11 Articles for 'cyworld'
- 2008/06/24 The top social network in Asia is... Friendster? (4)
- 2008/06/16 Open Social Conference Korea 2008 (4)
- 2008/05/15 Cyworld Japan looks desparate (2)
- 2008/04/30 Cyworld 3D about to enter closed beta
- 2008/04/07 Cyworld to launch a blog service
- 2008/03/26 Koreans aged 19-24 have 78 Cyworld friends on average (2)
- 2008/03/19 Comparison between Asian social networks (1)
- 2008/03/07 Social network fatigue is clear and present (9)
- 2008/03/07 Cyworld pulls plug from European market (3)
- 2007/11/21 Cyworld to go 3D - Second life contender? (7)
Venturebeat's Eric Eldon reports "Friendster’s growth in Asia could make it the top social network in the world, once again." The article quotes Friendster's claim that they are the number one social network service in Asia, leading everyone (Facebook, Myspace, Mixi, Cyworld) by a big margin.
Wait a minue.. Friendster number one in Asia? Every day, I'm getting emails from Facebook and LinkedIn about a new friend request or new updates from my friends. But I haven't had a single email from Friendster for a long time. So at least for me, Friendster doesn't feel like a very active service - But then I may not be profiled as an "average" internet user in Asia.
Stats like these bring a question to my mind: Will the Western/US social network services (Myspace, FB, Friendster) take over the Asian market eventually? Or, will one of the local players (Mixi, Cyworld, 51.com) come out as the Asia's social network winner, transforming itself into a regional market leader that can compete neck-and-neck with Myspace and FB in the global market? Or will every single Asian market have its own social network of choice, without going the consolidation route? What do you think?
Wait a minue.. Friendster number one in Asia? Every day, I'm getting emails from Facebook and LinkedIn about a new friend request or new updates from my friends. But I haven't had a single email from Friendster for a long time. So at least for me, Friendster doesn't feel like a very active service - But then I may not be profiled as an "average" internet user in Asia.
Stats like these bring a question to my mind: Will the Western/US social network services (Myspace, FB, Friendster) take over the Asian market eventually? Or, will one of the local players (Mixi, Cyworld, 51.com) come out as the Asia's social network winner, transforming itself into a regional market leader that can compete neck-and-neck with Myspace and FB in the global market? Or will every single Asian market have its own social network of choice, without going the consolidation route? What do you think?
On June 13, I was at the OpenSocial Conference '08. Here's my coverage:
The 450-capacity auditorium was packed – showing the high interest in open platform technologies. First up was the keynote by Chul-soo Ahn, the president of Ahnlab and a professor at KAIST teaching entrepreneurship. His keynote was about entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley and in Korea - a rather classic topic, but more relevant as Ahn has just come back from the Valley after being there for years. He asserted that Korean entrepreneurs and startup employees should be more focused rather than being "generalists"; also that Korean venture capital should not be a mere "money-loaning bank".
Next, Hyunsoo Hwang, a manager at Cyworld gave a talk about Cyworld and the open internet. Interesting he should say about Cyworld and the open internet as the service is widely regarded as a rather closed service... Anyways, he said Cyworld is trying to implement open data interchange with third parties - For example, if you write a book review on Cyworld's minihompy, the same review might one day also appear on the online bookstore's website.
What I found interesting was Hwang's talk on the social network monetization. Hwang said that the reason why contextual ads work very well on internet search is because the service knows the user's intention. So that means if there's a way social networks can also capture people's intention right (which should be very challenging), then he doesn't see why contextual ads on social networks should not work well too.
It is well known that Cyworld is actually one of only few social network services around the world that generate enough profit, by selling digital items such as background music or avatars. It's interesting that Cyworld seems to be focusing on improving search experience these days - Has Cyworld's digital items revenue hit the wall or something? Is Cyworld interested in generating search-related revenues, such as contextual ads? I don't know..
Traditionally, Cyworld's hottest service has been photo album. But lately, Cyworld diary, a short-form blog of sort, has picked up significant usage. Probably the same reason why Twitter has been popular - people are busier, and they want quick and easy writing over putting up pics.
It turns out that 60% of Cyworld visits occur among 1-chon (i.e. friends) while 40% among non-friends. These statistics from one of the major social networks of the world verifies that social networks are mostly for strengthening the relationships among those who already know each other.
In another session, Kyosuk Song Andy Kyoseok Song at Ahnlab introduced IDtail, the first Korean service (and the fourth in the world) that fully implemented open social. I've heard unofficially quite a few times that this service is one of the best practices (if not the best) of open social technologies.
IDTail is basically a Linkedin-like service an OpenSocial-based social network service. It's an open social container into which various open social apps can be plugged. Song said that after rolling out open social apps, IDtail's unique visitors increased by 250%.
In the following session, Sangsuk Lee of 3Cim Korea shared some "inside stories" related to open social. This interesting Korean startup is based in Silicon Valley and in Korea, and runs a photo widget service called MagToo and MagShow.
After developing application based in open social, they say that opensocial's promise of “Write once, run everywhere” should be taken with a grain of salt – different service providers have different specs, and for their own case, they could launch only on Myspace despite working for over 4 months on Opensocial. But they say Open Social certainly cuts down the development time.
Their application, Magshow, shows well what an OpenSocial application can do; Magshow allows Facebook or other social network users to display all their friends' pictures in one place (such as under profile) without having to visit each one's page.
The 450-capacity auditorium was packed – showing the high interest in open platform technologies. First up was the keynote by Chul-soo Ahn, the president of Ahnlab and a professor at KAIST teaching entrepreneurship. His keynote was about entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley and in Korea - a rather classic topic, but more relevant as Ahn has just come back from the Valley after being there for years. He asserted that Korean entrepreneurs and startup employees should be more focused rather than being "generalists"; also that Korean venture capital should not be a mere "money-loaning bank".
Next, Hyunsoo Hwang, a manager at Cyworld gave a talk about Cyworld and the open internet. Interesting he should say about Cyworld and the open internet as the service is widely regarded as a rather closed service... Anyways, he said Cyworld is trying to implement open data interchange with third parties - For example, if you write a book review on Cyworld's minihompy, the same review might one day also appear on the online bookstore's website.
What I found interesting was Hwang's talk on the social network monetization. Hwang said that the reason why contextual ads work very well on internet search is because the service knows the user's intention. So that means if there's a way social networks can also capture people's intention right (which should be very challenging), then he doesn't see why contextual ads on social networks should not work well too.
It is well known that Cyworld is actually one of only few social network services around the world that generate enough profit, by selling digital items such as background music or avatars. It's interesting that Cyworld seems to be focusing on improving search experience these days - Has Cyworld's digital items revenue hit the wall or something? Is Cyworld interested in generating search-related revenues, such as contextual ads? I don't know..
Traditionally, Cyworld's hottest service has been photo album. But lately, Cyworld diary, a short-form blog of sort, has picked up significant usage. Probably the same reason why Twitter has been popular - people are busier, and they want quick and easy writing over putting up pics.
It turns out that 60% of Cyworld visits occur among 1-chon (i.e. friends) while 40% among non-friends. These statistics from one of the major social networks of the world verifies that social networks are mostly for strengthening the relationships among those who already know each other.
In another session, Kyosuk Song Andy Kyoseok Song at Ahnlab introduced IDtail, the first Korean service (and the fourth in the world) that fully implemented open social. I've heard unofficially quite a few times that this service is one of the best practices (if not the best) of open social technologies.
IDTail is basically a Linkedin-like service an OpenSocial-based social network service. It's an open social container into which various open social apps can be plugged. Song said that after rolling out open social apps, IDtail's unique visitors increased by 250%.
In the following session, Sangsuk Lee of 3Cim Korea shared some "inside stories" related to open social. This interesting Korean startup is based in Silicon Valley and in Korea, and runs a photo widget service called MagToo and MagShow.
After developing application based in open social, they say that opensocial's promise of “Write once, run everywhere” should be taken with a grain of salt – different service providers have different specs, and for their own case, they could launch only on Myspace despite working for over 4 months on Opensocial. But they say Open Social certainly cuts down the development time.
Their application, Magshow, shows well what an OpenSocial application can do; Magshow allows Facebook or other social network users to display all their friends' pictures in one place (such as under profile) without having to visit each one's page.
Cyworld Japan announced a site renewal plan where it will essentially turn into a place for pro-Korean community in Japan.
This might make sense as what little number of Cyworld users in Japan are mostly K-wave followers or Korean expats anyway.
But on the other hand, this is something like, let's say, Xing France announcing it will focus on offering German job information to French people. Bad analogy, I know, but my point is Cyworld JP is essentially turning itself into a service that's quite limited to serving small, niche demographics. Which is their own statement that Cyworld JP is irrelevent to the mainstream Japanese web users.
Just another evidence that in Asian web industry, it seems so difficult (nearly impossible) to produce a "cross-cultural" hit service, whose success isn't limited only to its own country. Which is a topic that's well worth discussing in our upcoming Asia Web conference.
This might make sense as what little number of Cyworld users in Japan are mostly K-wave followers or Korean expats anyway.
But on the other hand, this is something like, let's say, Xing France announcing it will focus on offering German job information to French people. Bad analogy, I know, but my point is Cyworld JP is essentially turning itself into a service that's quite limited to serving small, niche demographics. Which is their own statement that Cyworld JP is irrelevent to the mainstream Japanese web users.
Just another evidence that in Asian web industry, it seems so difficult (nearly impossible) to produce a "cross-cultural" hit service, whose success isn't limited only to its own country. Which is a topic that's well worth discussing in our upcoming Asia Web conference.
Cyworld "Minilife", aka Cyworld 3D, is about to start closed beta service. They are accepting up to 500,000 closed beta users (about 2% of their current user base of 22 million). Cyworld Minilife is a Second Life-like virtual 3D social network service, and is expected to launch in June this year. So far I'm not that impressed, but will deliver updates anyway.
Cyworld is launching a blog service (link in Korean) - well, technically, they're not launching a new service, but changing the name of their existing Home2 service. With their "Cyworld Blog" initiative, Cyworld might add more features
down the road, but at least for the time being, the change seems pretty
cosmetic.
What is Home 2? As the suffix "2" tells, Cyworld has made a longtime effort to bring forth an upgraded version of their popular yet aging (i.e. slow growth) minihompy service. As popular as minihompy service was, Cyworld knew that nothing can be popular forever and they had to come up with the new engine of growth.
So they put together a team of brilliant strategists (including Marc Canter of the US, it's widely known) and spent numerous hours on brainstorming sessions. The service that came out of that effort was Cyworld Home 2 (out in spring 2007) - which was essentially a blog service with some robust frontpage editing features (widgets, page addition, etc) and 1-chon (Cyworld's friend system).
However, Home 2 service never really clicked with the Cyworld minihompy users. Minihompy users didn't perceive the more blog-like Home 2 service as the natural next step to their minihompies and therefore didn't rush to Home 2. The fact that Home 2 was packed with all the bells and whistles also meant the service didn't have a very clear focus. When introduced to Home 2, minihompy users were like, "ok, so why am I supposed to use this?"
So Home 2 was by and large a flop, but to make matters worse, the situation isn't all that rosy for the minihompy service either - it's under a double threat of a) decreasing traffic in its domestic Korean market and b) struggle in virtually all foreign markets it entered into.
Which is why the re-naming of Home 2 to Cyworld Blog seems to have come from desperation rather than from a well-devised strategy.
Cyworld is perhaps undergoing a textbook case of innovator's dilemma: Once great, now slowly aging. Massive self-reinvention effort in the name of Home 2 didn't exactly succeed. Again, if you were Cyworld CEO, what would you do? Certainly a nice brain-teaser.
So they put together a team of brilliant strategists (including Marc Canter of the US, it's widely known) and spent numerous hours on brainstorming sessions. The service that came out of that effort was Cyworld Home 2 (out in spring 2007) - which was essentially a blog service with some robust frontpage editing features (widgets, page addition, etc) and 1-chon (Cyworld's friend system).
However, Home 2 service never really clicked with the Cyworld minihompy users. Minihompy users didn't perceive the more blog-like Home 2 service as the natural next step to their minihompies and therefore didn't rush to Home 2. The fact that Home 2 was packed with all the bells and whistles also meant the service didn't have a very clear focus. When introduced to Home 2, minihompy users were like, "ok, so why am I supposed to use this?"
So Home 2 was by and large a flop, but to make matters worse, the situation isn't all that rosy for the minihompy service either - it's under a double threat of a) decreasing traffic in its domestic Korean market and b) struggle in virtually all foreign markets it entered into.
Which is why the re-naming of Home 2 to Cyworld Blog seems to have come from desperation rather than from a well-devised strategy.
Cyworld is perhaps undergoing a textbook case of innovator's dilemma: Once great, now slowly aging. Massive self-reinvention effort in the name of Home 2 didn't exactly succeed. Again, if you were Cyworld CEO, what would you do? Certainly a nice brain-teaser.
Korea Economy Newspaper (link in Korean) reports that, according to a newest research, Koreans aged from 19 to 24 are, on average, found to:
It's funny people work so hard, often checking emails at 2AM, to achieve their biggest dream: To become able to throw away their blackberries and get free from emails.
- Have 78 Cyworld buddies ("Il-chon")
- Have added 23 new Cyworld buddies over the last year
- Have 79 instant messenger buddies
- Be a member of 5 online clubs
It's funny people work so hard, often checking emails at 2AM, to achieve their biggest dream: To become able to throw away their blackberries and get free from emails.
Benjamin Joffe of Plus Eight Star offers a great summary of leading social networks in Asia - namely, QQ, Mixi, Cyworld. Here's also a follow-up post.
A few days ago, I exchanged emails with Charlie Schick of the Lifeblog blog on the issue of "social network fatigue". Charlie wrote a post titled "Facebook fatigue" - which reminded me of similar issues that have arguably been around for longer in Asia, in the forms of "Cyworld fatigue" and "Mixi fatigue" (Mixi tsukare).
About this "social network fatigue" issue, the "why" is actually an easy part - novelty gone, etc. But the "how to solve" is the more difficult part. When asked how to keep a social network "fresh" and prevent it from becoming a fad, I couldn't come up with good answers myself:
About this "social network fatigue" issue, the "why" is actually an easy part - novelty gone, etc. But the "how to solve" is the more difficult part. When asked how to keep a social network "fresh" and prevent it from becoming a fad, I couldn't come up with good answers myself:
Self-reinvention, new acquisitions and value addition (think Google), letting users constantly find new people within the network, etc. pops up to my mind, but clearly it's more complicated than that.So here's a nice brain teaser to keep your brain running even during the weekends ;-) : If you were the CEO of Cyworld or Mixi, what would you do to overcome these fatigue issues and continously provide new values to users so they won't leave your service? Watch out - "doing more stuff", again, might not be the right answer.
But doing "more" can actually lead to adverse results - Cyworld tried to add more features but that made the service increasingly difficult to use and many users didn't like it.
Cyworld Europe started as a joint venture between Cyworld and Germany's T-Online (a subsidiary of Deutsche Telecom), but the service has been struggling in Europe - which isn't too surprising given the service being "too Korean".
But perhaps the bigger problem is that Cyworld isn't growing rapidly in its home Korean market either - in fact, Cyworld's numbers are decreasing in Korea. (Figures come from Alexa and have been quoted from photouni.tistory.com.)
Obviously there would be many reasons for this decline, but one reason could simply be "fatigue" - I'll talk about this briefly in a separate post.
TAG cyworld
Digital Times (note: link in Korean) reports on the press conference that Cyworld is looking to change the current "mini room" and "mini me" features into a 3-D virtual space, something that will probably resemble Second Life. SK Communications does not hide the fact that they were inspired by Second Life when they came up with this notion of a 3-D Cyworld.
Mini room and Mini me features basically display a user's avatar in a virtual room. The virtual room can be decorated with virtual items purchased through Cyworld's item shop, where "Dotori" or acorns is the virtual currency - equivalent of Linden dollars in Second Life.
Shin Cho, the newly appointed co-CEO of SK Communications, said: "The key difference between Cyworld 3D and Second Life is that... Second Life mostly provides ready-made content, while Cyworld 3D will focus on providing user-created content." We might imagine Cyworld 3D users visiting someone else's 3D virtual room and watch the video content he or she had shot and uploaded there.
SK is planning to roll out Cyworld 3D early next year.
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