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.

North Korea using Twitter and YouTube

The New York Times carried an interesting article today on how North Korea is using Twitter and YouTube to bolster its propaganda efforts.  During the last month, a series of video clips have been posted to YouTube, brimming with vitriol and satire against leaders in South Korea or in the U.S.  During the past week, North Korea also began operating a Twitter account under the name uriminzok or "our nation."
A spokesman for the National Unification Ministry in Seoul said “It is clear that these accounts carry the same propaganda as the North’s official news media, but we have not been able to find out who operates them." The two Koreas agreed to stop their psychological war after their first summit meeting in 2000, but the situation has changed following the sinking of a South Korean warship in the West Sea earlier this year.