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Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> Notably, it is also gaining traction in China, where the country’s 700 million users make up the world’s largest internet market. There, Snow has a major advantage: Snapchat is blocked in China.

That also helps!

I agree. Chinese protectionism is a whole other story entirely. I was referring specifically to that fact that Snow is beating out Snapchat in South Korea, where Snapchat doesn't face any regulatory barriers.

While I don't know the specific causes. You might be interested to know that South Korea has a very strong history of preferring clones to the original software. Some of it is cultural and linguistic, but Korea also has a very protectivist market. The examples I can think of, Naver over Google, KakaoTalk over Whatsapp/Messaging, KakaoTaxi over Uber, 1km/Hello There over Tinder.

Edit: Actually, Kakao's (the company) business model is to take apps from the West and remake them for the Korean market. (Talk - Messaging, Music - Music Streaming, Taxi - Taxi Hailing, Story - Facebook)

Naver beat Google because lack of English based content, according to this article:

http://searchengineland.com/naver-the-google-of-south-korea-...

It's not because of protectionism.

What are the protectionist policies (not cultural or linguistic causes) that prevent non-Korean mobile apps from succeeding in South Korea?

The iPhone was delayed several years in Korea because it didn't have Korean security/encryption software and was therefore considered insecure.

I haven't heard about app level barriers but I wouldn't be surprised

Hard to see how apps can be kept out lime iPhone was. Unless you are China.

While I don't have specific examples of this being abused. I would point out that there are actually country/region specific app stores, not one unified store. It's very common for software to not release globally. For example, much to the chagrin of most of my Thai friends, Pokemon Go is still not available in Thailand.

And this will probably be blocked soon also, unless they make an agreement to harmonize their service for a Chinese market and partner with some princeling's tech company.

The rules in China are evolving all the time but basically to have an app in China, you need to have an entity in China, have user data on a server in China, follow all Chinese laws, etc. So if Snow wants to keep it's Chinese user base, they will need to implement everything that other CN messaging apps have done, including censoring specific keywords, etc.

I wonder how much the disadvantage that causes for the Chinese economy, if it got slowed down at all.

They have an advantage that their own local market is quite large (and growing). It's similar to how a US company can do very well focusing on just us consumers, because the market is so big. Or, same as Japan .

I am thinking about the markets, not the business inside it.

Would that mean this snow app is providing user information to the Chinese govt? Why would snapchat be blocked but not Snow?

Perhaps it flew below the radar?

Probably because Snapchat is an American company and Snow is not.

You have to wonder at what point the US returns the favor? Just kidding, that would require our politicians having a pair.

Return the favor how? There aren't any novel Chinese apps worth using outside of China.

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.

Only Americans would accuse them of racism, because we Americans like to manufacture controversy. Regardless, you either give each market what it wants, or you will fail. If they were really that worried about such accusations, Snapchat could have created an Asian subsidiary company and had that company create and release an Asian version of it. Given that Snapchat is blocked in China, they should have done this anyway and created a version that was palatable to the Chinese government.

Only on HN will you receive genuine advice to create a communication app specifically tailored for the censorship and surveillance purposes of an authoritarian government for profit.

If you dislike Chinese censorship, you can refuse to participate in their market, or you can have a seat at the table and try to work for change from the position of having a popular and valued service in their country. The latter is probably more effective. Snapchat isn't exactly the tool of choice for privacy-minded people anyway.

Probably true; remember the controversy about the skin lightening filter? That would be a default filter in Asia where fair skin is aesthetically considered more beautiful.

I once heard a theory that whiter skins were considered more aesthetically pleasing in old days (in East Asia), because at that time everybody worked at fields, so being pale meant that your family is so rich that you don't have to work. It was something that couldn't be attained by most people.

Fast forward to the industrial age: now poor women worked all day long in a factory, barely getting sunlight, while rich girls would visit beaches and sky resorts, tanning themselves. Suddenly, being slightly tanned is now considered "healthy" and, to some degree, "more beautiful".

That said, most people still seem to like relatively whiter skin, just not 0xffffff.

> I once heard a theory that whiter skins were considered more aesthetically pleasing in old days (in East Asia), because at that time everybody worked at fields, so being pale meant that your family is so rich that you don't have to work. It was something that couldn't be attained by most people.

> Fast forward to the industrial age: now poor women worked all day long in a factory, barely getting sunlight, while rich girls would visit beaches and sky resorts, tanning themselves. Suddenly, being slightly tanned is now considered "healthy" and, to some degree, "more beautiful".

I actually heard this exact theory about skin perceptions in western countries, and I think it's regarded pretty well by sociologists/historians. Being "too pale" is an insult these days among Whites, and many people specifically go to tanning salons or lie in the sun, just to tan/darken their skin tone.

In Texas and other southwest US states, being pale is still a sign of being high class, since so many of the lower class are day laborers working outdoors. This includes classism within the Hispanic races.

>where fair skin is aesthetically considered more beautiful

The first time I heard 一白遮三丑 was an eye-opening experience. I knew the stereotype but not how far it actually went.

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

Other Americans, of course.

remember what happened when Snapchat had Bob Marley filter?

People who don't understand what 'racist' means. Which is a lot of people today.

good luck creating a fried chicken filter targeted at south korea and convincing people it wasn't part of some thinly veiled "fried chickenz and watermelons" plot to insult a large percentage of the american population...

I specifically add things to my products that might trigger some ladies on black twitter so that it goes viral.

I thought everyone was doing this.

To be fair, if a Japanese company launched sumo wrestler filters in Korea, I'm sure some people will find a way to be offended. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(Also, never mention "Sea of Japan", or you'll be in deep trouble...)

It's about context and how it's presented. The fried chicken thing as a sponsored filter would totally just make sense and be silly.

Those poor Caucasian engineers, when will they ever break free from the chains of their imaginary PC shackles?

Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube are all very popular in SE Asia, especially the ones that are just getting into the internet now (Cambodia, Myanmar, even Vietnam).

Most internet companies in the states have more Asians working there from these countries than in say, South Korea and China, which often have NONE (they are all pretty homogeneous ethnically). To say western internet companies don't have any multi-cultural affinity isn't accurate given the make up of most tech companies.

Really? That's the opposite of where I thought you were going with your comment. Based on what you're saying, it sounds like all Snapchat has/had to do to be more successful in South Korea was add soju and fried chicken filters to their existing product.

In this precise case, it has much more to do with : - It's been launched by Naver, a tech company with deep pockets, not a startup. - It can access China.

That's interesting. Naver dominates Japan, Taiwan and Thailand with LINE, but they chose to create a new messaging app to go after Korea and China since LINE wasn't getting traction there.

I wonder why LINE thought they could challenge kakao in korea...

I wonder if this is the same for search? As a long time user of Google I must say, outside of the anglosphere, their search engine is really lacking.

Where is it bad? It's pretty good in Japan

France, Germany are my main areas. It still sends me to wildly different locations each search.

One example near Paris: some tourism company were hijacking Maps results so when I went looking for a specific language school this other place was the first result.

Another example: I was in Cape Verde looking for the ships chandlery. The results returned were in Portugal. My second attempt gave me results in Brazil and Portugal.

I've since learned to sanity check the results first. This can be hard when you are driving in a different country and Maps wants you to board a ferry and drive through sub-Sahara Africa.

Are you searching in the native language for those areas? I think that might be the difference; Google maps search is unpredictable like your examples in English but basically perfect in Japanese.

That is so true. You can see a lot of SV startups think if it works in the US, then it works in Asia. AirBnb is a great example something that does not work. When a 5 star hotel cost $50-70 only, people aren't going to pay the same price for someone else's home.

Airbnb certainly works in Asia. Lots of Americans use it to find month-to-month whole apartment rentals. It's safer than paying a wad of cash to some random local landlord.

Americans are using it, but that's a very tiny slice. The local market isn't using it and that's where the bulk of the money is. Using your logic, that would mean Airbnb is working the US, because Chinese people are using it in the US.

Also, you are literally paying the same local landlord plus service fees to Airbnb. It is known that the exact same apartment can be listed +10% more on Airbnb.

Look at all the medium size indie hotels that are popping up all around Asia, and you can see that the local people still prefer hotels.

It's not just that. Asian markets have incredible amount of protectionism and self-promotion that it takes uncanny effort to penetrate as a North American company.

I know China has a lot of protectionism, but I have not heard of it being difficult to get your software/app into other Asian countries. Which ones have a lot of protectionism in terms of software/app stores?

Anything that involves social integration does not thrive when created in NA and marketed in Asia.

But that is not protectionism.

Don't most markets have their own local apps/sites that are more popular than foreign ones?

I think Kakao is more popular in Korea than Whatsapp. In Russia Yandex is bigger than Google. In China everything is bigger because the foreign apps are banned.

> If you want to win a foreign market, you have to ensure that you meet their needs. This is just Business 101.

Beating the locals at their own game is just Business 101? Seems like an arrogant attitude.

> Beating the locals at their own game is just Business 101? Seems like an arrogant attitude.

When you recast the quote in different words, I suppose. But do you refute that you "have to ensure you've met [your market's] needs"? Is it better to ignore the market's needs instead? That seems more arrogant to me.

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