Springnote is based in Korea. It has multi-language offerings in Korean, English, and Japanese. (We're planning to expand the language set in the near future!)

A question that naturally follows is this: "Why Asia? Do you think you can ever invade the invincible U.S. market while based in Korea? Stop dreaming!" Well, let me walk you through one step at a time to show what's really going on.

(click here for a larger view of the chart)

As a starter, needs for wikis are soaring higher than ever. If you study the search trend on Google, as shown in the charge above, there are far more queries for the word "wiki" than "blog ", i.e. Internet users are willing to learn more about wikis than blogs.

However, what's even more surprising is that most of those queries are indeed coming from many Asian and pan-Pacifc countries, such as Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia. That means 1) we've got an astonishingly fast growing market in wikis, and 2) the market belongs to Asia. That seems to be a great business opportunity right there, doesn't it?

For example, Springnote, the sole online wiki service in Asia, gathers many users from around the world through its English and Japanese service offerings. A great number of them indeed come from China, Singapore, Japan, and Australia, in addition to many from the U.S., U.K., Germany and Canada (We spotted an Swedish team today!) Openmaru, the maker behind Springnote, is located in Seoul, Korea, garnering a huge opportunity to explore the market here just by being local, i.e. Asian. While it's a service aiming for global presence, it's been so lucky to enjoy a success in Asia that could not easily come with many companies from the West .

The Web 2.0 revolution didn't stop in the Silicon Valley. It's spreading throughout the entire globe. Do you want to be global or local? It's a very important question any business development people should be asking themselves every single day. After all, the Internet increasingly blurring the boundaries bewteen countries, or even continents. :)

(I covered this topic on my personal blog TechnoKimchi more in depth.)