Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. A place of my own where I can talk about the industry I live in, work in and love. A platform that I’m hoping is going to help create English-language awareness of the Far Eastern web industry and its exciting movements across Asia. More importantly, it’s going to give me legitimate cause to hilariously shout the phrase “News?? I AM the news!” over and over again whilst out with friends, whenever someone mentions the word “news”. I give you httpAsia.

httpAsia is a blog about the web and tech industry in Asia. I will be commentating on the business developments, startup activity and popular websites of China, Japan, Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and more - wherever the action is. My position as a web consultant here in Tokyo, my obsession with the industry in general and my growing relationships with several startups across Asia (and my experience with my own startup projects) puts me in a fairly decent position to act as a reporter on the goings on of the Asian web.

Goals

My number one hope is that httpAsia can contribute in whatever way to making the web industry in Asia a sexier place to be. It’s a vibrant place to be right now, but I feel that the industry needs much more passionate, young entrepreneurs to liven up the Asia web experience. There are lots of obstacles facing web startups in Asia, from massive, incumbent web services that dominate the scene, to the risk-averse attitude towards funding and investment of the web, and the lack of a platform to discuss these issues.

I’m hoping that httpAsia can in some small way help fuel a little passion, get some young people excited, and get people out there building web apps especially for the Asia market. Over the coming months I’ll be doing my part to contribute to the latter, along with helping to spread information via httpAsia.

Who is the audience?

httpAsia is English-only for now, so I see the main audience as made up of two groups of people:

1. English-speaking Asian web entrepreneurs, be they from English-speaking Asian countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, or educated, English-speaking business and tech bods from non-English-speaking countries such as Japan and China. In addition, I’m hoping that a decent chunk of the audience will be English-speaking expat entrepreneurs like myself, living and working in Asia.

2. Western readers who want to learn more about the developments of the Asian web industry, such as existing companies wishing to expand into new markets and investors looking for new opportunities in Asia.

What’s in it for Yongfook?

Oh you cynical little buggers. For me, this is a great outlet for me to waffle on about the industry that I live and breathe, without cluttering up my personal blog with a bunch of industry commentary when all people really come to my blog for are picture comparisons of me with short hair and me with long hair. Call it a form of therapy. In addition, as I stated above my overall goal is to help make the web industry in Asia a little bit more exciting, through spreading awareness, providing a single place where people can come and read about what their peers are up to, see some figures on investment and earnings to get them excited, and discuss issues that pertain specifically to the Asian web.

And if the industry is an exciting place to be, that makes my job as a web guy in Asia working with local clients and producing local web apps much more exciting.

Do you have loads of free time or something?

Certainly not. But I have shaved a few hours off my sleeping time each day. I find you are able to get so much more done in a day if you are awake for 20 hours of it…

But seriously, I think I’ve been lucky to set myself up in a profession that I truly am enthusiastic about. I’m not going to sit on my hands and let opportunities or ideas pass by because I’d rather spend my late 20s playing Xbox360 every weekend*. Call it “kiasu“, call it a deeply-instilled sense of self-underachievement pummeled into me by demanding Chinese relatives - I want to create things, dammit, and httpAsia is my new thang.

Enjoy, and please spread the word to anyone you think will be interested!

*actually I have an Xbox360 and Rainbow Six: Vegas is totally sweet.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.