Speaking on behalf of Mozilla at the >Play conference

On Saturday, October 27, I had the chance to speak on a panel titled Consumer Internet in the Asian Theater  at the >Play conference hosted by Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Pkim and I were asked by the student organizers to find someone to speak on this panel because of Mozilla’s community building efforts in Asia (Mozilla Japan, Li in China, and our Mozilla friends in Taiwan).   Due to my interaction with many community members in these regions, I RSVP-ed to the organizers that I would speak on the panel, letting them know that Mozilla is focused on both what is best for its users and what is best for a free and open web.

The panel had some really interesting and fascinating participants, including Jeremiah who you might know through his blog titled www.web-strategist.com.  At first, I felt like Mozilla might be misplaced speaking on a panel about consumer strategy (focusing on things like maximizing ad revenues) in Asia.  But as the panel evolved, it became pretty apparent that many companies face the very same issues as Mozilla (or anyone) when entering these markets.  A couple takeaways:

• Start by trying to understand the culture.  Whenever an organization has decided to enter,  explore, or community build in a new country, the panel agreed that it is important to focus on “technographics” (term used by Jeremiah).  Every culture has different technographics.  Each panelist contributed to this idea with anecdotes from experiences, noting that it is critical to understand why people are motivated to use the Internet, what type of technology is that new market accustomed to using, and how will people in that new market use that technology.  Mobile, browsers, search engines were all discussed.
• When possible, place decision making into local hands.  Each panelist seemed to have a story that relayed how they were able to enter a new market because they empower local decision making.  I shared a bit about my recent trip to India, pointing out that all ongoing activity we have with our community in India right now (localizing, community building, marketing) is being driven by local members there.
• Don’t force a style or strategy that might have worked elsewhere.  Perhaps this aligns with the first point, but it was hammered home a few times.  The panel agreed that it is so important to get on the ground and see how people are using the Internet.  At one point, we discussed how social networking differs in places like the United States (a la the Facebook-Poke Me!-style, which is very in your face) versus a place like Japan where people often prefer to be less HEY-EVERYONE:BBLLLLAAHHHHH about themselves through social networking.
• Understand the costs or benefits of externalities when looking at new markets.  A while back, Gen (Mozilla Japan) wrote a terrific post about the cost of monoculture in the Korean internet (http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/02/27/the-cost-of-monoculture/).  Due to external decisions by the government in Korea, users are pretty much locked into using IE for secure transactions.  Panelists agreed that there are several factors that will impact entry into a new country, whether it is government decisions on policy or other external factors that influence decisions.  Li Gong has an interesting write up on his blog about what it took to get the proper Mozilla name registered in China.

For some reason, I expected the stories from Mozilla to be completely different from others’ on the panel because Mozilla does have a clearly different mission.  But, it became clear that whether an organization is fighting to keep the web open, or trying to optimize ad revenues through search optimization, it is important to put in a special effort in understanding culture and why people choose to do what they do on the Internet.

Tags: evangelists | Categories: Uncategorized