That is, if you like to be connected to the Internet all day, while enjoying the fastest connections in the world! Enter the hyper connected society, with an astounding 90 percent of the country connected with 3G and a nation wide coverage of a South Korean version of Wimax.
How and why did South Korea become an overlord in Internet speed? In short; the South Korean government introduced a number of policy instruments to stimulate technological learning, aimed to strengthen international competitiveness of the economy. The government launched a five-year plan to create a ubiquitous networked world in 1995, meaning that the country developed a stunning 1.5 billion dollar wireless network to stimulate the use of the Internet.
Today, South Korea is the most connected country on earth, but the funny thing is that we hardly hear anything about Korea’s web scene. This made us curious about what websites are popular over there, and if Korea has a web 2.0 scene. To find that out, we reviewed the three visited websites in Korea and we interviewed Chang W. Kim, Korean web 2.0 enthusiast and initiator of the Open Web Asia ’08 conference.
The top three websites in South Korea
When we look at the Alexa list of most visited websites in South Korea, we find a social network, search engine and Internet portal. They all have western equivalents, but are slightly different.
1. Cyworld
Social network Cyworld is a trendsetter in E-commerce, generating an astounding amount of revenue last year, surpassing that of almighty Facebook. The majority of their cash flow is built up out of digital presents, not advertisements, with the biggest amount coming from the ability to buy-your-friend-a-song, only that service made Cyworld the second-biggest music store in the world behind iTunes in 2006.
2. Naver
Search engine Naver is probably the worlds best in localized results. For the last few years, we have seen increasing amounts of search engines popping up on the Internet, they are using advanced algorithms to come up with better results. Not in South Korea, at least not at Naver. Employees analyze, index and produce content for their search engine by hand. Even though this labor intensity, Naver counts for 70% of the search queries in their country, leaving Google with just 2% far behind.
3. Daum
On number three we find Internet portal Daum, the most interesting thing about Daum is the combination of user-generated content and the connections to mass media networks and companies. ‘Web stars’ from the video portal make appearances on dedicated TV programs. Also, traditional media companies are realizing the power of the new media, and are increasing interested to organize contests, offering prizes to original video uploads. It seems that Daum is innovative in it’s approach in user generated content, and might be a interesting thing to look for as a ‘old media company’.
All these websites offer refreshing approaches on income, localization and approaches on user generated content. However, none of these top South Korean websites has yet become successful in Europe or the US, and we hardly hear from South Korean web companies on Techcrunch or the thenextweb.org, or meet many South Korean friends at conferences in the Europe. To me, this doesn’t add up. I suspect that all this connectivity would at create an internet culture, what about the web 2.0 culture in South Korea?
The startup scene in South Korea
We approached Chang W. Kim to find out more about the web scene in South Korea, Chang is blogger at web2.0Asia and CEO of one of the most prominent blog companies in South Korea. He explains:
good article
Good article. Your journalistic skills are not bad at all!
Great overview!
So South Korean web sites are both “busier” and “cuter”, but South Koreans find Facebook “too complex”? Interesting — I wouldn’t mind if this observation were expanded into an entire post in itself.
South Korea is a great incubator to look for ideas that could work in other markets.
However, many people look at South Korean Internet companies and say that it will only work in South Korea because Koreans are “…” and US users are “…”.
Also, the “busy-ness” of websites arguments is an interesting one. Lately, there has been a move to simplicity with Web 2.0 companies, yet if you look at the mainstream websites like eBay and http://www.yahoo.com, they’ve evolved to become more and more like Korean web sites.
The reality is that a lot of the ideas that are in vogue right now (social networking, MMORPG, Virtual currencies, Q&A sites, casual gaming, etc.) have been thriving in Korea for quite some time now.
The challenge for the Korea is that the companies that have the resources to expand overseas simply don’t have the right corporate culture nor management/people to be successful in the US market. Conversely, the startups that do have the right startup culture in Korea simply don’t have the money nor the people/connections to know how to get started in a foreign market.
There’s a real opportunity for really great VC’s and angel investors to leverage these types of opportunities and build the next Skype…
Everybody, thanks for your replies,
@Katherine It’s hard to research complexity of websites by ethnic background, but it’s an interesting question, certainly for websites like facebook!
@Yong Su Kim Thanks for that reflection , I agree with you whole heartedly, yahoo compares very well with daum for instance!
It struck me that ‘busy-ness’ could also be related to the advertising model that is applied! which might imply that website design and interaction differ from country to country and in industry! Although, the evolution of the web might create a lot of opportunities (like OpenID)
I want to compare websites with airports to make my point clear, the evolution of aviation lead to commercialization and eventually caused the need for airports, the airports became standardized over the years with standardized icons and procedures. This means that you will find your way at SF airport just as you will in New Delhi. This standardization will indeed create lot’s of opportunity for VC’s, it’s about time that South Korea raises the next Skype!
Your point about design and culture is interesting. Actually, Korean websites +used to+ look like Western ones a few years ago.
I would tend to think that once they had been enjoying super-fast broadband for some time, and developed enough local talent, they started to turn to more “emotional” design (vs. “intellectual”). It is quite obvious in the style of Cyworld compared to Facebook or Western-style blogs. Cyworld is very emotional communication while Western blogs tended to be expert blogs (at least in the first wave).
It is possible that the emotional aspect of online communication is just at the beginning in the West, while Korea has made some good progress already.
all this cube boat free head