Next in my series on international web apps is Korea. I have Chang W. Kim, who runs a blog called Web 2.0 Asia, to thank for providing me with all the info.
Korea is in many ways ahead of the curve in terms of the Internet. It has the highest household penetration of broadband internet in the world and some highly innovative Web applications (e.g. the social network Cyworld).
Chang says that in Korea a lot of web 2.0 initiatives are done by Internet bigcos - Naver, Daum, Nate.com (operated by SK Communications, which also owns Cyworld), Yahoo Korea, etc. However he says Google Korea isn't such a big threat in this market and it is outperformed by local search company Naver.
In a post on his blog, Change described the reasons why:
"I think the success of Naver search has been largely helped by the fact that Korea is a very homogeneous society where people often have very common and shared interests. I mean, every society has its memes and zeitgeist, but I think Korea is a little more special. 48+ million people packed in a small country that's equipped with dead efficient broadband and mobile networks. That's an interesting (and even a bit dangerous) combination."
Chang said that the Korean bigcos all seem to be providing generic Web/media 2.0 service offerings - blogs, photo management tools, online video sites (a la Youtube), social networking, RSS aggregators, etc. Very similar to what's popular in the Western world.
But Chang reckons of all the bigco service offerings, the most impressive is definitely Cyworld. It provides the same social networking values as Myspace, but it did so 5 years before. Cyworld had been criticized as a "closed service" in the past, but now they are opening up. Chang has written about Cyworld's new initiatives, which are little known outside of Korea, on his blog [ref 1 and 2].
Some of the best features are:
In terms of stats, Cyworld is totally dominant. According to Wikipedia:
"...as much as 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s[1] and 25 percent of the total population of South Korea[2] are registered users of Cyworld, and as of September 2005, daily unique visitors are about 20 million."
Cyworld also recently opened for business in the US - and promptly got a harsh review from Techcrunch's Marshall Kirkpatrick. Chang commented over on his blog that he thinks Cyworld US may not take off, but that the parent company has deep pockets and is putting in a lot of effort for version 2 of the US product - codenamed C2. It does seem to me that Cyworld is a culturally unique product, which may prevent it from succeeding in the US (and hence the UK, Aussie, etc) market.
But from what I understand of
it, Cyworld is extremely innovative and (unlike Marshall) I actually do think avatars
will have a big part to play in future social networks in the West. Marshall was very
dismissive of avatars in his TC review. He said in a comment: "I can’t speak for
anyone in South Korea, but I think these avatars are silly. I think the whole thing is
massively nuts." Nice one Marshall.
Korea has a great list of startups and some of them are making a name for themselves overseas - e.g. OhMyNews and ThinkFree.
Chang also said there are many online gaming services - "Korea is a hotbed of online games companies." He thinks that online games (MMORPGs) might be the best example there of a) software as a service and b) online money-making business models.
If there is a possible market opportunity, Chang thinks it's a Facebook-like college social networking site. But then, everyone uses Cyworld anyway!
Finally, if you want to keep up with the Web industry in Korea - as well as subscribing to Chang's blog, also check out my friend Taewoo Danny Kim's blog and Channy Yun's KoreaCrunch. They're all in english and well worth tracking.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Top Korean Web 2.0 Apps.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2706
Richard MacManus, a good friend of mine, whom I met through blogging, introduces the top web 2.0 applications in Korea on his blog, ReadWriteWeb. Chang W. Kim, who's also a close friend of mine, nicely summarizes the state of the webosphere in Korea. I'.. Read More
Next in my series on top Web apps in international markets is Russia. To remind you of the previous countries profiled: Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea and United Kingdom. Other country profiles coming soon include Spain, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand... Read More
Turkey is next in this R/WW series on top international Web apps. It's the 9th country I've profiled so far - the others have been Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain and China. For the following information on... Read More
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It's cool. Thanks for your introduction of Web 2.0 in Korea. If you're interested in latest news about that, please refer koreacrunch.com.
Posted by: KoreaCrunch | August 3, 2006 5:00 AMa bunch of guys did a cyworld clone called npool.de in germany. mini hompy and other cyworld-like-features including. maybe of interest for german readers, who wanna discover the cyworld experience.
Posted by: Pixelsebi | August 3, 2006 5:55 AMWay to go, Richard! :)
By the way, there's been another site that's kind of been left out of the picture (sorries.)
t's called AllBlog (http://allblog.net) and it's currently the best known metablog/RSS aggregator site in Korea, well loved by many amateur bloggers.
Posted by: Taewoo Danny Kim | August 3, 2006 7:38 AMNice overview.
One point I like to add about Cyworld. Cyworld has become very popular in Korea (and globally) for its mini-hompy service but there is one thing that gets overlooked about Cyworld - it has not launched another successful service since the mini-hompy service. It has tried very hard to recreate the type of success it enjoyed with the mini-hompy but subsequent services, such as The Paper, have been sub-par to say the least. SK Communications, owner of Cyworld, ended up purchasing a service called Egloos (which by the way should be included in the web 2.0 list as the leading hosted blog service in Korea) as The Paper service could not get any traction. It is too early to tell how the other new services launched by Cyworld will fare in Korea but they will most likely have difficulties replicating mini-hompy's success. As for the US service, I also have my doubts.
Anyway, it's great to see some of the web 2.0 services in Korea get some publicity on this blog.
Posted by: Doug Yeum | August 3, 2006 9:40 PMHi, I'm Jonghwa Kim, Co-CEO of Wingbus.com
Thank you for introducing Wingbus to US.
But there are two things I'd like to correct.
First of all, our URL is not linked properly. Currently it points to 'Oh My News' - a Korean news site. Correct URL is http://www.wingbus.com
Secondly, a better description of our service would be 'a meta-blog service focused on travel'. (And we don't provide travel booking service - at least not yet :) )
You can think of 'realtravel.com', but instead making people to open a new travel blog, we let bloggers to link their travel stories they already posted on their blogs.
Blog posts are linked around specific travel spots - like Eiffel tower in Paris or Jamie Oliver's Fifteen in London, and you can find candid reviews and photos of others easily.
I'd happily give you more detail introdcution of Wingbus.com, so feel free to ask.
Thanks again for your interest in Korean web 2.0 scene.
- Jonghwa Kim
Posted by: Kim, Jonghwa | August 3, 2006 9:53 PMHan RSS == bloglones.com ?
Posted by: asdf | August 4, 2006 12:29 PMJonghwa, apologies for the incorrect link - someone pointed it out yesterday and I fixed it up then.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | August 4, 2006 8:07 PMRichard,
Great post. I have just spent two weeks teaching business in Korea to children. I asked them about their favorite website and they included the ones you have listed.
The children listed: Naver, Duam, Cyworld. It was surprising how few used Google. Though the majority of them had heard of it. Most of the students prefer Yahoo over Google which I thought was interesting. They don't realize the difference in search results and Yahoo was first to market which I think grabbed their mind share.
A few other sites they mentioned are: www.norara.com, miniclip.com, r2beat.com, netmarble.com, clubbox.co.kr and buddybuddy.co.kr.
You can see some of my lesson plans here: http://okdork.com/2006/07/31/korean-lesson-plan-the-rainy-day-solution/
Cheers,
Posted by: noah kagan | August 6, 2006 9:34 PMNoah Kagan
It's interesting article.
But I'd like to tell you one thing about Cyworld. Actually 'C2 project' is about Next Cyworld version not just for Cyworld US.
It has been prepared to the next feature of the whole Cyworld (especially Minihompy). Of course, C2 has an effect on Cyworld US. But C2 is not the project to prepareing next version for US prodect.
See also, C2 blog (http://c2.cyworld.com/en/) in Englisg Version.
Posted by: june | August 6, 2006 11:57 PMActually, here's another view of Naver.com's success:
WHY IS GOOGLE GETTING WHIPPED IN SOUTH KOREA BY NHN?
Posted by: Bernard Moon | August 7, 2006 1:11 AMhttp://bernardmoon.blogspot.com/2006/02/why-is-google-getting-whipped-in-south_01.html
I got to know Web 2.0 websites in Korea I had not known.
Posted by: anihil | August 24, 2006 5:55 PMMy Richard, There're no web2.0 in korea yet.
Posted by: Blanc | December 19, 2006 2:51 AMIf you can read Korean, view this article.
http://economy.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=309134&ar_seq=
Select resources no longer exist. Anyway, thank you very much for such a useful and prodelanu work.
Posted by: MODA BAMBINI | March 19, 2007 11:54 AMHi there,
Posted by: RoseOtto | March 25, 2007 10:01 AMThank you for the article. Unfortunately, still I couldn't understand how can I list my web site (www.bulgarianroseotto.com) to the Korean S.E. without knowing Korean.
Any ideas?
Korean websites suck, well the mojority. Filled with popups, addons, downloaders, and who knows what else. Most, you are also required to give your Korean SIN number and who knows what they do with that. Bank sites are the worst requiring a s**t load of security messures, by the time you input all the info, install the required firewall, just to get onto the site, you could have just went to the bank. Naver, don't make me laugh, filled with tons of flash objects, adds and so on, give me a break all I want to do is search for something why do I need all this crap. Google is much better, simple and easy on the eyes, and that's what a search engine should be simple. In my opinion stay away from any Korean site it's a headache just waiting to happen.
Posted by: I Hate Korean Websites | July 13, 2007 9:03 PM