Former Tudou CEO Gary Wang.

Tudou founder and former CEO Gary Wang cashed out of China’s biggest ever internet business deal last summer and then announced his retirement from the YouTube-like video company to chase “the next interesting dream.” It turns out that his next startup project will be quite different – an animation studio.

Aiming to be China’s Pixar, Wang told the WSJ, “I wouldn’t have done this five years ago, but now the time is right.” With improved copyright protection and a domestic movie market worth $2.74 billion last year, it seems the opportune moment for a Beijing-based animation studio to take on both Pixar and Dreamworks. China’s animation industry is fairly sizeable, but has yet to have a contemporary, big-name success either at home or overseas, and it’s mostly American and Japanese cartoon characters that catch the imagination of Chinese kids.

Wang’s new animation studio will open on April 1st, and reportedly has tens of millions of dollars in funding from a group of unnamed international investors. It’s not clear if his new venture will have an online business aspect, or will operate more like a conventional studio.

Whatever animated blockbusters he helps produce will find a big market in China – and one which is biased in favor of local production companies. Only a handful of foreign movies are permitted access to China’s growing (but still small) network of big-screen cinemas each year.

After managing Tudou – which is now part of the Youku Tudou company, running two of China’s top video-streaming sites – for seven years, Wang will know that licensing big-screen content to the country’s numerous video sites will be a big part of the success and profitability of the new studio.

(Source: Wall Street Journal; Image: Guardian)

Now that everyone is over a certain horse-riding dance, the next music meme all over the internet is the Harlem Shake. It’s already taking off in China in terms of both being shared over social networks like Weibo, as well as some recreations of the easy-to-replicate, freak-out dance.

Dubbed “Ha Lin yao” in Chinese, we’ve found three versions of the Harlem Shake made by Chinese netizens. As you can see: it’s the same simple formula the world over: one lone dancer gyrates to the building intro, and when the bass drops that’s when everyone else gets down and dirty. Masks or helmets are encouraged, but optional. Unlike a certain Korean pop sensation, there’s no set dance routine, making this the perfect meme for the reality TV attitude-is-more-important-than-talent generation.

[UPDATED two days later with video from Oppo]. There are not yet many Chinese reworkings of the Harlem Shake, but these three four stand out:

Startup shakin’

The perfect place for us to start is with the Shanghai-based startup NeoNan, a sort of GQ-like portal for men, which got its office pumping to the Harlem Shake. Look out for some nice horse-ridin’ meme-mixing going on in here:

Oppo Harlem style

We’ve updated the post with this one from phone-maker Oppo:

Gyrating grans

Next, some rocking grandmothers, one of whom throws some renegade nose-picking into the mix:

On drugs

Lastly, what looks to be a pharmacy is turned into a dancefloor by these Chinese students. Also, who left students to run a drugs store?

The new Asia Pop channel has only four videos so far, but that will soon expand once it adds livestreams of special events. The first Hangout will kick off on March 8th with Korean pop star SHINee.

Also useful are the playlists within the new Asia Pop area – there are five so far – that give you a rundown of the most popular music of the past week.

Google tells us that the new channel will focus on Korean, Japanese, and Chinese pop music. Hopefully that might also expand to cover other nations with vibrant pop music scenes that have cross-border appeal – and perhaps some alternative music too. But that’s just our wishful thinking.

There are seven Hangouts planned for early March. This is the line-up so far:

March 8 – Shinee (K-Pop)

March 9 – Wang Lee Hom (C-Pop)

March 10 – Super Junior (K-Pop)

March 11 – Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (J-Pop)

March 12 – Flumpool (J-Pop)

March 13 – 2PM (K-Pop)

March 14 – Mayday (C-Pop)

Only five lucky fans, Google explains, will be allowed into each Hangout, so you better start thinking of a good question if you want to get in.

As you’ll likely know already, PSY’s Gangnam Style is the most-viewed YouTube video of all time, so it seems like a fitting time for the region’s pop music to get more attention from YouTube itself.

Just last week, YouTube announced the opening of Asia’s first YouTube Space in Tokyo to give content creators a professional space to craft their videos.

Japan’s Nikkei ¹ reports today that national TV network Fuji TV has founded a venture capital fund called Fuji Startup Ventures, or FSV for short. The fund will be worth about 1.5 billion yen (approximately $17 million) to invest in startups developing apps and services that can be integrated with TV programs.

Fuji TV has many subsidiaries including radio stations, mail-order businesses, music companies, and book publishers. They aim to create business synergies between their existing subsidiaries and tech startups they will subsequently invest in.

As Japan’s younger generation drifts away from watching TV, private TV broadcasters are now forced to create a new revenue stream in addition to their primary business.

In 2012, we saw Fuji TV embark on some other digital endeavors, including opening new online channels on YouTube, and even cooperating with Rovio for an Angry Birds web game on the Fuji TV website.

The Gougou.com page right now with its closure notice.

It was just a few weeks ago that Gougou.com, China’s most notorious pirate content search engine, was added to the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) report on major copyright offenders. And now the service has finally shut down. Visitors to the site right now will see that the search box has vanished, and there’s just a bilingual notice; in English it says:

Gougou.com has been closed down. Thank you all for your support, and we are sorry for any inconvenience.

The Gougou site is run by the Chinese web company Xunlei, whose plans for a US IPO were blown apart last year due to the rampant piracy both on its Gougou search service and via its Xunlei P2P sharing platform. But Xunlei is keen to become a legitimate, Hulu-style video-streaming company, and so this closure might be a part of how it is finally cleaning up its act.

In the past, there were versions of Gougou for searching for pirated movies, music, software, games, and e-books. All those are now closed. When we last tried to access the site a few weeks ago (when we got hold of the USTR report), the site was offline and returning only an error message. Rumors of its imminent demise have been going round for over a year on the Chinese web – but it seems that, at last, the rogue search engine is dead.

But, proving that a many-headed hydra is hard to kill, many imitators, using the distinctive “Gougou” name remain online, such as gougousousou.com (“sou” means “search” in Chinese).

The Chinese web has cleaned up quite a bit in the last year or two, with the recent closure of the dodgy Yahoo Music portal, the removal of the Taobao online mall from the USTR blacklist, and the nation’s top home-grown search engine shifting to only licensed music on its streaming service.

Perhaps we’ll see Xunlei have another whack at an overseas IPO now that it has less (though still some) copyright concerns to list in a potential investors’ prospectus.

NotTV, at CEATEC Japan

This past July we wrote about Mmbi Inc’s NotTV mobile television service, which at that point had surpassed 100,000 subscribers after its April launch. There’s now word from Mmbi this week that the service has now broken the 400,000 subscriber milestone, as of December 22. NotTV needed just 266 days to reach this landmark.

It’s important to understand that each of those subscribers is a paying customer, as the mobile channel costs 420 yen (almost $5) each month. If we do some quick math we can see that means nearly a cool $2 million monthly.

Currently the service is available in 14 Japanese prefectures, but it is expected that service will expand to all prefectures in 2013. Mmbi’s previously stated goal for its first year was one million subscribers, and with a little luck it could very well reach that mark if growth keeps up in the new year.

NotTV will launch a new promotional effort from tomorrow until January 6, as part of a New Year’s campaign. If that goes well, it could certainly help bring in some new subscribers.

NotTV is supported by Docomo, as most of its winter lineup of handsets are compatible with the service. So Mmbi could see another surge in sign-ups when the carrier’s spring lineup hits shelves next year too.

[NotTV via S-Max]

Readers may recall back in October when we featured new media artist Eric Siu and his amazing human camera prototype called ‘Touchy’. The concept involves Eric wearing a helmet-like camera, but with eye-holes that function as shutters which activate when he’s touched.

Eric, along with his partner Asia Skubisz and some other friends, have put together a fun Christmas video that I thought would be nice to share with you guys as the holidays are upon us.

It comes complete with all the things that make Christmas merry, including blond pole-dancers and homoerotic elves. Wait, did I say Christmas? I totally meant bachelor parties. In any case, you can check out the festive video in its entirety below. There’s a special guest appearance from Touchy advisor and Japanese gadget Nobumichi Tosa (Maywa Denki), who chimes in on his Otamatone, a very unique instrument of his own creation.

Stay tuned for more fun adventures from the very creative Touchy and friends in the new year!

In an all-too-rare instance of web companies and content providers teaming up to give users exactly what they want, China’s video sites are currently thriving, packed full of legit and fully licensed movies and TV shows from across the globe to watch, on-demand, and mostly for free. It’s somewhat ironic that Chinese web users will find it easier to stream the latest episode of Breaking Bad or watch the entire back-catalog of House, or view a recent Hollywood blockbuster, than their counterparts in the US.

Among the many strong contenders are video-streaming services from Chinese web giants such as Baidu (iQiyi), Sohu (Sohu TV), Youku, LeTV, PPS, and – the nation’s biggest online company – Tencent (HKG:0700), with its Tencent Video portal at V.QQ.com. To get a sense of the scale of Tencent Video, and why it even needs to compete in this pricey and crowded sector in the first place, we talked to Alex Liu (pictured below), general manager of Tencent’s online video department.

Alex states that Tencent Video is no longer playing catch-up, and is already a top choice for Chinese viewers:

iResearch’s UserTracker September 2012 report on video sites for web and PC clients shows Tencent’s 275 million monthly user coverage was more than Youku’s 266 million, making Tencent Video the number one platform in the industry. [… And] the October monthly coverage was 272 million, leading Youku again by six million.

There are a lot of metrics out there, of course. [UPDATE: It's also worth noting that the iResearch data mentioned above does not include mobile/app views, so it's not a full reflection of the market. Factoring in mobile video views, Tencent Video might not be top]. When we last got a sneak peak at some ComScore data a few months ago, it showed that the stickiest video streaming site in China, in terms of viewing time, was Youku, which was being used for 698 million hours of web video viewing. Tencent Video was third with 474 million hours of eye-ball time. But Tencent’s portal looks to be growing with the strongest year-long growth in the industry by iResearch’s stats [1]. In terms of importance, Tencent recently declared web video, among its very many products, to be one of its top five goals.

To Hollywood and beyond

Alex Liu.

Aside from all the stats, what these video sites need is quality, big-name content to bring in viewers – viewers who are dissatisfied with the dull and safe programming on CCTV, the state TV broadcaster. That means things that young Chinese really want to see (unlike CCTV), such as Korean romantic series, Taiwanese game-shows, American dramas, topical Chinese dramas and comedies, new Hollywood movies, the latest manga. And all that will bring in advertisers. Alex explains:

Tencent Video has always emphasized the importance of investing in the [broadcast] rights to TV series to create a TV viewing platform with diverse, high-quality content, and broad, total coverage. Tencent video already has 61 TV series with more than 100,000,000 plays, and our coverage includes 85 percent of the year’s popular TV content. In 2013, Tencent video wants to cover 80 percent of the content on the top satellite TV stations, plus have exclusives each month, and we’ve already signed agreements with 15 hot shows.

That extends even to Hollywood and other nations:

As far as overseas content, Tencent Video’s Hollywood film theater is already online, including nearly 400 films across 20 genres. We also have 24 series and more than 1,000 episodes of American TV on Tencent Video, including a worldwide web exclusive for the first 13 seasons of CSI, and 500 episodes of Korean soaps from MBC will also be exclusively shown on Tencent Video.

Self-produced shows

All these video-streaming rivals have pushed up the price of web broadcast rights in China, with 30 episodes of one Chinese drama costing as much as $4.6 million last year. Many sites are therefore producing their own content – even dramas – to bring in viewers. Alex adds:

Original content has always been a source of competitive strength for Tencent, and was established early on as one of Tencent video’s strategic directions. At present, Tencent video has successively released [lots of Chinese dramas] and other news, sports, entertainment, and finance; plus Tencent original programs. [… We’re] planning “Burst Forth 2013,” a strategic plan to produce 100 microfilms and 100 web series over the course of the year.

Mobile cinema

Tencent – which also makes the huge messaging app WeChat, which it has launched worldwide – is the nation’s biggest web company by revenue – and by the sheer weight of registered users. Its QQ instant-messenger is used, it’s no exaggeration to say, by pretty much everyone in China. That gives the video portal a big boost in terms of reputation, already registered users, traffic, and its perceived power as an advertising platform. Alex insists it’s a “dual platform for marketing” that includes displaying ads on the Tencent Video mobile apps (for Android, WP, iPhone, and iPad), the Windows PC app, and of course on the website too. But Alex won’t be drawn to give a number for how many video views come from the smartphone and tablet apps.

The V.QQ.com site is different from Baidu’s iQiyi – and Hulu – in also having user-generated content (UGC) in the form of videos, but, we’re told, “less than 10 percent of Tencent Video is UGC.” It’s mostly social stuff that comes from the company’s many social services, such as WeChat, QQ, QZone, or the Facebook-esque Pengyou.

Paying up?

The new Tencent Video section for Hollywood movies – with support for paid streaming. Click to enlarge.

Although Tencent doesn’t lack the resources to buy all this content or monetize the videos from advertising, some of the streaming content requires a small fee to watch – usually as little as 2.5 or 5 RMB (40 to 80 US cents). We’ve seen the web company do this kind of thing for a long time, including on QQ where it has 30 million paying members. For the video site, the payment experiment is still very new, launched last month to coincide with the new “Hollywood film” section of the portal, here. Alex explains more fully:

Tencent Video is currently testing the waters of the user payment model. This November when we were pushing out the Hollywood theater [section], we tested user payment models, asking between 2.5 and 5 RMB for each film, or 20 RMB [$3.20] for a month of membership to watch unlimited movies. Through the implementation of this user payment model, Tencent Video will give users the newest, the hottest, and the most classic Hollywood films, to give users an exclusive platform for a Hollywood-level experience.

At present the films there include Clash of the Titans, Inception, Green Lantern, and more including animation, science fiction, comedy, and also thrillers among 20 total genres and 400 high-definition North American films. Taking this year’s Oscar contender Argo as an example, it premiered on October 12th in the US, November 15th in Hong Kong, and then just 40 days after the initial premiere it was first available on Tencent Video on November 21st, breaking a new record for online arrival speed.

Despite Chinese web users being very used to e-commerce and paying for things online, it can be more of a challenge to get them to cough up for digital content. Nonetheless, a very reasonable price coupled with a quick roll-out (and better streaming quality than pirated movies), should help to make it a persuasive and attractive proposition.

We’ve seen rival site Youku do the same kind of thing with its Youku Premium channel that focuses on top movies. Back in June of last year, Youku revealed that it had seen 200,000 paid transactions for its library of more than 300 movies. That sounds pretty good, but it’s a small fraction of the hundreds of million of visitors to these kinds of sites.

For China-based fans of films and TV series, they have more high-quality choice online than ever before – all while having to endure less ads than on TV. And that sounds like a great reason to turn off the TV and tune into the web.

Big thanks to my colleague Charlie for Chinese-to-English translations!

It comes just three months after Google closed its own China-only music streaming service.

The Yahoo Music site (see it here) differs from the Google one – and from Baidu’s recently revamped music streaming offering – in that it offers very dodgy deep-linking to probably pirated mp3 files, as shown here:

This is the kind of thing that Google stopped some time ago, and Baidu too has cleaned up its act and stopped its MP3 search engine portal that fished out deep links to pirated content. It’s not clear how Yahoo got away with this for so long.

In related news, even licensed MP3 downloads in China might be paid-for in 2013, with one or two companies thought to be keen to launch paid music subscriptions.

[Hat-tip to Marbridge Daily for spotting this]

Recently Silicon Valley-based Fenox Venture Capital announced its investment in Japan’s Dream Link Entertainment Inc., which it notes is the largest Flash animation company in that country.

I was initially a little curious as to why Fenox would be interested in investing in a Flash animation company, given the current trajectory of Flash as a technology. I’m told that the draw of DLE as a company is in the popular characters it has created, and in its style of animation and storytelling – which the firm believes has huge potential in the global market. DLE animations have previously won ‘Best Animation’ and ‘Best Director’ at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival. A Fenox representative further explains:

DLE has the choice of supporting any animation software, in order to reach the largest possible target audience. The real opportunity in DLE is their ownership of a stable of popular characters and the team of creative talents behind them, who can continue to create new characters.

I understand that DLE currently brings in over $10 million in annual revenue, although currently its audiences are primarily in Japan. Fenox aspires to help the studio break into the North American market, and DLE is working to convert game characters into animation characters for more sales possibilities.

The Fenox rep with whom I spoke even alluded to the possibility of theme parks centered around DLE characters, which echoes Rovio’s real-world merchandising and marketing tactics with Angry Birds.

If you’d like to check out some of the animation that has impressed Fenox Venture Capital so highly, I encourage you to browse DLE’s YouTube channel where you’ll find lots of fun videos. Or for starters you can check out the very humorous clip of Eagle Talon below, which includes subtitles.

We have featured more than a few awesome news animations from from the folks at Taiwan-based NMA. Many of the company’s short CG clips have attained viral video status, and the world edition of its YouTube channel now boasts more than 70 million views in total.

But I was a little surprised to find out about the its latest endeavor, which is not a video animation at all, but rather a browser-based game. It centers upon the upcoming Japanese elections, and pits the current prime minister Yoshihiko Noda against former prime minister and challenger Shinzo Abe. You can play the game over at NodaVSAbe.com, and I have to confess it gets a little bit crazy. For Japanese users it should be a lot of fun, with some poop attacks from the challenger (warning, that’s not a metaphor) and strange exclamations relating to their respective campaign platforms. The visual style is sort of consistent with what you’d expect from NMA, and overall it looks like a fun little game.

www.nodavsabe.com

I spoke to NMA’s Michael Logan, who explained that the company hopes to do sort of the same thing with games as it does with video animations, aspiring to create news-based games that are a reflection of hot conversation topics in society. The games are to be developed by NxTomo, which is the brand Next Media has developed for its animation and game offerings.

So why is NMA producing games these days? Michael explains that while there is some advertising on the the game’s page, the primary goal is to build more exposure for its content – and in this case, more exposure in Japan. NMA has a shiny new YouTube channel with Japanese content, and ideally its new election game can help build some awareness of that. You’ll notice in the game that the ring girl holds a promotional banner encouraging players to check out the YouTube channel (pictured). NMA plans to follow up with more animated satire about the Japanese elections later in the week, so stay tuned for that. (Update: See its new video below)

Interestingly, this is not the first time that we have seen politicians face off in a web-based game. Readers may recall that earlier this year we wrote about Jakarta gubernatorial candidates Fauzi Bowo and Joko Widodo who both were featured in online games leading up to a local election.

Internet radio service Pandora (NYSE:P) has just fully launched in Australia and New Zealand, which means that users can now access it using iOS and Android apps on their smartphone [1], in addition to the previously available web-only trial access in those countries. This marks the first time that Pandora has launched fully outside of its home market of the US.

The company has also created specific stations for users in Australia and New Zealand. It has also hired a local managing director for the region in Jane Huxley, formerly of Fairfax Media.

Pandora has 175 million registered users in the U.S., and notes that over 75 percent of listening takes place on mobile devices via its apps. Of course, for users not in the US, Australia, or New Zealand, the service is not available due to geographical restrictions.

2012 has been a pretty good year for streaming music in Australia and New Zealand. As you may know, Pandora’s rival Rdio also launched in Australia and New Zealand this year. Likewise, Spotify launched in in these countries back in May.

Alternatives for Asia?

For music fans in the Asia region who wish they could access a service like Pandora, Rdio, or Spotify, I’m not aware of any solid mobile solutions on the market yet. My colleague Enricko in Indonesia says he uses Nokia Music on his phone, and Steven in China points to Xiami which has apps for free streaming.

Here in Japan, I’ve been relying on Beatrobo for music on my Mac, although I’m not sure if the Japan-based startup has any mobile solution on the way.

I’m curious to hear what you, our readers, use to get your streaming music fix – whether its on your PC or on your mobile. I suspect many of you might be using a VPN to access US-based services. But if there are any gems out there that we’ve missed, do let us know in the comments, as well as which country you are accessing it from.

[Pandora via TechCrunch]

Indonesian game developer Nightspade together with candy brand Chupa Chups launched an iOS game called Give a Dam back in November. This kind of partnership with an internationally recognized brand does not happen too often among Indonesian game developers. We spoke with Hasna Tsaniya Rananti (aka Nia) of Nightspade, as well as Dillah Zakbah, the product manager of advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), the advertising partner of the Chupa Chups brand, about this latest partnership.

We briefly mentioned Give a Dam and its gameplay back when we wrote about the Jakarta Game Show. Players need to stack various characters and make sure they don’t fall off into the waterfall. Nightspade used similar game mechanics in its previous game Stack the Stuff.

Nia told us that the team first met a representative from social game publisher Chuck Studios [1] and BBH during a networking session at our Startup Asia Singapore event earlier this year. They both continued the discussion back in Indonesia, which resulted in an agreement to build a game for Chupa Chups.

Dillah explained that one of the reasons Chupa Chups decided to build games is to capitalize on the immense opportunity in the mobile industry, as more and more people are actively engaged with their phones. It’s sort of a spin-off of social marketing that could be called social gaming marketing. She adds:

We also have a huge fanbase of youth in the social media stream that we would like to leverage on and engage with – more than just through the standard Chupa Chups’ lollipop. Our first game published – Chupa Chucker – was on the Facebook platform, so it would be nice to test out and explore mobile as well.

The target market for Give a Dam is people who enjoy Chupa Chups who also play games on their mobile phones. Dillah said that with this game, they hope to reach markets and groups that the company doesn’t necessarily connect with via traditional media. But of course, she added that the main aim is to treat Chupa Chups’ customers and supporters to a whole lot of fun.

Nia said that there hasn’t been any discussions to port the game to other platforms – not even Android. You can download and play Give a Dam for free from the app store.

Apple’s iTunes began to accept payments for apps in the currencies of India and Indonesia in October of this year – and that’s the basis for today’s rollout of the iTunes Music Store in those countries. But it’s not just tunes, as India and Indonesia also get movie purchases and rentals.

It’s part of a huge expansion of the iTunes Music Store to 56 new countries today, but only four of them get support for movies (and only those two in Asia). In this region, music sales are now available in (courtesy of a neat list by MacRumors):

Just 5,000 rupiah per song in Indonesia’s iTunes Music Store. Click to enlarge.

• Asia Pacific: Fiji, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Micronesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan

Today’s action brings the iTunes Music Store to 119 countries in total. China is still off the list, though it does have apps and local currency support.

Some prices in the new music store in Indonesia seem reasonable, with one K-Pop album I spotted costing just IDR 30,000 (US$3.15); but the purchase of the HD version of the movie The Raid costs a full IDR 149,000 ($15.60).

Both India and Indonesia have a books section in the iTunes store, but those remain just a very limited selection of free titles.

Last summer, Indonesian authorities made moves to shut down 20 notorious illegal music-sharing sites, and even targeted blocking overseas sites that encouraged piracy, such as 4shared. But, 4Shared is accessible in the country today, and even locally-based file-sharing sites like musik-corner.com were never actually shut down by authorities.

[Source: MacRumors]

Ever since anti-virus maker Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU) first caused waves with the launch of its own search engine this summer, the company has been expanding its offerings. Today it has rolled out a dedicated music search feature at music.so.com.

Though 360 Music search is a challenge to China’s biggest search engine, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), with its Baidu Music service, Qihoo’s effort is actually just an aggregator of songs from third-party sites. Perhaps Qihoo plans its own music streaming service later. But for now, 360 Music links to smaller services such as Xiami and Yiting. So it’s a great traffic boost for those music startups.

In addition to the music section, Qihoo’s 360 Search also now has a streaming video section that aggregates movies and TV series from the likes of Youku, Tudou, and LeTV. Again, this is an area where Qihoo might develop its own in-house service in the future.

Qihoo’s founder and CEO is hoping that the fledgling search engine can take 15 to 20 percent of the search market in China. Currently, it has just under 10 percent, which is good going for a three-month old product. But it’ll be a challenge to grow it from there.

[Hat-tip to iMeigu (article in Chinese) for spotting this]

From the left: Danny Ritonga (PT Ironroad International), Eddy Lim (Liga Game), Dellawati Wijaya (Viki Inc.), Herman Suharto (Smartfren).

International video site Viki announced a partnership with Indonesian telco, handset manufacturer, and internet provider Smartfren a couple of days ago. The deal will see all Smartfren Android smartphones and tablets come pre-installed with Viki’s apps. Viki will also benefit from visibility on Smartfren’s USB modem through its user interface screen.

Viki is rapidly solidifying its presence in Indonesia. Previously the startup partnered with telcos Axis and Three, handset maker Nexian, and Samsung on its Smart TVs. The site now has a total of 15 million users worldwide, with two million of them part of Viki’s subtitle community.

Viki was one of four new Smartfren features announced yesterday. The other three are:

• A similar pre-install partnership deal with video messaging app VMS (Video Messaging Service)
• Smartfren’s daily deals to be called Smartkupon, which will enables users to receive discounts from Smartfren’s merchants
• Smartfren Games Credits, allowing users to top up their online game credits directly using Smartfren’s credits or top-up vouchers.

Regarding this last addition, Detik cites Smartfren’s Herman Suharto yesterday as saying that they now have 15,000 unique gamers who spend around IDR 11,000 ($1.14) every month. Smartfren claims that the total revenue from its digital games business reaches IDR 35 billion ($3.6 million) every year, with Smartfren receiving 20 to 30 percent of the income. The team is looking to add eight more game titles next month, accounting for a tally of total 30 game titles this year.

Google’s Eric Schmidt and PSY at Google Korea

A new post over on the Youtube Trends blog points out that over the weekend PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ video became the new most-viewed video of all time. Currently the catchy Korean video has over 820 million views in total.

So who did PSY take down from the top spot? None other than my countryman Justin Bieber, and to be honest, I’m ok with that [1]. Bieber’s song ‘Baby’ now falls to second place on YouTube’s all-time charts with 805 million views.

Perhaps what’s most amazing about PSY’s accomplishment is that rate at which it was accomplished. As you can see in the chart provided by Youtube below, Bieber’s rise up the charts was more gradual, spread out over a couple of years.

But PSY’s hit has literally been rocket-like in trajectory, and after it first gained traction in South Korea it later spiked thanks to popularity in the US and around the world.

It will be interesting to see if this pace is sustained, and how long it will take for ‘Gangnam Style’ to reach one billion views. PSY’s channel overall has already broken the one billion views mark, although it still trails behind Bieber’s channel which has over 3 billion.

YouTube and the folks at Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) are clearly delighted that PSY has ridden their platform to fame. Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt even asked PSY to teach him the famous ‘horse dance’ from the video during a visit to Google Korea.

I’m a little out of touch with the music scene recently, but I hear the kids these days really like themselves some K-pop. And South Korea as a whole appears to be doing a pretty good job of packaging this cultural export for global consumption. Not surprisingly, smartphones are a part of this process as well.

Take for example the StarCall app from SK Planet (a subsidiary of SK Telecom), which since it originally launched in Korea has managed to accumulate 3 million users. The lets you receive real-time video calls from your favorite K-pop stars, or if you miss the call, you can view it later in your ‘callbox.’

The calls are mostly in Korean, but SK Planet’s agency will add translations after a call is stored in the callbox. The company is now aiming to push this application in markets across Southeast Asia – including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand – as well as Australia, America, and Japan.

Featured K-pop artists in the app include Girls Generation (pictured above), Super Junior, and 2PM. There is also a StarCall SuperFan contest ongoing as well, which you can check out over on the Facebook page.

The app is available for both iOS and Android. If you’d like to learn more about how StarCall works, you can check out its (somewhat cheesy) promo video below. As for me, I think I have some Nickelback on a shelf here somewhere that I can put on [1].

Blackberry’s dominance in Indonesia is starting to falter, with Indonesians now more open to Android devices. RIM needs to start to worry about the Android threat, because given the amount of gaming and entertainment apps available on Google’s platform, it’s likely to lure many younger Blackberry users to switch. Android apps crossed the 700,000 mark last month, but Blackberry won’t even cross the 100,000 mark until next year.

Recently RIM has stepped up its efforts to convince developers worldwide to start building apps for Blackberry. You might have noticed campaigns like the Blackberry JamHack event, Blackberry’s generous ‘$10,000 developer commitment’ program, the Blackberry Got Game Port-a-Thon, and its #BB10Believe campaign. But why aren’t many developers building their apps or games on the Blackberry platform in the first place?

We talked to three Indonesian game developers Mintsphere, TouchTen, and Nightspade, as well as Malaysian game developer E1 Studio, who have all been approached by RIM and some of them were given Blackberry devices on which to test games. While Nightspade didn’t have much problem from a technical perspective, the other three argued the opposite. They agreed that building games for the Blackberry platform is a bit complicated. E1 Studio added that it is a challenge for them to build for Blackberry’s various form factors such as full touch and QWERTY handsets.

TouchTen had similar concerns. Most of the studio’s games use the Unity engine, which is easily deployed onto iOS and Android – but not Blackberry. This would mean that TouchTen would have to rewrite its code from scratch if they want to port games to Blackberry, which they deem not worth the effort.

In the end, it seems that another big reason for the lack of apps in the Blackberry OS is simply developers’ lack of trust in Blackberry’s market. All the game developers, including Nightspade this time, agreed that the Android or iOS app stores are more promising markets.

Why Build for Blackberry?

Unfortunately, Angry Birds isn’t available on Blackberry 7 OS. (This is just a joke image, btw).

Mintsphere has previously built a game for Blackberry OS [1]. Its award winning game Trigger Knight is available on four platforms: Android, iOS, Symbian, and Blackbery 10. Wilson Tjandra, the co-founder of Mintsphere, explained three reasons for this.

First of all, they were supported by RIM. They were given a Blackberry device and were enticed with the $10,000 developer commitment program. Second, Trigger Knight is a relatively simple game, so it is easy to be made for both touch or non-touch devices. Third, the lack of gaming apps for Blackberry provided a better chance for the studio’s game to stand out. But in the end, Wilson said that building for the Blackberry OS is still not their main priority.

Nightspade argued that they might consider building for Blackberry OS if they can get further support from RIM – not only in terms of devices, but also in terms of licensing and promotional support. The game studio gives the example of how the Windows 8 team did just that for them. Nightspade also mentioned that RIM could benefit by emulating Nokia’s efforts to support young game developer startups in the country by holding more local developer-related events.

The four game developers we talked to above may or may not be a representative sample, but they may share similar views with other game devs out there who aren’t prioritizing Blackberry OS either. These opinions definitely do not bode well for RIM’s upcoming Blackberry 10 phones, which are set to be launched on January 30th next year.

[Picture source: Buzzfeed]

Indonesian digital art studio Mechanimotion Entertainment and game developer Elven Games released the first episode of an Indonesian folklore-themed gaming app for Android called The Adventure of Wanara: Garuda Riders this week. Interestingly, the game takes the form of an interactive comic. We talked with Mahdi Bashroni Rizal, the CEO of Elven Games, about his latest game.

The Adventures of Wanara tells the story of protagonist Naradja, who is a descendant of three races: human (Rama), giant (Rahwana), and monkey (Hanoman). Naradja will have to stop the resurrection of the devil king from inside him by collecting the eight God elements or Hastabrata. The app is loaded with mini games, animation, and Bali-themed background music to help get the fun going.

Mahdi said that the game story was inspired by the Indonesian folk tale Ramayana. The team wanted to create a unique experience where people not only can have the pleasure of reading the comic books’ story, but also feel more involved as well with the app’s aforementioned features.

Garuda Riders is only the first out of the five episodes for The Adventure of Wanara. Its sequel, Eye of Garuda, will be released next month. The games’ development is sponsored by Indonesian telco operator Telkom.

Elven Games has built other Indonesian-themed games previously such as Durian’s Revenge and Nusantara Chronicle. Mahdi explained that it is indeed their mission to showcase the Indonesian culture through gaming media to the international community. He cited Japan’s success in promoting its culture globally through games and anime as a source of inspiration.

By the way, Elven Games is the same game studio whose game Chase Burger was hijacked recently. The company has just changed its name from Elventales Studio to Elven Games now. You can download The Adventure of Nawara here. The iOS version of the game will be available soon.

Two Swedish entrepreneurs, Peder Wahlberg and Gustav Evertsson, are hoping to bring back the Jukebox era with Jukeboxsms.com. The startup, which was launched yesterday, provides a modern jukebox experience by using a HD screen and computer. The owner can then earn money from paying customers who request a song through their handsets via PayPal or SMS.

The service is available in 70 countries worldwide, complete with localized languages and payment methods. Here in Asia, music fans in China, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia will be first to have access to Jukebox SMS. You can check here to see the full country coverage.

To set the jukebox, you need the afore-mentioned HD flat screen or projector, and a PC with an internet connection. Then sign up an account at music cloud service Audiobox.fm, organize your songs, and you should be okay. Peder said that owners can freely decide the price for each song ordered by the customer via PayPal, but they may have some freedom taken away as SMS payment provider Fortumo (which handles SMS payment outside of Sweden) might have fixed prices for the service. This fixed price policy is different from country to country.

When I tried the Indonesian SMS payment service on Jukebox SMS’ demo page, Fortumo charges IDR 8,800 (90 cents) for each song. I think that’s quite a steep price for a country that is accustomed to getting CDs for as cheap as IDR 5,000 (50 cents). Though I agree with Peder when he said that there will always be a market for Jukeboxes in the world.

The customers can browse and order songs through their phones and can even set the music volume if they want to. Peder said that he got the Jukebox SMS idea first when he and Gustav needed an online jukebox where people can order the songs through their phones for an event. But since they were not able to find one, they created this service instead.

The team will continuously update the jukebox with new features and payment solutions. He promises that any new updates will be simultaneously available to all countries worldwide since the startup’s service is cloud based.

Tokyo-based startup Nana Music has finally introduced a global version of its iPhone app. It allows users to sing, play songs, and collaborate with other users on their Nana platform. The app was launched two months ago, but has been for Japan only up until now. The service has acquired more than 4,400 users and has seen over 10,000 recorded posts since then.

The new version is designed to fit iPhone 5′s longer screen, and it’s now integrated with Twitter and Facebook. The maximum recording time has also been extended from 60 to 90 seconds.

The startup has introduced some user interviews with some users, including a university student/amateur singer and a karaoke girl. They hope this may motivate you to give their music collaboration service a try.

Readers may recall reading our past coverage about the app, which gives a little more background about the startup’s journey thus far. Get the new global version of Nana app here in the App Store.

Youku HQ in Beijing

Chinese online streaming video company Youku Tudou (NYSE:YOKU) has just announced an agreement with Sony Pictures Television to bring over 300 titles to its paid Youku Premium platform.

Notable films covered under the agreement include Groundhog Day and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, as well as newer releases like Men in Black, The Amazing Spider-Man, and 21 Jump Street.

The company says that subscriber growth for Youku Premium has “exceeded expectations,” saying that it’s an indication that Chinese audiences will pay for content. So far Youku Premium has about two million paid users. The service offers a number of viewing options, including paid on-demand viewing, paid subscriptions, or ad-supported viewing.

Back in July (just before the August merger with Tudou), Youku announced an agreement with NBCUniversal on a collection of feature films, and it also has a three-year agreement in place with Warner Bros’ China joint venture Warner Home Entertainment.

Other agreements have been made with Dreamworks, Paramount, Disney, and Lionsgate — and now with Sony Pictures Television on board, Youku Tudou says it has licensed offerings from all major Hollywood studios.

As of September, Youku and Tudou reach 310 million viewers per week according to figures from iResearch.

On Thursday Yahoo Indonesia announced a new initiative. Yahoo OMG, well known as one of the leading gossip and celebrity sites in Indonesia, is organizing its first ever star-oriented online awards called the Yahoo OMG Awards.

Dian Nur Farida (marketing manager for Yahoo Indonesia) shared the idea behind the awards. She said:

It’s to bring fans and celebrities closer by creating unique online and on-ground digital experiences. Ultimately our aim is to give back to the fans who have offered their support to Yahoo OMG and at the same time shine a spotlight on the diversity of entertainment industry in Indonesia.

The Yahoo OMG Indonesia editors have picked 100 nominees for 20 different categories. The nominees were selected based on the search trends of Yahoo’s Indonesia users and the most read news on Yahoo OMG Indonesia from September 2011 to August 2012.

Users will vote on the winners for each category, with voting open online from October 22nd to November 21st. Web and mobile users can just sign in to their Yahoo! account, and then go to the landing page to vote. Users can vote once per day for each category, so if you’re really into some celebrity, you can actually vote for him/her again tomorrow. As of now there have been more than 450,000 votes cast.

The winners will be announced at a glitzy awards night on November 24th. Yahoo will give away tickets to that ceremony through quizzes online and on local radio stations. For those who don’t get tickets, they will live-stream the event via the internet and some radio stations.

Dian said that the mechanism of how they selected the nominees, and the democracy of how they let readers choose the winners online, are their main differences compared to any other award shows in the country. “We are the first to do this,” she added.

Singaporean game dev PD Design Studio has launched a 2D hack-and-slash game called Dusty Revenge on online gaming platform Steam Greenlight recently, and they are looking for your votes to make the game available on Steam’s online store.

Keng Jin (aka: KJ), the co-founder of PD Design Studio, describes Dusty Revenge as a 2D side-scrolling beat-’em-up game. As the name implies, it tells the story of the main character exacting his revenge throughout the Wild West-themed game. KJ said that it took the studio two years to develop Dusty Revenge, which has seen the game’s graphics change from having cute animals into the serious-looking and bloodspattering creatures you see today. He explained further:

We wanted lots of good, old-fashion action and thus the revenge theme came in. Additionally, the idea came when we were watching lots of revenge-themed movies.

KJ believes that the special thing about the game is its supporting character mechanics, which allows the player to control three types of characters – a fighter bunny, a heavy arms wielding bear, and a sharpshooter dog. These characters play particular roles – for example, you’d want to call the artillery bear’s help when faced with a huge cluster of enemies, or the sharpshooter dog when you need help taking out pesky enemies in some inaccessible places.

Dusty Revenge will be made available for PC and Mac. The 10-man team is also looking to release the game for Playstation 3 and PS Vita, which will have a two-player mode, in the future. KJ said that he is still unsure about the game’s age/suitability rating, but he definitely wouldn’t recommend it to kids under the age of 12, as you’d see by all the blood in the game trailer.

PD Design Studio actually started as a multimedia company back in 2006. KJ explained that incidentally, the company’s first job was on a Flash-based game and they happened to do lots of them over the next few years. After changing the company’s focus to solely games development, they’ve also made two iOS games, Alien Masher and Move Caster – besides the current Dusty Revenge.

You can check out Dusty Revenge over at Steam here, and if you think the game’s worth your money, be sure to vote for it there.

Related:

• Malaysian-Built Japanese Game Up For Voting at Steam Greenlight

• Another Game Seeks Your Vote on Steam Greenlight, as Malaysian Game Devs Look to Penetrate Global Market

Recently in Indonesia, the phrase “Do I need to say ‘wow’ or something?” has become a trend in Indonesia whenever friends relate some fact or stories. Well, the recent Sparxup winner Pulsk is looking to literally create more of those ‘wows’ with its Pinterest-like social platform. The site offers you numerous user-generated pictures categorized into different channels such as ‘technology and gadgets,’ ‘recipes & culinary,’ and ‘my Indonesia.’ We talked to Irwan Fahmy, who does business development for Pulsk, about its plans and why the name ‘Pulsk’ was chosen in the first place.

The team likes to describe Pulsk as a very easy and simple social content platform for what it calls ‘wow’ (similar to Facebook’s ‘like’) content. The name Pulsk emerged simply because they wanted a readable five-letter domain name that makes sense from a marketing perspective. The startup created Pulsk to facilitate Indonesians’ thirst to share new things to as many people as possible, and to entertain them at the same time.

In space of only two weeks since its beta launch in mid September, Pulsk has put up the following numbers:

• 110,000 visitors with 850,000 pageviews
• There are 2,200 registered users with 2,250 items posted
• Each visitor averages 7.91 pages per visit in the space of eight minutes
• 10,000 wows

The four-man team of Rendy Bryanzah, Rizwan Raiz, Ardian Trimurti, and Irwan Fahmy plan to open an advertising platform as its monetization strategy. They’re also open to creating special badges and channels if sponsored by a brand. The team is learning the ropes regarding possible funding plans for Pulsk, and promises to launch new features and mobile apps in the future.