CEO of SUP Media Shares More About Livejournal.sg
Annelies van den Belt, CEO of SUP Media, the Russian parent company of Livejournal.sg, was in Singapore last week for the official launch of Livejournal.sg – a dedicated site for LiveJournalusers in Singapore.
In short, the new site aims to build a convenient one-stop blogshop community in Singapore — a community for LiveJournal users, powered by LiveJournal users. The blogshop phenomenon in Singapore started at least 5 to 6 years ago but only now has LiveJournal has started to enter this market. Every month, Singapore generates a whopping 30 million pageviews for LiveJournal and the number is poised to grow with this new spinoff site.
I had a chance to speak with Van den Belt on Friday after the press conference to find out more about SUP Media’s plans for LiveJournal.sg. In terms of the big picture, Van den Belt revealed that LiveJournal plans to capture the Southeast Asian market but the team will be moving very cautiously ahead. Van den Belt told us that it is crucial to make Singapore a success first before moving on to conquer other countries. In fact, that’s what many big companies are doing here in Singapore: establishing a base to test their products. If it works in Singapore, chances are, it will probably work in other countries in Southeast Asia too.
Annelies van den Belt, CEO of SUP Media
The LiveJournal team is working closely with Tickled Media and there will be about 10 of them based in Singapore. As I understand it, Tickled Media, with Roshni Mahtani as CEO and founder, will lead the growth and expansion here in Singapore. I did ask about the revenue model and Van den Belt says it will be primarily based on advertising. The LiveJournal Singapore site features blogshops which I thought could be a great channel for advertising revenue (paid listings). Van den Belt told me that currently blogshop listings are free and asserted that she doesn’t know or want to interfere with much about the local operation.
This should be okay, she said, as long as the advertisements on LiveJournal.sg are within SUP Media’s guidelines. “It depends on the users,” she added, noting that it is users who “live the LiveJournal journey.” (One of the coolest lines I heard from any CEO I have interviewed.) Van den Belt said that their plans and strategies are aligned with the users’ interests.
LiveJournal’s social commerce focus in Singapore is very much aligned with the blogshop phenomenon in the country. The site, for now, will be focused on e-commerce and blogshops. Van den Belt wouldn’t rule out editorial content which could be featured on the site, but again, it’s all about the users. If their data says that the users want it, Tickled Media will do it. LiveJournal users basically run the show.
As with any new product or start-up, there is a lot of testing and many changes ahead for LiveJournal.sg. Nonetheless, I must say that I’m pretty impressed with the team that SUP Media has gathered for its local push here in Singapore. The partnership between SUP Media and Tickled Media seems perfect, at least for now.
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