LinkedIn versus Facebook in Korea

As elsewhere around the world, social networking in South Korea is in a rapid state of flux, in no small measure because of the proliferation of smart phones and the social capabilities that mobile devices make possible.  As noted in earlier posts, social networking via Cyworld arrived half a decade before Facebook appeared in the U.S.  However, with the arrival of Apple's iPhone near the end of 2009 and the rapid proliferation of Android devices, both Facebook and Twitter began to gain significant market share here.
Gigaom has an interesting article entitled "LinkedIn and Facebook:  Personal Versus Professional in the Identity Wars."    Like many users of internet services, I've found myself much more comfortable with LinkedIn than with Facebook, precisely because the former deals with professional identity rather than close family or personal ties. I suspect that Korean users of both services have noted this difference as well, especially since the boundaries between personal and professional, culturally speaking, are different in Korea than in the West.  This much can be seen from the rather dramatic differences between Cyworld and Facebook.  When it comes to social networking, it seems apparent that one size doesn't fit all.

Korean Social Networking Trends in the Smartphone Era

This is a follow-on to the previous post and earlier posts about social networking in Korea.  The Joongang Daily has an interesting article with data from Metrix showing what happened to social network service traffic in Korea during the year following arrival of the Apple iPhone and the so-called "smart phone shock" here.  As shown in the accompanying graphic (click on it to see a larger version), although Korea's homegrown Cyworld still has far more members than Facebook or Twitter, the latter two services have relatively more pageviews---many more per user!
There are several main reasons for the relative success of Facebook and Twitter in the face of a well-established Cyworld that was already dominant in the Korean market and had operated here for nearly half a decade before Facebook was even invented in the U.S.   First, Cyworld was designed as a Korean language service, with Korean users in mind.   It failed in its efforts to penetrate such international markets as the U.S., Germany, Taiwan and Japan.  Second, while Facebook and Twitter took advantage of the mobile broadband and smartphone revolution, Cyworld neglected Apple's iPhone and the new Android phones, instead concentrating on the outmoded Windows mobile platform.  Finally, the internet is inherently a global phenomenon.  Such SNS services as Facebook and Twitter allow networking throughout the world, across most national borders.  As the Joongang Daily article points out, Cyworld's image of being a Korean company rather than an international one was a big obstacle.

Twitter Now Available in Hangul 트위터 한국어 서비스 시작

As reported in the Joongang Daily and widely noted elsewhere, Twitter has launched a Korean-language service, with some fanfare.  The co-founder of Twitter held a press conference in Seoul to announce this development.
As readers of this blog are well aware, I'm very interested in the role of language in Korea's remarkable digital development.  If you are new and doubt this, just do a search for "language" using the Search This Blog feature to the right and see how many entries turn up!  Or, consider the following.

• South Korea is the world's most highly networked nation, yet it is also one of four countries in the world where Google does not have a substantial share of the search market.  Why?  Because of the strength of Naver, which is a Korean-developed, Korean-language-based intranet of sorts. (see one of many earlier posts).
• Language was a major factor in explaining the long-delayed arrival of the Apple iPhone in the South Korean market.  In important respects, it is only because of the "iPhone shock" or, more broadly the "smartphone shock" that Facebook and Twitter are gaining market share here.  However, Cyworld remains by far the dominant social networking service in the Korean market, in no small part because it is a Korean-language service, designed from the ground up for a Korean market.

Despite the phenomenal growth of the internet and the emergence of "smart" digital media, language remains a basic element of communication flows and patterns, and nowhere is this more evident than inside Korea and among Koreans worldwide.  The surprising element is that so many non-Korean companies actually think they can succeed in Korea while using only English or other languages.

Facebook versus The Korea Communications Commission

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) is in the news again, throughout the tech blogs and even in the mainstream press around the globe.  The KCC, formed in 2008 by the incoming Lee Myung Bak administration, is South Korea's top communications policy and regulatory agency.  This time it is in the news for issuing what The Register called a "stern warning" to Facebook about its privacy policies.
As reported by IDG, the KCC sent a letter to Facebook indicating that it is in breach of South Korean data privacy laws and needs to do a better job of getting consent from users when getting their personal information.  The KCC said the U.S.-based company has 30 days to respond to the complaint, so this may be a developing story.
Much of the blog and mainstream press coverage of this development, while interesting, fails to convey adequately the following obvious points.

• Traditional conceptions of privacy in Korea, and in Korean language web content and services, are not at all the same as ideas about privacy in the West and other parts of the world.
• Social networking in Korea, epitomized by Cyworld, and social networking in the U.S., led by Facebook, have significant differences.  As noted in earlier posts, even though Cyworld swept through the Korean internet experience almost half a decade before Facebook appeared, it cannot simply be treated as the Korean equivalent of Facebook (as noted in earlier posts on social networking.)
• Notably, Facebook did not have much of a presence at all in Korea until the arrival of Apple's iPhone about one year ago.
• Finally, it seems to me that the KCC complaint to Facebook represents another excellent illustration of the global scope of the internet.  While the activities of Facebook impinge upon Korean society and Korea's laws, the question of what impact the KCC complaint will ultimately have on Facebook's behavior is an interesting one.   Some months earlier, when the Korean government sought to regulate how users could log  in to Google's Korean Youtube site, that company reacted by closing the site.  Subsequently Korean users of Youtube flocked to sites hosted in other countries to make use of the service.

More on Social Networking Trends in Korea

The Joongang Daily has an interesting article today dealing with the problems of security on social networking sites in Korea.  It quotes a Facebook representative in Korea as saying that Koreans have a relatively low awareness of social network security.   I would suggest that this is part of the broader cultural differences in thinking about and using social networking sites, as discussed in earlier posts.   Cyworld is dramatically different from Facebook with the latter being introduced over four years later in the U.S.
According to eMarketer, 61.4 percent of Internet users worldwide have an SNS account, up from 51.4 percent in 2009 and 45.1 percent in 2008. And it turns out that people spend more time on social media Web sites than they do e-mailing or Web surfing. Those surveyed spent 4.6 hours a week on SNS sites, compared to 4.4 hours for e-mail.    Here in Korea, according to the Korea Communications Commission, 65.7 percent of the population uses SNS sites.
The article notes that the very concept of social networking is about sharing personal information.  However, there are limits, as most people would not want credit card or certain employment-related information publicized over the internet.   In Korea, as shown by the accompanying graphic, Cyworld is still the most popular "social networking" web site (click on graphic to see a larger version).
Online attacks have been a common occurrence in Korea, with the most famous being “dog poop girl.” In 2005, a photo of a girl who left the subway train without picking up her dog’s waste was spread on the Internet. Korean netizens revealed her identity as well as her school, and she ended up dropping out in disgrace.
Although the graphic in this post shows the current dominance of Cyworld, it should be noted that Facebook and Twitter are experiencing much more rapid growth with the booming growth of mobile broadband and smartphones.  This all amounts to many future challenges for Korean consumers, the government and the legal system here as South Korea adjusts to the realities and the security risks of social networking.

Social Networking and Korean Social Networking: The Rise of Twitter and Facebook

In retrospect it is clear that "social networking" via the internet arrived in Korea, in the form of Cyworld, almost half a decade before Facebook appeared in the United States.  However, as pointed out in an excellent  article in The Korea Times, Cyworld's "mini homepages" were tailored for users seeking to maintain a closed and controlled network of immediate friends.   I assume part of Cyworld's great appeal here in Korea is that it naturally extended the Korean penchant to form close networks among classmates,  family or friends from the same hometown or business.
It is most interesting that Facebook and Twitter, along with Google to some extent, only began to seriously penetrate South Korea's market with the arrival of Apple's iPhone about a year ago.  According to local market research, the number of visitors to Facebook and Twitter reached 7.38 million and 8.65 million respectively, during the month of September.  This represented a 650 percent year-on-year increase for Facebook and a 580 percent jump for Twitter.  Cyworld saw its visitors drop nearly 12 percent over the same period.
In response to these developments, local services such as Cyworld and Naver are introducing their own alternatives.  In the case of Cyworld, one such service is C-Log, a Facebook resembling service.  Time will tell about the success of these services, but as prior posts on this blog have argued, (for example here, here, or here.  Better yet, search this blog for "language") language and culture are extremely important factors in shaping Korea's information society and this reality is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Are Koreans Less Social than Other Nationalities? More on Social Networking

I haven't touched on the topic of social networking lately, but it is all over the news.   One set of articles that caught my eye were those that mentioned a new TNS study of social networking in 46 countries around the world.  A headline in the Chosun Ilbo declared "Koreans Among Least Social in Online Networking."  That caught my attention for the simple reason that "least social" is the last thing that would come to my mind to describe Koreans.  "Most social," perhaps, or "More social..."  According to the Digital Life report released by the British market research firm TNS, Koreans had an average of 50 friends in their social networks, ranking 44th among 46 countries studied.
Overall, the Digital Life study noted such broad trends as social networking sites overtaking e-mail in popularity and the the growing use of digital sources for news around the world.   It would be interesting to know how much of the first trend is due to the seemingly uncontrollable growth of spam and malware.
The suggestion that Koreans are "less social" may have to do with the structure of the study (were Western, and English language sites weighted equally with Cyworld in the study?), or it may simply require further explanation.   After all, most Koreans were experimenting with their own version of "social networking" via Cyworld about four years before Facebook hit the market in the U.S. The finding may simply reflect the close-knit family-classmate-friend nature of Korean interpersonal networks or the linguistic and homogeneity of the information culture here.    Comments on the TNS finding are welcome.

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.

Cyworld and Social Networking in South Korea

The Plus 8 Star website, Benjamin Joffe, CEO, has some very useful reports on social networking in Asia, including a report on Cyworld, South Korea's leading social networking site.  A report, Inside Cyworld:  Best Practices from South Korea's Leading Online Community, provides a nice overview of social networking in South Korea.  The report notes that the internet in South Korea is dominated by three major portals:  Naver, Nate.com (Cyworld) and Daum.  Yahoo Korea is the only foreign-owned website in the top fifteen. As shown in the accompanying graphic, seven of the top 15 Internet sites by traffic, are general portals and four are online game sites. (click on the graphic to see a full size version)