We’re excited about the future opportunities within Asia. We’ve seen some recent research which has come out which has said that Asia Pacific is the largest internet market in the world by number of users. It’s the fastest growing internet market by again number of users and that social media within that space is the fastest growing area. So as a company positioned as the leading provider of this technology and solutions in Asia Pacific, in the largest growing market which is the fastest growing market in the fastest growing segment, we’re extremely enthusiastic and optimistic about future growth patterns both in Australia and within Asia Pacific.
You’ve got quite a quite a famous surname in Australian business, Has that helped or has it put some extra pressure on you or raised some expectations, opened a few doors?
There’s a distant relationship between myself and some of the other known Australian businessmen which is something, in itself.
So it hasn’t really changed the way you’ve done anything?
Look, the core business principles of what makes a successful start up, the drive of this has come from listening and learning from key technology companies again out of Silicon Valley, so I suggest the key business fundamentals stay the same for any early stage company. Looking at the history of web and early stage technology companies, we all saw through the dotcom boom that throwing lots of money at problems, doesn’t solve things and that constraints are things that force creativity and ultimately deliver better outcomes. So as a CEO I’ve been very disciplined and principled about ensuring key business fundamentals apply.
Where’s social media heading next? That’s a big question I know, but it’s been a pretty big year of development. Can you see some trends that might happen in 2010?
There are a lot of people within the spectrum who sort of pick and choose about what’s hot and what’s not and how things should be used. But I think overall we should look at the statistics around engagement of people spending time online regardless of medium.
For example, there’s some numbers around saying that the highest growth segment of Facebook usage this year was 35 to 50 year old females. I think that the breadth of penetration of social media hitting a mainstream is probably the key thing this year. We’ve gone beyond early adopters, we’ve gone beyond the innovators. This is becoming a majority thing and as markets mature, there’s obviously interesting impact when the majority use these kinds of things.
I think the thing to expect is as these social media technologies mature and hit greater parts of the market well we’re going to see exciting and unexpected things happen just due to that majority of usage.
I wouldn’t like to say X platform is going to be the big thing or Y new service the hot tip because really I think it’s more about what happens when everybody is doing this is that things change in a different way. And again going back to that growth of 35 to 50 year old females within Facebook is something that is maybe unexpected and may demonstrate new ways for things to come.
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
