
A South Korean Copy of Snapchat Takes Off in Asia - hvo
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/06/technology/snapchat-snow-korea.html?ref=business
======
whack
The following paragraph really says it all:

 _Snow focuses on Asian consumers. Like Snapchat, it offers users an array of
filters that can add dog ears, glowing eyes and bulbous foreheads to selfies.
But Snow also lets users add bottles of soju, the Korean liquor, or images of
Korean pop stars. Another filter adds a rain of fried chicken, a favorite
South Korean nosh. For Japan there are sumo wrestler and sushi filters._

If you want to win a foreign market, you have to ensure that you meet their
needs. This is just Business 101. Any company that thinks that it can simply
take a US/Western oriented product, add some language translations, and roll
it out in other continents, is going to be massively vulnerable to local
competitors that are willing to customize their features to tailor local
preferences.

~~~
walrus01
If Caucasian engineers at an American company created fried chicken, sumo
wrestler and sushi filters for specific ethnic target markets they'd be
accused of ethnic stereotypes and racism.

~~~
colordrops
I don't think that's true based on personal experience working for foreign
markets. Who exactly would be calling these engineers racist?

~~~
nostromo
Other Americans, of course.

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frank_jaeger
Anyone have insight as to why Snapchat is blocked in China but Snow isn't? Is
Snow just currently under the radar and will likely suffer the same fate?

~~~
mikeevans
My random guess is that the last I heard - Snapchat was still on AppEngine.
The first results on a Google search (so I don't know with any confidence if
it's true) say that the appspot domain is blocked in China.

~~~
arcticfox
That would be one of the worst reasons to get locked out of the world's most
populous market...

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rhema
I love pop culture Asian design aesthetics. They are so much more clean and
bouncy feeling than western software. It using websites and apps more fun.

~~~
sushid
I certainly agree that Korean/Chinese iPhone apps feel that way. Websites,
however, are stuck using UI preferences of the 90s.

Large, popular Korean sites look a lot like Yahoo during its heyday.

~~~
pcurve
Like others, I prefer the content-centric look of East Asian sites.

Many highly trafficked Japanese (and Korean) web sites are model for brevity
and efficiency.

Compare:

[http://www.sankei.com/](http://www.sankei.com/)

vs

[http://www.yahoo.com/](http://www.yahoo.com/)

vs

[http://www.naver.com/](http://www.naver.com/)

Sankei site has so much more content, yet its HTML file is only 38kb. Naver
site is 97kb. Yahoo's html file is 614kb.

Do View-Source on these sites, and it doesn't take long to figure out what a
joke Yahoo site is.

And the real joke is Japanese and Korean web developers make 1/2 or 1/3rd of
what Yahoo guys make.

~~~
jonknee
> And the real joke is Japanese and Korean web developers make 1/2 or 1/3rd of
> what Yahoo guys make.

What does that have to do at all with the number of kilobytes for the
homepage?

~~~
dba7dba
Do more with less = efficiency

And usually efficiency is rewarded?

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jusben1369
"Our competitive advantage is Chinese regulations blocking a social network
and some domestic market filters" \- One can change overnight and two can be
pretty easily matched by a deep pocketed competitor who wants to enter your
market. I could see these places being ghost towns in 2 or 3 years.

~~~
cheriot
In 2 or 3 years they'll have the network effect locked down. Chat apps rise
and fall between generations ICQ -> AOL -> Text -> Snapchat, but it's rare for
a similar product to steal a user base in that kind of market. My
understanding is that many Asian countries look to Korea and Japan for fashion
and pop culture so this may be the gateway to the rest of E and SE Asia.

~~~
vthallam
Yeah! And on top of it, none of the western social networks have been able to
crack the chinese market yet. Wechat/Weibu etc are popular with millions of
users. So no deep pocketed company can crack the market easily.

~~~
khuey
s/have been able to crack the chinese market/are not banned by the government/

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uniclaude
> _“With the rise of China and China’s infatuation with Korean culture, it’s
> breathed new life into Korean start-ups and founders, Mr. Chae said. “This
> is a market that happens to be a lot bigger than the U.S., that seems to be
> more welcoming for Korean technology and culture than the Western world ever
> was.”_

This paragraph is telling much than the rest of the article. Working in Japan,
I see a similar trend. Except for those already well implanted, companies are
not interested in the western world anymore. Not only it's hard, but it's not
growing as fast as Asia.

Hiring teams that can understand the target market and culture is also much
simpler, and marketing channels are simpler to understand.

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wodenokoto
I just downloaded snow. While snapchat might have a hard to figure out
interface, snow feels down right broken.

After going to the menu to add Facebook friends, a list of people show up with
a little "added" icon. There is no confirm button, only back. So I click back
and my friend list is still empty.

2/3 the friend finder will not return results and many buttons take upwards of
40 seconds to think about things.

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cm2012
The options for face altering in snow are generally cuter/prettier (according
to my wife).

~~~
pcurve
I agree...

I have to say, in the area of emoticon designs, Kakaotalk is still the best.

[https://www.airfrov.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2015/05/Daum...](https://www.airfrov.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2015/05/Daum-Kakao-Blog-KakaoTalk-Love-Story-Emoticon-01.jpg)

[http://cfile5.uf.tistory.com/image/230DBD3753AD4E8129D4F3](http://cfile5.uf.tistory.com/image/230DBD3753AD4E8129D4F3)

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Grue3
This is why Snapchat will fail. Too easy to copy. Too little stickiness.

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aluhut
Could someone provide me with a link? I was unable to google it. I even tried
what it gave me for snow (눈). It wasn't helpful.

~~~
UntitledNo4
On iPhone, I just searched for Snow on the App Store and found it. Android
seems quite straight forward as well:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.campmobile...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.campmobile.snow&hl=en)

~~~
aluhut
Thank you

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bsder
Silly social network becomes popular for silly social reasons.

That's the definition of "fad", after all.

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anonbanker
The United States is losing real money due to their surveillance/panopticon
policies. This is one of many examples.

~~~
mooman219
You are aware that all data in china has to be available to be available to be
randomly searched at any time, and hosted in specific locations that are
regulated by the government? Your comment is absurdly naive.

~~~
anonbanker
Yes, but does any of that affect my rights as a citizen of this (different)
continent?

