Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Cyworld: South Korea
E-Society: My World Is Cyworld
A Businessweek article describes a popular and profitable social networking site called Cyworld from South Korea. It seems to be a more advanced form of MySpace. According to Businessweek, its popularity is hard to exaggerate:
Cyworld is threatening to swallow South Korea. Less than four years after its launch, 15 million people, or almost a third of the country's population, are members. Among those in their late teens and early twenties, 90% are hooked.
Cyworld is a social networking service that offers web pages, email, blogs, IM, etc. But unlike it's American cousins it offers a deeper immersion in the cyberworld, or as Businessweek puts it this South Korean "web phenomenon" is "indicative of a more general blurring between the digital and physical realms." It is more of an immersion because it offers a 3D experience and the creation of personal avatars to explore this three dimensional landscape:
Home pages, for example, appear three-dimensional. Users decorate their "rooms" with digital furniture, art, TVs, even music. Since avatars stop by, the idea is to make your space as cool as possible. Instant messaging is included in the service, so you can chat with visitors. You can even enter Cyworld from a mobile phone.
Cyworld took off after it was acquired in 2003 by SK Telecom Co. (SKU ), Korea's largest wireless service provider. The idea, of course, was to generate revenues. Although the service itself is free, when people add digital couches or TVs to their home pages, they spend real money. They swap cash for a digital currency called dotori (Korean for "acorns"), which cost 10 cents each. For instance, a digital couch costs six dotori. SK Communications, the subsidiary that runs Cyworld, chalked up a profit of $12.5 million on sales of $110.4 million, nearly half by selling dotori. The company expects sales to double this year.
One feature that has helped Cyworld take off is "wave riding." It works like this: When you're reading posts on bulletin boards or looking at photo files, you can click on the name of someone who has added a remark or photo you find interesting and you'll be transported to that person's digital room. If you like the art or music, you can introduce yourself and put in a request to become a "cybuddy." If accepted, you can use your buddy's goodies -- from art to photos -- on your own page. The chain of wave-riding visits creates communities on the Net, which often develop into clubs of common interest in the real world: clubs for fishing, bike riding, and going to jazz performances, among others.
Surfing through digital rooms, making cybuddies and forming communities of interest, networks that can create realworld contacts. . . If the numbers that Businessweek cites for the popularity of Cyworld in S. Korea are accurate, a third of all South Koreans are swiftly entering a new dimension of social life and community that may be a guide for our future development. The question becomes why is South Korean society the early adopter here? What is it about South Korean culture, corporate culture, government and demography that makes this nation a laboratory for the digital future?
