Startup Idea #1: Asean Facebook - Opportunities and Issues

Facebook clones are a dime a dozen. Yet, the concept is too compelling for me to resist taking a crack at differentiating the product.

While there are many facebook clones in some countries, I have not seen the Facebook concept being applied across different cultures with different languages.

The aims of this post is to document my thoughts on how to differentiate the current Facebook model and features with Asean context. The opportunity here, to me, is to provide a compelling feature that takes into account the fact the Asean countries, excluding Singapore, are generally poor with limited career opportunities for graduating students. If students in these countries can be tied with opportunities in Singapore via the site, there is an angel there that I think can be exploit.


Hmmm....

Resources: Current Facebook Clones
-China:http://xiaonei.com/
-Germany: http://www.studivz.net/
-Australia: http://www.studentface.com.au/auth

Updates: 18 April 2007

Upon further thinking, I think there are 2 potential projects embedded with this idea.

The first project is to be a http://www.match.com/ or http://www.jobster.com/ that specialises in matching students from ASEAN to companies in Singapore that requires their services. The Singapore companies might view them as cheaper labor or they might require them for overseas expansion.

Value added services for this will then include things like linking successful overseas applicants with quick and easy clearance of legal requirements such as permits et al. The features should have things that current job listing sites lack. A social networking feature can also be integrated to help overseas students adjust to Singapore culture.

The revenue will not be based solely on successful matching. The travel commission the site can earn is a good potential cash cow.

The second project will be more similar to facebook. The new feature will be a multi-language translator that allows students from different parts of ASEAN to network. A Thai student for instance will input as Thai but a Malaysian will see the output as Malaysian. All these automated via IP addresses.

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