Zing Me is twice as huge as Facebook in Vietnam

Zing Me is twice as big as Facebook in Vietnam

Published Time: 2011-02-22

What’s left for Facebook to conquer in Asia? Vietnam is one of them. There are only about 1.4 million Vietnamese users on Facebook out of a possible 20 million (Internet users).

With Facebook failing to cement its placing, Zing Me, a social network catered specifically for Vietnamese is dominating. Zing Me was formed in Aug 2009 by parent company, VNG Corporation, a Vietnam-based Internet giant. By the end of 2009, Zing Me has more than 4 million Vietnamese users on the social network, twice as many as Facebook’s. The figure is probably even more now.

Zing Me offers a wide variety of tools and entertainment including songs, chat, games, MTV and blog. There are over 1 million songs in ZingMP3 for users to listen, embed and download for free. ZingPlay is a collection of over 20 mini flash games on the Zing which has attracted over 1 million active gamers.

Like Farmville in U.S, ZingFarm is a huge success in Vietnam. We are unsure how many farmers are there on ZingFarm but the social network labeled the game as “hot”. It sure is as ZingFarm commands a lot of enthusiasm from gamers. There are hundreds of ZingFarm related videos on YouTube. ZingFarm also celebrates events like Valentine’s Day and Christmas with gamers by providing special roses and snow effects respectively.

So, who are the brains behind Zing Me? It traces back to VNG, its parent company. Five founders, including CEO le Hong Minh and American entrepreneur Bryan Pelz, founded VNG in 2004.

Shortly in two years, VNG ended 2006 with US$17 million in revenue. By 2010, VNG’s Zing network gathered over 1 billion pageviews per month. 1 out of 2 Vietnamese Internet users uses at least one Zing product on a monthly basis. Amazing isn’t it? With so much stickiness within Zing Me, Facebook is surely facing an uphill battle conquering Vietnam.