Weekly VentureSquare Stories are summaries of some of the week’s top posts relating to the Korean startup and venture Industry.
Mutant Defense – Kuno Interactive
Kuno Interactive is a game development startup from Korea that are currently creating a new strategy game called Mutant Defence. The game is targeted at hardcore gamers and is a real-time strategy game for the Playstation 3. Based in space, players must build up the their defenses with a variety of towers and robotic weaponry to protect themselves from invading foes. The startup which was founded in October last year, did a lot to raise funds prior to starting development and eventually LG Mobile Content Support decided to support them. Though they may have received financial support, developing console games is no small feat and with two other games in development at the same time, it is likely that they will need more developers. Mutant Defence is due to be launched sometime in the first half of next year.Muzalive Releases Beta Version of new Platform – Muzarang
Social music startup Muzalive has launched the open beta version of their new site Muzrang. The site compiles a top 100 list of Korean artists using real time statistics from 30 sources including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Me2day. The system does not simply calculate views but also the amount of likes and times a certain artist is mentioned in Facebook posts and YouTube comments. With a simple interface, users are able to view video clips within the site as well as statistics of the clips themselves. Muzrang has been launched at the same time as CD sales in stores continue to decrease and people in English speaking countries turn to similar sites such as MTV musicmeter and Wearehunted. Taking into consideration the rising interest in K-POP overseas, Muzrang has initially been launched in English.Strategies to Improve Social Media Marketing
* In 2011 there were several issues involving social media, one of them being that social media communication is still not being acknoledged within many companies.
* If during the past two years companies have created and learnt how to use social media as a communication channel, they now need to improve their knowledge of how to use it.
* It is important to check whether social marketing for your company is travelling in the right direction. Here are a list of points to analyze.
– Level of interest and participation from management
– How much knowledge does your social media team have of social media communication?
– How much knowledge does your social media team about social media channels?
– Analysis of other rivals’ use of social media for communication
– Analysis of the team running the company’s social media channels
– Plans for running each social media channel
– Plans for content
Waterbear Soft – Creating Apps for a Brighter Future
Waterbear Soft is a mobile app developing startup that creates a wide range of educational apps for many different ages. With most apps focused towards language study and toddlers, the company has high potential to create revenue from their software. Waterbear Soft’s vision is to combine multimedia, mobile and interactive elements into one place in order to create a better learning experience for the user. Their Updown language learning series has been selling well and features English, Japanese, French plus many other languages. High sales have also been recorded in countries such as Japan and Taiwan for these titles. Waterbear Soft strives to bring books to life in order to help users concentrate and focus better while learning.
* Upcoming Events for Startups in Korea
VentureSquare OpenUp Event
VentureSquare’s 12th OpenUp Event will be held on the 3rd of December, 2011. Last time the event was a little different as we had Startup Recruiting Day, but this time we will be returning to a seminar and networking format. This event’s topic will be “Beyond the Search”. Searching is what we do as humans naturally. When we open an internet browser, more than often the first thing we do is search for something. This event we will hear from startups as well some major players as to how they are approaching searching and what the future of searching hold for us.
Topic: Beyond the Search
Date: 11:00 – 15:30, December 3rd, 2011 (Includes lunch and networking time)
Venue: Daum Communications (Seoul Hannam Office)
Limit: 100 People
Entry Fee: 15,000won
Host: Venture Square
Sponsors: Daum Communications, Rehoboth, Myungjin Books, TNM
