ASEANNOW.com - Thaivisa.com rebrands and expands beyond Thailand

[Radar501]

THAIVISA YESTERDAY,  ASEAN NOW, PLANETEARTH TOMORROW 

[Kadilo]

Just now, rumak said:

you sir have just won the poty 2025 !

I’ll delete the post then 

[CharlieH]

Racial remark removed.

[J Town]

4 minutes ago, rumak said:

If you click the “theme” button down below at bottom of page next to the “contact us” you can change it back. 

Spread the word far and wide! Kudos.

[clivebaxter]

13 minutes ago, misterjames said:

Source? Tessanet is registered in Hong Kong so they are by law required by law to provide anything the communist party requests from them regardless of where the servers are. It's also not owned by one man it's owned by shareholders from what I found on the companies house website. 

 

Please feel free to prove me wrong with a credible source?

What is the point these days of having a media company registered in CCP controlled HK? 

[Puccini]

52 minutes ago, misterjames said:

...A lot more positive sinovac posts incoming me thinks.

Sinovac is the bee's knees.

[herfiehandbag]

It is a funny old world isn't it?

A few months ago they closed down the old "World News" forum.

Now they are busily expanding the site to cover countries outside Thailand!

No doubt it all makes sense to someone - in China?

[Peterw42]

5 minutes ago, clivebaxter said:

What is the point these days of having a media company registered in CCP controlled HK? 

Advantages of doing business in Hong Kong

• Free trade and investment policy.
• Rule of law.
• Complete freedom of capital movement.
• Clean and efficient government.
• Low and simple taxation.
• Close proximity to markets in Asia.
• Highly skilled workforce.

[misterjames]

3 minutes ago, clivebaxter said:

What is the point these days of having a media company registered in CCP controlled HK? 

You could ask why the Chinese own a lot of the Thai media in general, but to speculate on why this site would be useful, to control the narrative regarding human rights abuses? censor content regarding vaccines? the list goes on. 

 

Not only that but access to all the user data of people that speak out.

[ICELANDMAN]

 

Now Asean Now has a new IT capable of recognizing the location of members who are warned that those hiding underneath with fake IPs will be immediately deported and confined to Covid field hospitals in case of overcrowding as almost all of them use fake IPs. deported to the north to places kept secret.

[misterjames]

4 minutes ago, Puccini said:

Sinovac is the bee's knees.

1 rmb is headed your way ????

[Puccini]

51 minutes ago, phetphet said:

...Well it just means there is now space for a new Thailand  centric competitor website if someone is willing to set one up.

Isn't there one already? I forgot its name. Rotten Mango, or something like that.

[WineOh]

So is the Cheese man no longer at the helm???

 

Now this is a Chinese owned site???

 

How long before Xi Jinping signs up to become a member?

[cyril sneer]

1 hour ago, nikmar said:

Will the mobile app be ****ing useless in other ASEAN countries aswell?

Yes

 

The app was removed because it wasn’t able to display adverts 

[Hanaguma]

Just curious, but it seems like a lot of sections from the previous Thaivisa Forums are missing. Farang Pub, Marriage/Family discussions... is that a feature or a bug?

 

[kynikoi]

Expats jumping ship or planning or at the very least considering. I know I am.

 

As stated above, you're late to the party. Other countries and forums already established. None of those people need the endless droning of Thai *news* regarding vaccines that never arrive, hourly government rethinks and Thai PBS hopium.

 

When you leave Thailand...you leave it.

 

It's a rebrand the same country boards at the bottom people have always been able to view.

 

Good to know TV supporting us in time of local crisis.

[CharlieH]

Just now, Hanaguma said:

Just curious, but it seems like a lot of sections from the previous Thaivisa Forums are missing. Farang Pub, Marriage/Family discussions... is that a feature or a bug?

 

Work in progress.

[kynikoi]

1 minute ago, Hanaguma said:

Just curious, but it seems like a lot of sections from the previous Thaivisa Forums are missing. Farang Pub, Marriage/Family discussions... is that a feature or a bug?

 

 

Some may be but important threads are buried in tiny sub forums lol.

 

My interest waning already.

[Poet]

From a website economics point-of-view, setting fire to a strong, memorable brand, established over two decades, is insane.

From a Chinese perspective, however, Thailand is a tiny market, whether we are talking commercial potential or political influence. Barely even worth controlling.

Collectively, the ten ASEAN member states represent a market just about big enough to be worth cultivating. The dream here is that the existing traffic and link juice of ThaiVisa will act as an anchor to provide this larger project with the necessary momentum to make all ten country sections viable.

It makes a lot of sense in theory, but absolutely won't work. I have watched so many websites try to transform themselves into a broader portal, not realising that a large part of Google's favor is that you specialize in a particular region or subject niche.

On the other hand, why not?

Despite the TAT-style claims about how well the forum has been doing, we all know the reality, and we all know why it has happened, no point going into that. Suffice to say that the turnover of good contributors has been high, while the dregs and loonies tend to accumulate.

So, at this point, emergency surgery may be justified, especially in terms of possibly delivering a potential market that Chinese owners would consider worth bothering with.

My prediction is that the activity in the Thailand section will drop but remain viable. The existing Cambodia, Vietnam, and Philippines sections will remain about as active as they have been, which is not very. The other sections will feature the occassional post from regulars in the Thailand section, but will never attract expats established in those countries and already well-served by dedicated forums and Facebook groups. There is no way they are going to swap that for the perculiarly user-hostile environment here.

I further predict that the Thailand section will be ported back to the ThaiVisa brand and domain within one year, with fewer active users, damaged Google rankings, and facing far stronger competition from the other Thailand expat forums. The remaining AseanNow forum will continue for another year before folding due to lack of interest and too broad a focus.

Personally, despite some good discussions here in the past, my interest had already, prior to the current gymnastics, waned to the point that this is probably my final thread on this forum.

 

Edited July 2, 2021 by Poet

[hgma]

great any jobs in the pipeline?

 

[Poet]

Just now, hgma said:

great any jobs in the pipeline?

 

Can you speak Mandarin?

[misterjames]

3 minutes ago, hgma said:

great any jobs in the pipeline?

 

plenty of jabs not sure about jobs though

[Puccini]

44 minutes ago, Kadilo said:

Christ you would think people had lost a relative. 
Its just a <deleted> name. 

Yes, a deleted name, that's what Thaivisa is now. Come to think about it, I never knew what the brand name really was, THAIVISA or ThaiVisa or Thai Visa.

[WineOh]

8 minutes ago, Poet said:

From a website economics point-of-view, setting fire to a strong, memorable brand, established over two decades, is insane.

From a Chinese perspective, however, Thailand is a tiny market, whether we are talking commercial potential or political influence. Barely even worth controlling.

Collectively, the ten ASEAN member states represent a market just about big enough to be worth cultivating. The dream here is that the existing traffic and link juice of ThaiVisa will act as an anchor to provide this larger project with the necessary momentum to make all ten country sections viable.

It makes a lot of sense in theory, but absolutely won't work. I have watched so many websites try to transform themselves into a broader portal, not realising that a large part of Google's favor is that you specialize in a particular region or subject niche.

On the other hand, why not?

Despite the TAT-style claims about how well the forum has been doing, we all know the reality, and we all know why it has happened, no point going into that. Suffice to say that the turnover of good contributors has been high, while the dregs and loonies tend to accumulate.

So, at this point, emergency surgery may be justified, especially in terms of possibly delivering a potential market that Chinese owners would consider worth bothering with.

My prediction is that the activity in the Thailand section will drop but remain viable. The existing Cambodia, Vietnam, and Philippines sections will remain about as active as they have been, which is not very. The other sections will feature the occassional post from regulars in the Thailand section, but will never attract expats established in those countries and already well-served by dedicated forums and Facebook groups. There is no way they are going to swap that for the perculiarly user-hostile environment here.

I predict that the Thailand section will be ported back to the ThaiVisa brand and domain within one year, with fewer active users and damaged Google rankings. The remaining AseanNow forum will continue for another year before folding due to lack of interest and too broad a focus.

 

Very well put mate. I agree with all of what you said above, especially the slashing and burning of a brand that has taken decades to build!

 

Absolute madness IMO.

Edited July 2, 2021 by WineOh

[FritsSikkink]

3 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

 

Just curious... other than a ‘branding change’ I don’t see any difference in the ThaiVisa functionality etc... 

 

Where is the ‘disrespect’ ??? 

 

Bangkok and other city forums are gone

[Puccini]

40 minutes ago, misterjames said:

Source? Tessanet is registered in Hong Kong so they are by law required by law to provide anything the communist party requests from them regardless of where the servers are. It's also not owned by one man it's owned by shareholders from what I found on the companies house website. 

 

Please feel free to prove me wrong with a credible source?

Talking about credible source, please be so kind as to post the link to the page on the "companies house website" you mentioned in your post.

[asiacurious]

3 hours ago, scubascuba3 said:

"easily searchable"  definitely not that

 

I've always relied on Google for searching this site.  Much better results that the internal search engine. 

 

At least until Google re-crawls the site, you will still want to use "thaivisa.com" as the site name if you're using google.

 

For example, searching this on Google:

      90 day report site:thaivisa.com

 

Gets you about 11,600 results.....

 

But searching this:

      90 day report site:aseannow.com

 

Only gets you 4 results.....

[Puccini]

42 minutes ago, Ralf001 said:

 

not going to provide jack <deleted> as I could not be bothered.

 

If you say it is cshareholder owned then so be it, you are right and Iam wrong.

 

Perhaps you are both right, for example if al shares of the company are owned by one person.

[misterjames]

5 minutes ago, Puccini said:

Talking about credible source, please be so kind as to post the link to the page on the "companies house website" you mentioned in your post.

DM me for it I'm obviously not allowed to discuss it here.

[Poet]

6 minutes ago, misterjames said:

I did post my source as well as screenshots, my post was the second post on this topic but my post disappeared .

Well, the fact that this happened, and that none of us are in any way surprised by it, says more than any document from a "credible source" could about the management of this forum and the precise level of esteem in which they hold their users traffic.

 

Edited July 2, 2021 by Poet