Www.Hongrian.Com - Website Promoting Education For Thais And Those Who Know Thai

[MacWalen]

www.hongrian.com

Hi Guys, I have not posted for a while but today I have a great piece of news. Walen School and Honeysun IT have been working for about 3 years on producing a website that would promote education in Thailand. We believe a lot of people will be encouraged to stay at school longer. We want to promote the idea that learning at school is "cool". We still have some bugs there but essentially it works quite well. We have 70 active accounts in 6 days. Not much but we expect a lot more in the future. A lot of interesting features will be gradually introduced as the number of users grows.

Registering on Hongrian.com and staying in touch with your Thai friends is a great way to practice your Thai.

If you have any comments I am always happy to hear them.

Walen School and Honeysun IT

www.hongrian.com

Edited July 24, 2010 by macwalen

[bhoydy]

I just signed up for this site but i'm unsure how to connect with other members on there.

[MacWalen]

I just signed up for this site but i'm unsure how to connect with other members on there.

Quite easy, first time you need to have a friend after that it is easy as you just build a network, the idea is the same as on other networking websites with the difference that this service is more specific for Thais and that we will be organizing yearbooks for Thai students as such thing does not exist in this country, there is not culture of yearbooks. You can ask a Thai friend to sign up an then you just use search function and add them to your friends list. Invitation will go to their inbox, after they just accept you and that is how it starts. Enjoy.

[kriswillems]

Young Thai people are very active on facebook. Almost every university class and groups of friends within university can be found there. What's the difference with facebook?

How is this website related to Thai language (except for the fact that the interface is in Thai)?

I mean, I know thousands of websites that are in Thai which are totally unrelated to Thai language study. I didn't know it was allowed to make advertisement for these websites on this forum.

Edited July 24, 2010 by kriswillems

[MacWalen]

Young Thai people are very active on facebook. Almost every university class and groups of friends within university can be found there. What's the difference with facebook?

The difference is that hongrian.com is not an international website and is directed specifically to Thai people or to a much smaller degree those who know the language or want to learn Thai and interact specifically with Thai friends.

hongrian.com has a purpose, we want to promote education, I doubt very much Facebook management cares a lot about the Thai people. For Facebook Thailand is yet another country they have users in. Other than just having more and more people using it what is the purpose? Also very often about 70% of people in users friends list are people they have never met. Those are not real friends. They do not even care about them, it is better to limit friendships to people we met personally, at least we know they are real.

A lot of people would prefer a website just for Thais as it is a website that is culturally closer that other foreign networking websites.

A lot of governments are concerned about Facebook. For example Chinese consider Facebook as a spying service. Other governments are also concerned.

Facebook is a trend, yesterday myspace, today facebook, tomorrow? Hongrian would like to play an essential part in promoting education starting with pratom 1.

Of course if Walen and Honeysun IT were worried about Facebook we would not be doing it.

The best answer will be provided by users themselves, if Thais will see that it is not a useful service they will not support hongrian.com and if they do like we will do our best not to disappoint them.

Kris, thanks for your post. We just started a few days ago so we have a lot to learn.

Walen & Honeysun IT

Edited July 24, 2010 by macwalen

[MacWalen]

Young Thai people are very active on facebook. Almost every university class and groups of friends within university can be found there. What's the difference with facebook?

How is this website related to Thai language (except for the fact that the interface is in Thai)?

I mean, I know thousands of websites that are in Thai which are totally unrelated to Thai language study. I didn't know it was allowed to make advertisement for these websites on this forum.

Regarding the advertising part, perhaps you have not noticed but Honeysun is also a sponsor of this website. Two banners and perhaps more soon. We do not actually advertise, more like inform.

Walen School & Honeysun IT

www.thaiwalen.com www.hongrian.com

Edited July 24, 2010 by macwalen

[kriswillems]

Ok, got it. Thanks for "informing".

[bhoydy]

I just signed up for this site but i'm unsure how to connect with other members on there.

Quite easy, first time you need to have a friend after that it is easy as you just build a network, the idea is the same as on other networking websites with the difference that this service is more specific for Thais and that we will be organizing yearbooks for Thai students as such thing does not exist in this country, there is not culture of yearbooks. You can ask a Thai friend to sign up an then you just use search function and add them to your friends list. Invitation will go to their inbox, after they just accept you and that is how it starts. Enjoy.

Where i'm from in the UK there is no culture of yearbooks either. Anyway, so basically i can only connect to people who i invite on to this website. These friends i am already connected to on the internet through other sites. If there is no window to connect to new people on this website i can't see it happening, in my opinion.

[SoftWater]

Another SNS...hmm, just what we need. I've sent your link to a relative - a 15-year old Thai schoolgirl, which would appear to be your demographic. I'm not sure what value a load of farang expats can add to a site aimed at thai schoolkids, though I can think of some negatives. and I wonder, like Kris, exactly how this is relevant to the Thai language fourm. There already exist 'langauge exchange' SNS's, like iTalki and Lang8, but in any case, I'll let you know if she uses it and what she thinks of it.

No doubt as professionals you did plenty of market research and analysis before investing in such a venture, so this link about the history, success and failure of SNS's won't be of much interest to you, but others may perhaps find it interesting. Social Network Sites (shockingly, its NOT a wikipedia aricle! ).

I praise your social conscience Walen, as I can't see much profit it in this for you; an admirable service to the community.

Edited July 24, 2010 by SoftWater

[MacWalen]

We are not limiting our website just to Thais, there are international schools in Thailand, universities with a lot of foreign students and also a lot of foreigners with a long term commitment to Thailand. For a lot of us this is home. I do not know the future, what I know however is that if you offer people services that can benefit them there is a good chance of success. I am still improving this website. We spent a lot of time and money working on it and we are not a huge IT company so it takes time to get things done.

As my business for the last 9 years is education I thought it would be a good idea to have a website that is revolving around schools and groups are formed with people you actually know. Mostly your school mates. We will see. If this makes education more popular in this country it will be something to be happy about. Education and better opportunities go hand in hand so I can see a lot of potential benefits.

Goals are:

1. Promoting education

2. Promoting use of internet as we believe it is beneficial.

3. Promotion of English (our plan is to teach English for free on hongrian.com)

4. Renewing old friendships.

5. Finding all the schools in Thailand and placing them in our database so students can join all the possible schools and classes.

6. Promoting yearbooks. If you look at a picture taken 30 years ago that picture has much greater value than when it was taken. In order to do that we would like create a culture of taking two pictures each year of every single student. One of a student and one of his/her class with his/her teachers.

What we think about, talk about and participate in has greater value to us. For example I don't like cricket but in India it is very popular, why? Because everybody talks about cricket.

I cannot tell you all our plans yet but if we get enough support form Thai students we will offer them unique experience and preserve their memories hopefully for generations.

Walen & hongrian.com

[MacWalen]

I just signed up for this site but i'm unsure how to connect with other members on there.

Quite easy, first time you need to have a friend after that it is easy as you just build a network, the idea is the same as on other networking websites with the difference that this service is more specific for Thais and that we will be organizing yearbooks for Thai students as such thing does not exist in this country, there is not culture of yearbooks. You can ask a Thai friend to sign up an then you just use search function and add them to your friends list. Invitation will go to their inbox, after they just accept you and that is how it starts. Enjoy.

Where i'm from in the UK there is no culture of yearbooks either. Anyway, so basically i can only connect to people who i invite on to this website. These friends i am already connected to on the internet through other sites. If there is no window to connect to new people on this website i can't see it happening, in my opinion.

Or they invite you. Both. Basic idea is that groups are formed based on years of study, so for example if they spent 6 years in pratom they can have a new group each year with students from those specific years. They can also form other groups if they wanted to. If you do not have any Thai friends it may not be so easy to use the website. We assume that friends are people you know. The website in this sense may not be as 'friendly as other websites' where people add friends on a mass scale, anyone sending you an invitation is a friends. It will not work like that. But again, even if you have a few Thai friends in time you will gain more friends through networking.

Edited July 24, 2010 by macwalen

[MacWalen]

Another SNS...hmm, just what we need. I've sent your link to a relative - a 15-year old Thai schoolgirl, which would appear to be your demographic. I'm not sure what value a load of farang expats can add to a site aimed at thai schoolkids, though I can think of some negatives. and I wonder, like Kris, exactly how this is relevant to the Thai language fourm. There already exist 'langauge exchange' SNS's, like iTalki and Lang8, but in any case, I'll let you know if she uses it and what she thinks of it.

No doubt as professionals you did plenty of market research and analysis before investing in such a venture, so this link about the history, success and failure of SNS's won't be of much interest to you, but others may perhaps find it interesting. Social Network Sites (shockingly, its NOT a wikipedia aricle! ).

I praise your social conscience Walen, as I can't see much profit it in this for you; an admirable service to the community.

I understand your concern. We actually know quite well what is going on and if there ever was a situation that someone was doing things they should not appropriate actions would be taken. Thank you for helping with promoting the website Kris. It usually takes some time to make this kind of website work. Also initially till you have a few friends in your list it may seem empty inside.

Regarding how relevant it is to Thai language forum. I will encourage all our Thai students to join and form groups based on their classes. It is perfectly OK to join hongrian.com if you study Thai at a Thai language school. Hope you agree with that. Also students from other Thai language schools are encouraged to join and form groups based on their classes.

Walen & Hongrian.com

Edited July 25, 2010 by macwalen

[kriswillems]

Thank you for helping Kris with promotion........

Regarding how relevant it is to Thai language forum. I will encourage all our Thai students to join and form groups based on their classes. It is perfectly OK to join hongrian.com if you study Thai at a Thai language school. Hope you agree with that. Also students from other Thai language schools are encouraged to join and form groups based on their classes.

Don't see how this can be a good platform for students of other Thai language schools, if it's owned and moderated by one specific Thai language school (competition). It also doesn't have any special features that could help me to learn Thai.

In my opinion this website is a much related to Thai language as for instance www.thaicarpenter.com

I didn't say I will promote your website. I know quiet a few websites that are far more useful for people on this forum, but I am not allowed to promote them because I an not a forum sponsor.

[SoftWater]

Thank you for helping Kris with promotion........

Kris, I suspect this was a 'typo' on Mac's part, and he meant to say 'thank you, Softwater, for helping with promotion' as I mentioned I'd sent a link to a relative.

Of course, I have no right to put words in another man's mouth, so I'm sure he'll correct me if my reading is incorrect.

[HappyInCM]

hongrian.com has a purpose, we want to promote education, I doubt very much Facebook management cares a lot about the Thai people. For Facebook Thailand is yet another country they have users in. Other than just having more and more people using it what is the purpose? Also very often about 70% of people in users friends list are people they have never met. Those are not real friends. They do not even care about them, it is better to limit friendships to people we met personally, at least we know they are real.

A lot of people would prefer a website just for Thais as it is a website that is culturally closer that other foreign networking websites.

A lot of governments are concerned about Facebook. For example Chinese consider Facebook as a spying service. Other governments are also concerned.

Facebook is a trend, yesterday myspace, today facebook, tomorrow? Hongrian would like to play an essential part in promoting education starting with pratom 1.

Of course if Walen and Honeysun IT were worried about Facebook we would not be doing it.

The best answer will be provided by users themselves, if Thais will see that it is not a useful service they will not support hongrian.com and if they do like we will do our best not to disappoint them.

Kris, thanks for your post. We just started a few days ago so we have a lot to learn.

Walen & Honeysun IT

I hate to make these kind of posts Mr Mac, but your post is so outrageous, that it needs to be addressed. Can you not figure out why some governments don't like social networking and information sites (e.g., google)? Do you think a multi-multi billion (albeit still private) US-based company is spying for the US? Yesterday's myspace? They just passed 500 million users. And as for not caring about the Thai people, I would trust a big, presumably soon to be public, US company more so than a private Thai based company any day. They are held to a higher ethical standard than your company. Would it not have been better to just say we are addressing a niche market of helping Thai children learn english rather than creating an alternative to facebook.

Since it's a fad, I guess you wouldn't waste your time getting access to all those Thais that are on facebook by creating a fan page or advertising there? You probably could create a better product I bet mostly through FB pages and applications and spread there faster than by spending your money on your own web page unless you are doing something very special.

But, I commend your efforts to educate Thai people (those with some disposable income at least) and raise their level of English education. I just hope this isn't some thinly veiled attempt to create a vehicle to upsell them on your school; which would be fine normally, but since you've made such a point of saying how much you care, would be rather inappropriate.

[MacWalen]

Ok, if this is how you think then answer me a simple question. Would American government be happy with the data of tens of millions of Americans kept on servers in Beijing? I believe this is the reason why they do not allow Facebook in China, matter of national security. For the time being this is how that service is being perceived. It may change in the future but of course for now they do not trust Facebook enough to permit their operations in China. This is not my opinion, I just stated the fact how Chinese view it.

Edited July 25, 2010 by macwalen

[MacWalen]

"creating an alternative to facebook" - It could be that too. Still too early to worry. We just started.

Regarding trusting a US based company more. Not sure if I can agree in this particular case, if we operate in Thailand we are more accountable, if we do something wrong it is obviously a lot easier for the authorities to contact us should there ever be such a need. Also I remain of the opinion that should hongrian.com become popular it will care about Thais more than other foreign networking websites.

Edited July 25, 2010 by macwalen

[HappyInCM]

"creating an alternative to facebook" - It could be that too. Still too early to worry. We just started.

Regarding trusting a US based company more. Not sure if I can agree in this particular case, if we operate in Thailand we are more accountable, if we do something wrong it is obviously a lot easier for the authorities to contact us should there ever be such a need. Also I remain of the opinion that should hongrian.com become popular it will care about Thais more than other foreign networking websites.

A tens of billions of dollars company's misdeeds are big big news and so with a relatively free press, their actions are kept pretty ethical - more so than a very very small company in Thailand can be kept ethical; you may disagree and others too, but I think many will agree that big big companies are kept in check by laws in the west but more so, by the press. Also, do you think Thailand is a big enough market (for them) for FB to bother to do something unethical?

One thing we agree on - the stated reason for not wanting social networking sites in some countries is those countries caring about the security of the private information of their citizens. Many (most) people realize the real reason they want the data in their own country is so they themselves can see what their citizens are saying and so they can censure information/people. Just like many people probably realize your website is for upselling. Difference - nothing wrong at all in your case - just some people think monitoring your citizens and censuring them is not the best policy - we obviously have a difference of opinion

btw - google search doesn't have a single private chinese citizen's information, so why is there a problem with them?

ps it doesn't matter what the US govt thinks about keeping us citizen's social networking data on servers in china (in beijing - are u sure? i thought more Guangzhou and Shanghai), because most people know that the rule of law in China is not set up to support enough privacy to make that feasible.

Edited July 25, 2010 by eljefe2

[SoftWater]

Just like many people probably realize your website is for upselling.

Purely out of interest, is Walen now offering Callan-style English lessons to Thais (or planning to?). I thought it was just a Thai language school, in which case, I don't see where the 'upselling' is supposed to be (then again, maybe that's why I'm not in business... )

[HappyInCM]

Just like many people probably realize your website is for upselling.

Purely out of interest, is Walen now offering Callan-style English lessons to Thais (or planning to?). I thought it was just a Thai language school, in which case, I don't see where the 'upselling' is supposed to be (then again, maybe that's why I'm not in business... )

This is the cynical New Yorker in me, but I can't see why an astute business man like Mr Walen is or should spend money on education without getting anything in return - and in theory it hurts his business in the long term since if all the Thais spoke English, there'd be a lot less motivation for learning Thai - I would think.

He's a good business man, so I would think he'd want to keep his business growing and this is just another way. I doubt he really thinks he's going to replace facebook in thailand and then be able to monetize it - fb must be losing money in thailand (and many other places) even though the engineering is free and user's do the translation for them for free. the only thing he could do better I would think is get more targeted local ad dollars, but since fb can easily afford to operate at a loss in Thailand, he would have his work cut out for him But, thinking of that, since there aren't as many Thais abroad as other countries, he'd have a better chance of creating a local social networking site than you could do for example in Japan or South Korea or England for that matter.

ps Mr Walen, this dicussion in the language section does neither of us any good, so I am more than happy for you to get the last word in as I doubt you or I will change positions. Good luck with your new website - if you definitively say you are not using this as a vehicle to sell your own services or ads, I certainly would take you at your word, but there's nothing wrong with making money - it's the new chinese way, isn't it?

[SoftWater]

Eljefe2 - you're right that we're far from talking about anything relevant to the thai language forum, I think that was an inevitable direction for this thread given the OP...

That said, I don't see what's wrong with Walen or anyone else making money out of education if what they are providing is of value to those paying for it, and in this case it may not be the users paying for it anyway; I've no idea how he's going to generate revenue, but one common way as we all know is for advertisers to subsidize the service...just like right here on good old TV!

Edited July 25, 2010 by SoftWater

[Tod Daniels]

Purely out of interest, is Walen now offering Callan-style English lessons to Thais (or planning to?). I thought it was just a Thai language school, in which case, I don't see where the 'upselling' is supposed to be (then again, maybe that's why I'm not in business... )

FWIW: Mac Walen had the Callan Method English Language division for his school open MANY YEARS before he decided to branch out into the ultra-lucrative “teach thai to foreigners” arena .

Unless my memory fails me (which it does from time to time ), the thai language section of the school “the Walen Method of Thai” has been in existence just over 3 years now.

Several years ago; I remember walking past the main office in Times Square and watching Mac and his thai staff slaving over the ordeal of translating the Callan Method of english books into something understandable in thai .

As a purely observational aside (with no relevance on topic ); Even using rough estimates; with two branches in Bangkok, one in Pattaya, one in Chiang Mai, and now Phuket he's gotta have close to 3000 foreign thai language students, all who've paid 25K Baht a year to learn thai. That equals about 75 MILLION Baht; and is certainly not 'chump change' by any stretch of the imagination.

I believe we’ve gotta hand it to Mac as he does keep coming up with ideas . Whether they bear fruit initially or not, at least he’s not too afraid to try that he doesn’t even attempt it .

I’ll hafta have a look at the website. Although FWIW; I too wonder just what this hasta do with foreigners learning thai or this particular forum. .. .

[MacWalen]

www.hongrian.com is certainly relevant to those who learn Thai at various private language schools or universities. You can make a group on hongrian.com that is not intended for international members but specifically for Thais also for those who live in Thailand or outside but are interested in having specifically Thai friends. There are a lot of additional features that will be introduced if hongrian.com becomes popular that nobody else has. As some posters mentioned hongrian.com is a lot more specific because it deals with just one country and one language. Who knows, it may never become popular and 3 years of hard work could be wasted but it it does and people benefit from it great satisfaction will be ours.

Also most TV members know many Thais, it might be a great idea to mention this website to them, as soon as we have enough members we will be offering free English lessons. My belief is that this website can benefit its members as the idea is to promote education, especially to the younger ones.

I will keep you posted. So far we have 76 active accounts so certainly not much of a competition to anyone.

Edited July 26, 2010 by macwalen