VietNamNet Bridge – Zing has launched Zing Blog service at blog.zing.vn which has been developed on the blog foundation of the social network Zing Me, and provided tools to users so that they can convert data from Yahoo Blog to Zing Blog accounts, after Yahoo officially closes their blog service as announced.

Nguyen Van Duc Trong, a senior executive of Zing Me, said on Buu Dien that in fact, Zing Me always thinks of providing blog service, because it understands well that writing blogs and sharing their feelings is a hobby of Vietnamese people.

Therefore, right since the very beginning of Zing Me, the social network, the developer has always been trying to create a space for users to share their feelings with others.

The community of bloggers has been growing very rapidly at Zing Me with 500,000 entries and 2 million bloggers a month. Most of the bloggers are young people aged 18-25, accounting for 42 percent of the community.

“In order to serve the large community, Zing has been unceasingly improving the features of the blog service. Especially, it has decided to develop a specific product – Zing Blog, in which it would invest more heavily in the time to come,” Trong said.

Also according to Trong, after Yahoo Blog closes, Zing Blog would provide a tool allowing people to convert data from Yahoo Blog to Zing Blog accounts. With the friendly and similar interface, bloggers would find it easier to remove to a “new house.”

Commenting about Zing Blog, analysts say Zing Me has made a wise move when launching blog service at this moment, when Yahoo plans to terminate its blog service to focus on other key services.

The giant has announced that Yahoo!Blog would shut down in Vietnam from January 17, 2013. The noteworthy thing is that the service would be stopped six months after it made debut on June 20.

Yahoo!Blog was launched six months ago to replace Yahoo!360Plus. Yahoo! said the shutdown is a part of its plan to close the services and products which do not bring much value to users, so as to gather strength and resources to the key services favored by users. Yahoo!Mail and Yahoo Messenger would be the communication products Yahoo! would maintain in Vietnam.

However, the Internet users’ community believes that Yahoo! has other reasons to make the decision.

Thanh Nien newspaper has posted an article titled “ngay tan cua Yahoo!Blog Vietnam” (the collapse of Yahoo!Blog Vietnam), raising a question that if the main reason behind the decision to quit Vietnam is the failure in the market.

Nguyen Thi Thanh Ngoc, a senior executive of Yahoo!, did not give the answer to the question, but admitted that Yahoo!Blog still has been succeeding in Taiwan and Hong Kong. She said that in the two markets, Yahoo! has the partners who join forces with it to run the product. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, there has been no partner capable enough to ensure the success of the service.

Ngoc went on to say that this is the decision made by the board of directors of Global Yahoo! after considering its global development strategy.

The announcement to close Yahoo!Blog from January 17 has raised a wave or anger among the Vietnamese bloggers’ community.

A blogger said Vietnamese users have not been respected and that the service provider would stop providing service at any time it wants, while it does not care about the feelings of the bloggers, who have been “close-knit” to Yahoo’s blog for the last six years.

Compiled by Thu Uyen