If you like the web, I bet you love South Korea too
Story byJoop
Business development manager in Shanghai, always up to play with shiny gadgets, firecrackers or eat Shabu shabu. (Japanese hotpot)(show all)Business development manager in Shanghai, always up to play with shiny gadgets, firecrackers or eat Shabu shabu. (Japanese hotpot) • Check outjoop.in• Got Twitter? ♥ ->@Joop
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
Related Articles
More TNW
About TNW
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.
-
CyworldSocial 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 tobuy-your-friend-a-song, only that service made Cyworld the second-biggest music store in the world behind iTunes in 2006.
-
NaverSearch 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 engineby hand. Even though this labor intensity, Naver counts for 70% of the search queries in their country, leaving Google with just 2% far behind.
-
DaumOn 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 atweb2.0Asiaand CEO of one of the most prominentblogcompanies in South Korea. He explains:
(read more)
