Ustream to turn Korea into Asia hub

‘We want to become the global standard that circulates worldwide’

By Cho Mu-hyun

Ustream Asia CEO Tomotaka Nakagawa says the company sees its Korean office as the pivot point to further expand its business across the globe thanks to its strong cultural contents and information technology (IT) ecosystem.

Nakagawa and Ustream Korea head Jimmy Kim met with The Korea Times at the firm’s office in Namdaemun, central Seoul and laid out the company goals and its long term expectations for the globally popular live streaming platform.

“We expect a lot of combined services in Korea,” said Nakagawa. “But not only are we targeting Korea, we are eyeing the whole world for the service and we believe we will win (global popularity).” The Japanese boss also serves as chief executive of TV Bank, Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank’s media content developer.

The Korean affiliate of the service launched in March in collaboration between domestic mobile carrier KT and SoftBank

Ustream was founded by West Point graduates John Ham and Brad Hunstable with Hungarian engineer Gyula Feher in 2006. According to the Japanese boss, the two military school graduates started the service in order to allow American soldiers deployed across the globe to contact with family members back home through intimate video streaming.

“Three key reasons prompted the development of Ustream,” said Nakagawa. “One is its use in the presidential election campaign by Barrack Obama. Second is its co-service with Tweeter. The collaboration with Tweeter exposed Ustream’s live streaming and chats widely and allowed explosive growth. The third is its promotion through smartphones when it became the first officially recognized service by Apple’s iPhone among similar services.”

As more and more people across the globe became aware of the service, it also caught the eye of Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank. According to Nakagawa, Son has 2 million followers in Tweeter, the most in Japan, and is always looking for the next best thing in the IT industry.

“CEO Son asked me since I have been working mostly on media contents if I believed Ustream was worth investing,” said Nakagawa, one of Son’s closest associate within the firm. “I was at first hesitant due to the conflict that may rise between Ustream and our own similar broadcasting service. But as I examined the service more and more, I realized that it had strong potential.”

The video proved to be an unexpected boon for the mobile carrier as high quality contents were produced cost-efficiently, by the user themselves.

“Until now broadcasting meant buying rights from program providers and there were additional fees in network use. But for Ustream, system costs go down for networks and you don’t need to buy contents.”

The Asian office of Ustream based in Japan is speculated to have seen a turnaround within a year after launch and is a fast growing revenue pipeline for its mobile carrier owner. Though the CEO declined to reveal direct numbers, he smiled and said “I won’t deny the speculations.”

Events that grabbed worldwide attention such as death of Michael Jackson in 2009, the rescue of the Chile miners in 2010 and the Japan earthquake last year proved the service extremely efficient in connecting the world.

Ustream is aiming to be the platform that gathers all the contents services and become the global standard, much like Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS as becoming in operating systems. An era of international standard in IT has arrived, says Nakagawa.

“We want to become a business that has a content that can circulate anywhere, not in just desktops or mobile phones but in next generation smartphones and digital televisions: a business that has a contents portfolio that can transmit them to all services.”

The company and the Asian office also recognize that people across the globe are much diversified with different inclinations. While keeping a standard that has legitimate “Ustream” color, it will also reflect the cultural sentiment that creates a mobile ecosystem and contents different for each nation.

“I don’t know if I can link the success in Japan to Korea, but when we connected the service with popular social tools, we’ve also applied exclusively Japanese applications such as Ameba. The point is to connect the service with the strengths of different countries.”

As Ustream is available in English, Japanese and Korea, the service will branch out first to Asian countries with high English literacy, like Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan.

The Korean office, a co-investment of Korean mobile carrier KT and SoftBank, is one of Ustream’s strategic test grounds for the expansion. Ustream Asia has 22 studios, accessible to subscribers and provided to facilitate the ever growing of users to express themselves. Jimmy Kim says the Korean office is developing a similar franchise studio.

Commenting on the DDOS attack that shut its services recently in Russia, Nakagawa says ultimately, Ustream upholds Internet freedom and wish to connect the world to create mutual understanding between people.

“CEO Son wants Internet freedom. He believes war and conflict arises from each countries lacking understanding of one another. Though the Internet, he believes such things can be avoided,” said Nakagawa.