Saturday, February 21, 2009

Search, Blogs and Social Networking in Korean Cyberspace

A headline in today's Korea Times declares that "Daum Challenges Naver, Cyworld in Blog Battle."   The basic premise of the article is that web portals are increasingly relying upon user-created content to attract traffic.  Since acquiring Tistory blog services from Tatter & Company (TNC) in 2007, Daum's blog services have increased in popularity and are gaining ground on Naver, the market leader in blogging services.
It turns out that the web traffic reports that measure the popularity of blogs, also show that Cyworld, South Korea's leading social networking site attracts a lot of web traffic.  Daum and Naver both offer search services, whereas Cyworld is not a major competitor in this area.
It seems to me that in search, blogs and social networking you have three very different kinds of web services.  Although the Korea Times article compares the "blogging services" of each, Naver is basically a search engine, Daum is a web portal with search and other capabilities, and Cyworld is a social networking site, a la "Second Life." Search is a basic function that helps people locate the information they seek in the flood of information produced on the internet.  A blog is a way of publishing one's own information on the internet and networking with others interested in those topics.  Social networking has less to do with publishing anything and much more to do with simply socializing in a 21st century manner.
Because of their different origins and emphases it is extremely difficult to compare web traffic to the three sites compared in this article.  By their very nature, they are inherently aiming at different market segments to generate their traffic.

1 comment:

  1. Hi! Your article about SNS in Korea is quite interesting. Have you heard of Lingueo.com? It's growing among Koreans so I guess you could add it to your list. I use it to get in touch with Koreans as I'm learning the language.
    Anyway, thanks for all the information you provide :)

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