Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Doyon Kim, CEO of Pangalore (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: This was more about page views. You did the searching yourselves, so they can’t get into searching.

Doyon Kim: Right. Content providers had to get some sort of code from us, but that code could track every activity of people on the website. Sites like TechCrunch implement a code, so we track their website traffic and see what are the most popular articles of the day. We could get everything [and know] overall, what were the most popular articles.

SM: But it required that you became a quoter yourselves, wasn’t it?

DK: Sort of, yes.

SM: And how did that go?

DK: TechCrunch and other content sites used our service. In using that, they could provide the most popular articles of that site.

SM: They were widgets that were being stuck on?

DK: Right. We would go to, for example, the New York Times and there are the most popular articles. We aggregated everything.

SM: Were you powering the New York Times? There are several competitors in that space.

DK: We focused more on the blogs.

SM: Was anybody willing to pay for this?

DK: That was a problem, yes. We were based on the Titan model in 2008, about the time we needed a second round of funding. So, I had to fold. Just as with any other entrepreneur, there are ups and downs in my career, too.

For the past two years or so, I have done consulting for gaming companies from Korea. While I was doing this, I realized there was huge potential on the gaming side, especially social gaming. Also, I happen to have access to pools of talented developers in Korea, so we combined that and my experience here, and that became my fourth startup.

SM: Have you launched the game yet?

DK: We launched a couple of small games. Our games are based on HTML 5. Our philosophy is anything we do is a multiplatform. So, our games can be played on PC, PC Mac – of course – and smart devices. There is a new music game coming, a TapTap Revenge type of game, in February.

SM: From where you sit, what do you see as the major trajectory trends in mobile and in social?

DK: That’s a good question. Everything is kind of bridging together. Previously, there was the PC social network and PC games and then mobile and mobile games. Smart devices are becoming smarter, and I guess, the market requires more smart services that satisfy both, not just [one or the other].

SM: So, one of your theses is that mobile and social are converging, and the product strategies need to also converge?

DK: Right.

SM: To what extent do you see that happening? Facebook did not have an iPad application until very recently.

DK: Right. That’s where they’re heading. They had an iPhone app, but the iPad app was way behind. They realized that half of their market traffic came from mobile [devices]. Mobile and social networks are part of their [users’] lives. They want to access information and communicate with other people.

SM: And what’s happening in the gaming universe? When you look at games, the popular games, the ones that have really caught on, on the mobile side or on the social side, are the mobile games available on social, and are the social games available on mobile? Are they taking advantage of this trend? What is the response of the gaming industry?

DK: The gaming industry – there are mobile game companies and PC social game companies. Now, this border between them is becoming more obsolete or vague. Companies like Zynga are coming to mobile. Playdom is coming to mobile. Gameloft is going to the PC side. But the problem is that their approach has been, “Okay, here’s my popular asset on one platform. Let’s put it on mobile.” And it’s the same thing from mobile to the PC side. That approach is problematic because technologies to support the game are different. So, nothing has been working very well.

SM: When you put a successful asset to another platform, it’s not working very well, is that what you’re saying?

DK: Right. So, the game has to be designed with this multiplatform experience in mind.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Doyon Kim, CEO of Pangalore
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