Blog 2.0: The latest battlefield of the Korean internet giants?
Web 2.0 | 2006/11/24 02:50 | Web 2.0 Asia
As if blog was not 2.0 enough, Korean internet giants all seem to be into "blog 2.0".
Naver, the undisputable #1 portal in Korea, has announced its plan to launch "Naver Blog: Season 2" by the end of the year. What's different enough to make it "Blog 2.0"? According to Naver, the game changer will be "the ultimate freedom to edit the blog's skin." (Here in Korea, blog themes or templates are usually called "skins".) Naver Blog: Season 2 will allow user to design custom blog skins by simple drag and drop. I'm presuming some kind of Powerpoint-like interface for editing the blog skin at user's will.
Looks like Naver is taking shots at both #2 and #3 players - Daum and SK Communications (mother company of Cyworld) are both about to launch new blog services themselves.
Daum will launch Tistory.com ("Tee-story"), a co-branded service with Tattertools. Tattertools is the #1 blog server software in Korea (Disclaimer: I am the CEO of the company that builds Tattertools.) Tistory is essentially a Tattertools blog hosted by Daum. It's like Wordpress blog co-branded and hosted by Yahoo: Very powerful, but doesn't have to be installed on the user's own server. One of the key strengths of Tattertools blog is the skin configuration and editing system.
SK Communications will soon launch C2, short for - obviously - Cyworld ver. 2. As well known, Cyworld is a scarily successful service here in Korea. It is reported that one of the key new features of C2 will be, guess what? Customizing the user's home page using widgets as the building blocks.
At this early point, it's not clear who will win out in this "blog 2.0" battle. But at least one thing seems to be certain: all three of the new blog initiatives pursued by Korean internet portals emphasize on the easy customization of the blog, both in terms of features and design. New blog features can be added via widgets, new blog looks can be created or edited on a dead-easy interface (possibly like the Powerpoint), and so on.
And you know what? For the past several years, what happend in the Korean internet sphere soon happened in other parts of the world too. So you might want to pick up some small yet important signals, closely watching how this "blog 2.0" epic among Korean portals gets played out.
Naver, the undisputable #1 portal in Korea, has announced its plan to launch "Naver Blog: Season 2" by the end of the year. What's different enough to make it "Blog 2.0"? According to Naver, the game changer will be "the ultimate freedom to edit the blog's skin." (Here in Korea, blog themes or templates are usually called "skins".) Naver Blog: Season 2 will allow user to design custom blog skins by simple drag and drop. I'm presuming some kind of Powerpoint-like interface for editing the blog skin at user's will.
Looks like Naver is taking shots at both #2 and #3 players - Daum and SK Communications (mother company of Cyworld) are both about to launch new blog services themselves.
Daum will launch Tistory.com ("Tee-story"), a co-branded service with Tattertools. Tattertools is the #1 blog server software in Korea (Disclaimer: I am the CEO of the company that builds Tattertools.) Tistory is essentially a Tattertools blog hosted by Daum. It's like Wordpress blog co-branded and hosted by Yahoo: Very powerful, but doesn't have to be installed on the user's own server. One of the key strengths of Tattertools blog is the skin configuration and editing system.
SK Communications will soon launch C2, short for - obviously - Cyworld ver. 2. As well known, Cyworld is a scarily successful service here in Korea. It is reported that one of the key new features of C2 will be, guess what? Customizing the user's home page using widgets as the building blocks.
At this early point, it's not clear who will win out in this "blog 2.0" battle. But at least one thing seems to be certain: all three of the new blog initiatives pursued by Korean internet portals emphasize on the easy customization of the blog, both in terms of features and design. New blog features can be added via widgets, new blog looks can be created or edited on a dead-easy interface (possibly like the Powerpoint), and so on.
And you know what? For the past several years, what happend in the Korean internet sphere soon happened in other parts of the world too. So you might want to pick up some small yet important signals, closely watching how this "blog 2.0" epic among Korean portals gets played out.
