FireChat at Web Wednesday Hong Kong (V89)

Venue confirmed for tomorrow's impromptu and highly timely gathering with FireChat co-founder, Micha Benoliel. Follow Micha's recent posts about the Hong Kong protests on Twitter and Instagram, with links to all his social media channels on About.me.

Open Garden is the developer of FireChat, the first off-the-grid messaging app, leveraging peer-to-per mesh networking. News sources state that in a 24-hour period over 100,000 people downloaded FireChat during the Hong Kong #occupycentral #umbrellarevolution demonstrations.

Micha founded Open Garden to make wireless broadband Internet access ubiquitous and deliver a technology for the preservation of Net Neutrality.

Micha also launched Skype In and Skype Out in several European countries so knows his stuff!

NOTE NEW VENUE: Orange Peel, Flat A-C, 2/F, Ho Lee Comm Bldg, 38-44 D'Aguilar Street, Central. Doors open at 6:30pm with the interview at 7:15ish. HK$100 entrance fee, includes one complimentary drink.

Many thanks to Ping Wong and the good folk at Internet Society Hong Kong (ISOC HK) for their introduction.

Loading

Admirality, Occupy Central

View on Instagram

Podcast: iDreamSky at Web Wednesday (V88)

Returning from a highly successful IPO listing on NASDAQ, Jeff Lyndon joined us at our most recent Web Wednesday gathering to share his experience localising and publishing mobile games in China. His honesty was refreshing and a lesson for many entrepreneurs who get caught up in inflated PR!




Special thanks to the team at Radio Chinwag for mastering the recording.

Photos of iDreamSky at Web Wednesday

Good crowd - good chat at last night's 88th Web Wednesday with iDreamSky about mobile gaming in China.  See the photos on Flickr (sample screenshot below)for yourself!

Thanks to Bronney.com for capturing the moment.

iDreamSky at Web Wednesday Hong Kong (V88)

It's China Internet IPO time!

So we've invited Jeff Lyndon, former game champion and now Co-founder and President of iDreamSky (乐豆游戏）, China's leading independent mobile game publisher, to speak at our 88th Web Wednesday gathering in Hong Kong.

Jeff has recently returned from a successful IPO listing on NASDAQ where they raised US$115M, so will share his story of a Hong Kong entrepreneur helping a Chinese game company to list in the most competitive tech market in the US. Oh yes...we'll also talk plenty about how to design, develop and distribute great mobile games in China.

You can find Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter and read his favourite clippings on Paper.li.

As for iDreamSky, they are very active on Chinese social media and you can find them on Sina Weibo (303K fans) and Tencent Weibo (17K fans) as well as Facebook (165 likes) and Twitter (25 followers). From these numbers alone, you can see that China is their core market!

Some statistics on their business:

•  98.3 million active monthly users as of March 31, 2014
• 40 games but 85% of revenues comes form top three games, “Temple Run” series, “Fruit Ninja” and “Subway Surfers.”
• Temple Run 2 attracted 30.8 million active users and 10.3 million average daily active users in March this year.
• Revenue climbed to $40.7 million in 2013, from $3.1 million in 2012, and to $28.0 million in the first three months of this year. It swung to a profit of $5.4 million in 2013, from a loss of $1.5 million in 2012. It earned $5.3 million in the first quarter of 2014. 

And they're obviously continuing in a long line of game developers and publishers by appealing to their male dominated audiences with old fashioned marketing tactics, namely "booth babes"1

Listen to Jeff explain the China market for overseas game developers in the interview below.



Come here the man in person at Web Wednesday Hong Kong on 24th September at Club 18, 18 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central. Doors open at 6:30pm with the interview at 7:15pm.

Entrance Fee: HK$100 (includes complimentary drink), HK$50 for students (with proof, fresh from Occupy Central!)

We'll be giving out iDreamSky goodies so spread the word far and wide!

Find out who else is coming via the event invite on Facebook or MeetUp.

Podcast: Uber at Web Wednesday (V87)

Uber is the talk of the town! Our last social mixer (Web Wednesday Version 87) attracted over 150 people from all walks of the internet, see the photos on Flickr.

Thanks to Sam Gellman, Head of Growth for Uber in Asia, for sharing the story of Uber and how he has helped launch this disruptive new transport service in London, Stockholm, Shanghai, Singapore and, now, Hong Kong. If you missed the event, listen to the podcast below.

podcast - S4BB and SkyDrone at Web Wednesday (V86)

Thanks to Patrick Kosiol for taking the "hot-seat" on a last minute request at our 86th Web Wednesday social mixer on 23rd July, 2014. Listen to his experience as a serial mobile app entrepreneur under S4BB and co-founder of a new flying camera, SkyDrone.

Thingful - Search Engine for Internet of Things

Thanks to the BBC Click podcast, I learnt about thingful.net - a search engine for the pubic internet of things ("IoT"). Find them Twitter (@thingful) and use your own Twitter account to sign up and track your favourite IoTs.

Here is a map of all the odd things that are publicly connected to the internet in Hong Kong, from weather and pollution tracking hardware to ships and Raspberry Pies.