Platforms like Musical.ly and Vine have helped find the next-generation of internet stars in the West, now Chinese internet giant Tencent is aiming to ride that wave to boost its presence in Southeast Asia’s emerging internet space.
Tencent has teamed up with Ookbee , a digital content startup that runs an online book and magazine business, to launch Ookbee U. The venture is designed to identify and promote “user generated content” in Thailand, and later the wider Southeast Asia region, with a focus on all kinds of online media. It aims to gather over a million pieces of content over the next three years.
“Ookbee was born in time of ebooks and magazine, working with professional content creators and publishers. We used to compete with traditional book stores, but for this new company idea is to be more flexible,” Ookbee CEO Natavudh Pungcharoenpong told TechCrunch.
“The format can be anything,” he added. “More than just books: music, comics, and experimenting with video.”
Southeast Asia is home to more than 600 million consumers and, thanks to steadily growing sales of smartphones , its internet economy is tipped to grow more than ten-fold over the next decade. Thailand, the region’s third-largest country with a 65 million population, is seen as a key part of that promise.
