Because Facebook is officially blocked in Vietnam but still accessible by most users, it is difficult to say what this article really means. Perhaps there was a big campaign to encourage citizens to use local SNS providers instead of Facebook, perhaps it was propaganda, or perhaps there really was an unprovoked decline of one million users in the month.

The article says: Though Facebook witnessed a tremendous growth in its early stages, the numbers declined dramatically in January. Recently, Zing Me reported to have 4.6 million users, while Facebook, Yahoo!, and Yume followed. The article suggests that this leaves an open market for local social networking developers to enter. For instance, Go.vn has experienced a high growth rate, and VTC (Vietnam Network) has up to 2.9 million accounts. "Those who like local social networks became members of Yume, Zingme, Tamtay, i-pro, Henantrua, Vietspace, etc., while others who like foreign networks joined Multiply, Wordpress, Yahoo Plus, Twitter, etc. However, none of the social networks could dominate the market."

There is much discussion about the decline of the Chinese online game market and the fall of Chinese online game operators in the press lately, but Niko Partners disagrees with it. We believe that there is still a lot of growth left in China to cultivate gamers, but the burden of serving them something they want to play in a business model that they want to utilize will rest with the online game companies. Meanwhile, Chinese online operators are masters as supporting huge numbers of concurrent users, upwards of 1 million per game in some cases. For this reason these companies could perform well in international markets where huge user bases are finally adopting PC online games in earnest. As the PCGA states, the PC games market grew by 20% in 2010 worldwide - the companies with the most experience serving PC online games will stand to benefit, if they are smart in how they go about global expansion.

The Vietnamese government banned all new game licenses in mid-2010 and that ban has not yet been lifted. Facebook is officially blocked, but still used by many. In late 2010 the government limited the operating hours for Internet cafés. And starting March 3rd the regulators have said that there shall be no online gaming between 10PM and 8AM 7 days per week. ISPs will be prohibited from allowing access to game servers during those hours. The policies seem very extreme and hopefully will be rescinded once the Vietnamese government can establish a reasonable set of rules to meet their goals of protecting cities from violence, theft, sexual favors and other negative actions that the government associates with gaming.

Looks like the #1 SNS game developer recognizes that Southeast Asia is a region of importance.

Zynga just made a collaboration with MOL, which is a Malaysian online payments company, to develop game cards that allow users to "purchase virtual goods for 11 Zynga games including FarmVille, FrontierVille, CityVIlle and Café World" in increments of US$2, US$5, and US$10. These cards are set to sell in Malaysia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore in retail chains "such as 7-Eleven, Cheers, and Comics Connection."

Similarly, in Indonesia, Zynga collaborated with the local payment company, Indomog, to sell these cards "in over 1,500 cafés and retail outlets across the country." While consumers are reluctant to use their credit cards for online payments, the cards give them another option to pay for virtual goods especially since they can be used for promotional services for special occasions or holidays.

Since the local online game market is becoming saturated in Thailand, Asiasoft plans to maintain a 20-25% growth through expanding its services to other devices such as smartphones and tablets.

The company has already invested 600 million baht local Thai and overseas acquisitions to fulfill this goal. Investments include online games and web-related companies as a bridge to new markets and localization. Among the new 16 games Asiasoft plans to introduce in Thailand and overseas, different game types will be explored this year, including First Person Shooting (FPS) and mobile games in addition to their current multi-player games. Its expansion plans include "allowing its gamers in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore to play together using single identities via www.playfps.com," and introducing applications for both the iPhone and Google's Android.

Asiasoft will also target Indonesia because of the country's potential growth for the gaming industry. There are about 35 million Facebook users in Indonesia out of a population of 243 million. Asiasoft predicts its overseas revenues will contribute around "40-45% of its total revenues, up from 30% last year."