The first-ever pan-Asian internet entrepreneur conference took place on October 14 in Seoul, Korea. It was very well-attended with people from many countries, such as Taiwan, China, Japan, Singapore, and Korea. There were many surprises, from the high standard of dress in the audience, many suits and ties and almost no jeans and t-shirts, to the extremely high quality of expertise of the speakers and panelists. The OpenWeb.Asia Workgroup, http://www.openweb.asia/ deserves great credit for putting on a fabulous and well-organized show.

There were four panels during the session: Insights and Best Practices, Innovations in Asia, Collaboration, and East meets West. These simple categories hide the fact that some of the brightest and most experienced people you will ever have the opportunity to interact with gave away their knowledge in a truly open manner. Venture capitalists, executives running large companies, and individual entrepreneurs, all shared their insights in a spirit of cooperation that was wonderful to be a part of.

For visitors from outside the region, there were many surprises. Asia has a very high broadband internet penetration, 40% of the world’s on-line participants are there. There are a million blogs in China. Mobile devices are even more widely-used than pc’s. And most surprising, social networks and instant messaging services that make money(!!), such as QQ, http://www.qq.com and TX, http://www.tx.com.cn/ in china and Mixi, http://www.mixi.com in Japan.

Three Asia-specific reasons are behind these companies being profitable. People love to buy virtual goods (such as tools and avatars and ways to decorate one’s profile), the Asian cultural habit of strong community building, and most interesting to western bloggers and entrepreneurs, the ability for consumers to make micro-payments easily, via smart cards or mobile phones. The cost per transaction that credit card companies such as Visa and Masterdard charge makes such payments impossible in America or Europe.

Do you think Google is big in search in Asia? Not at all. In Korea it is Naver, http://www.naver.com/, or in China, Baidu, http://www.baidu.com/. Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube? Bit players in the world’s largest and most sophisticated internet marketplace. Think Youkou, Tudou, 51.com, Xiaonai, and the same holds true in portals and instant messaging. What is the world’s largest business-to-business marketplace? Alibaba, http://www.alibaba.com and it is a global business, that started with a Chinese focus.

Mass-scale collaboration via the internet is bringing social change to Asian countries in a way that hasn’t really happened in the west yet. The architecture of social participation is simply more active, more intense, more engaging than in western countries. In South Korea public demonstrations have happened simply via publicity generated on-line.

The interest in Asian countries going global is equal to the interest in western companies taking their brands to Asia. There are many challenges in both directions. Language, customs, and tastes limit many products to local markets only, but the passion and the fervor and the sheer creative skill of Asian entrepreneurs for developing on-line businesses will be a challenge to the more staid countries of the west.

The action is in Asia. Don’t miss OpenWebAsia’09.