They are the connected generation, the always-texting, iPhone-carrying 20-somethings who post messages on Facebook about buying shoes or eating pizza. And yet they feel disconnected from their Vietnamese heritage, even though many were born in Vietnam.
“I watch my grandmother watch Vietnamese soap operas all day,” said 23-year-old Milpitas resident Lana Huyen, who left Vietnam when she was 6. “I look in the mirror every morning and I realize I’m Vietnamese. It’s in my face. But it’s really hard when you don’t understand (the culture) for yourself.”
She is marketing director of a new social networking site, OneVietnam.org, which launched a week ago with the aim of connecting young Vietnamese-Americans with the culture of their parents, grandparents and homeland, as well as to nonprofits providing assistance to Vietnamese communities.
The platform encourages friendly banter as well as serious discussions on topics such as Agent Orange, the defoliant used by U.S. troops in Vietnam that has caused widespread health problems there. OneVietnam also is a place for professional networking. But what sets it apart from most other popular social media is its focus on Vietnam. It is designed to link Vietnamese spread across the globe — from San Jose to Switzerland to Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City.
The theme of the site is “coming home.” Visitors are asked to log in by using their Facebook and Twitter sign-ins, or OpenID, the authentication standard used by Google’s Gmail, Yahoo and others. People can also log in manually if, for instance, they are using a mobile phone or are in locations where Twitter and Facebook are inaccessible. Twitter and Facebook are sometimes blocked by the Vietnamese government.
The founders of OneVietnam see their website as a template that can be used by immigrant or other groups seeking to create more tightly knit communities that, while synced to sites like Facebook and Twitter, are more focused. Already, other groups, including Chinese-Americans, have inquired about licensing the technology.
“With many immigrant communities, once you get to the second generation, it gets harder and harder to maintain a connection with your culture,” said OneVietnam co-founder Uyen Nguyen.
Many Vietnamese in the United States fled the country in the 1970s and 1980s after the Communists took control. For years, few returned to their homeland and their children were encouraged to embrace American culture.
Older overseas Vietnamese, with vivid memories of their lives before leaving the Southeast Asian country, often generously support nonprofit groups and poor family members in Vietnam. But the younger generation does not have that deep personal link to their cultural homeland, said John Anner, president of East Meets West, an Oakland foundation that funds nongovernment organizations in Vietnam and helped set up OneVietnam.org.
Every year, Vietnam benefits from $10 billion in remittances from overseas Vietnamese, Anner said, adding that the amount “far surpasses any development aid by multiple factors.” He said OneVietnam can be a conduit for practical benefits for Vietnam because “the younger generation won’t give back unless they feel connected.”
OneVietnam represents a new dimension to social networking, one built around a common purpose, said David Teece, a professor of global business at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and an adviser to the founders of the site.
“I think it represents the evolution of networking into something that is more exciting and more productive,” he said.
OneVietnam is one of several focused social networking sites branching out from the larger sites, such as Facebook. Togetherville.com, for instance, is aimed at parents and preteens. KeaNewzealand.com is a site for New Zealand expatriates.
Visitors to OneVietnam are asked to choose their Vietnam hometown, or the Vietnamese city they most identify with, which links them to a community on the site. They also can choose a “guide,” another member of OneVietnam, to help them navigate the site.
Once visitors are inside the site, they are offered a choice of three tabs — Home, which lists the threads of their friends; Neighborhood, which shows their friends’ discussions; and Town Center, which highlights major topics of discussion, such as rural development, and includes a scrollable chatter bar.
A “Backroom” function allows members to have private conversations. Much like an actual room, users can invite others in for discussions that cannot be read by those who come in later.
While the site has the look and feel of Twitter, OneVietnam has a number of features that sets it apart from the popular posting site. In particular, it allows members to write more than 140 characters, which is the longest tweet Twitter allows per post. The idea is to encourage more in-depth conversations about important issues, said Paul Pham, OneVietnam’s director of engineering and a key creator of the early e-mail service Hotmail.com.
Members also can post photos and videos that can be viewed directly on the site instead of on another page. Another feature allows users to always be connected to OneVietnam. Those using Google Talk instant messaging service with Gmail or Android mobile phones will be notified when someone sends them a message on OneVietnam. They can view the contents of the message before deciding whether to log onto OneVietnam to respond.
“This is the way social networking will be in the future,” Pham said. “It’s the natural progression. People are becoming more demanding of what they want from a social networking site.”
The site, which launched a week ago, is attracting new members from Vietnam, where a number of tech blogs are reporting on it, Pham said. The site’s founders have not disclosed the number of users but say it is growing rapidly. Pham said OneVietnam had to increase its server capacity sixfold just two days after going live.
Pham and others do not expect the government to block OneVietnam because its focus is nonpolitical.
“The Vietnamese youth are not chained by the scars of the Vietnam War,” said Huy Do, chairman and president of Strategic Alliance Vietnamese Ventures International.
Contact John Boudreau at 408-278-3496.
What is it: A new social networking site for Vietnamese-Americans and those interested in Vietnam and its culture.
Goal: To create a global community of younger Vietnamese who want to connect to their culture and to spotlight nonprofits serving Vietnamese communities around the world.