CEO Comment Volume 35, 2007.09
Summary of DG Conference and Business Progress
Partnership with LinkedIn Corporation, the world's largest business SNS
“THE NEW CONTEXT CONFERENCE 2007,” organized by DG group and in its 3rd year, was held at the Westin Hotel Tokyo in Ebisu, Tokyo over two days on the 25th (Tuesday) and 26th (Wednesday) of September.
First I would like to thank the speakers that attended the conference from Japan and overseas and I am happy to say that the conference was a great success. Detailed accounts of the conference were reported by the media and bloggers that visited the conference. (Excerpts from the conference will be broadcast on TOKYO MX's “BlogTV” program at 23:00 on the 27th of September. Video clips will be available on BlogTV's official blog.)
In this conference, under the two themes titled “The Users’ Web - The new Web world created by users” and “Web Visionaries - Pioneers that shape the future of the Web,” Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, Ashwin Navin, the President and Co-founder of BitTorrent and Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn and the most notable venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, were invited and gave talks that were full of suggestions from their respective viewpoints.
We announced yesterday that DG reached an agreement in principle with LinkedIn to support the business operation of the LinkedIn service in Japan. LinkedIn operates the world's largest SNS (Social Networking Service), which has more than 14 million members worldwide, including more than 70,000 in Japan. In addition, Reid Hoffman, CEO and President of LinkedIn Corporation, will join the Advisory Board of DG.
Our partnership has been reported in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and on Nikkei BP's news site.
September 26, 2007 Published in NIKKEI NET
“Business-oriented SNS Arrives; US LinkedIn Expands into Japan”
September 26, 2007 Published in IT Pro
“LinkedIn, a business SNS with more than 14 million members to launch Japanese service in early 2008”
The following are reports on the progress of business:
- 1. Solutions Segment
- At Sogei, which became a wholly-owned subsidiary in April, the executives and employees are working together to develop a new business model in the field of advertisement and promotion by re-engineering. Fortunately, Sogei managed to move into the black for the first quarter (April to June) and absorbed the development costs of increasing-return businesses including “Mansion DB” and is about to become profitable for the year. DG&Ibex, which is focusing on cross-media promotions in a time when things do not sell well, is also growing satisfactorily, receiving high praise from clients.
- 2. Portals/Blogs Segment
- Despite the fact that Kakaku.com will include temporary promotional costs for the interim term (April to September), rapid growth is continuously being seen.
Our collaboration project with Sogei, “Mansion DB” is to start charging fees in September and the business has been expanding rapidly in the 6 months since the launch of the service. We also feel that 4travel has gained a strong foothold as a forerunner in travel sector CGM (Consumer Generated Media) after entering into a capital and business partnership with Yahoo Japan, which was announced on August 28. - 3. Incubation Segment
- Each year at the conference mentioned above, we introduce the latest venture businesses from overseas. We are focusing on finding such venture businesses abroad and investing in enterprises in which we can leverage our group synergy. We are making efforts in constructing business models that are not influenced by downturns in the domestic stock market.
- 4. Finance Segment
- Econtext has formed an international consortium, the “One Payment Alliance (OPA),” which targets global enterprises while cultivating settlement services in the existing domestic EC market. The OPA system makes it possible to settle payments in Japan, China and Korea, when installed by a global enterprise. Although it is still in the early stages of initial marketing efforts, we have high hopes for it to develop into a new growth engine for Econtext.
All the executives and employees at DG are determined to pursue further expansion of our business as a context enterprise. We look forward to your continued support and guidance.
