Naver, No.1 portal/search/blog/community/email/news-aggregation service in Korea, held a press conference yesterday to shoot out some interesting and fantastic stories. (probably not as exciting as TechCrunch being bought by AOL, though. Congrats, Mike!)
The first news was that Naver is integrating all of its social services (cafes – communities/forums; blogs; and me2day – facebook) into what’s called “Naver Me.” It’s practically the Web version of Apple’s MobileMe; it’s about YOU, the winner of Time’s the person of the year 2006 as long as you stay within Naver’s “social” services.
As I’ll cover later, with Cyworld practically looking for resuscitation, Facebook and Twitter have emerged as rockstars in Korea, to everyone’s surprise (though it didn’t surprise me at all) Me2day is Naver’s own foster child in the same category and Naver wants to use it to strengthen its “social-ness.”
Now, Naver is adding into the mix a communication suite with its launching of Naver Talk; an integrated messenger which works across Web-PC-Mobile, which will be directly competing against NateOn, the leader in the messenger market. Another exciting announcement, as NateOn’s service quality has going south for some time now just like its sibling Cyworld.
Assuming Naver Me and Naver Talk flourish, here’s what Naver will have under its umbrella: search like (no.1 by far), content (no.1 by far with music, movies, news, blog, cartoons, communities, QnA, etc), social (a very good chance to become no.1 with me2day’s users nearly equaling Twitter and Facebook’s users combined), and IM. To put it another way, Naver will become Korea’s Google + Apple + Facebook + AOL. Pretty scary, isn’t it?
What’s even scarier is this: I can’t think of anyone who can stop Naver from actually becoming all that. Search combined with content, social, news, email, and messenger? Wow. That’ll be quite potent.
Many have begun comparing Naver to the previous generation’s chaebols: Samsung, LG, Hyundai and SK–all of its components tightly integrated, practically wall-gardened, but very well made. Even in this digital generation, maybe it implies something immutable about the core strength and character of Korea: one-ness as the competitive advantage. Not putting what’s right or wrong; just a simple observation. What do you guys think?
Agreed Naver is killing it ..as it has been since I worked there a few years back. Facebook is probably the only contender that comes close. As you know probably know, Korea is one of the countries with the fastest growth rate on Facebook. As FB rolls out some nice features on its platform to improve ‘search’, a platform for more ‘content’, and ‘social’ (well…its leading in this area), NHN (Naver AND Hangame) may face a formidable threat.
Hi Jason, long time
As much as I love Facebook, esp. with its ever-rising popularity, I’m not sure Facebook is Korean-enough to go mainstream. Currently, the majority of Facebook users are teens and college students with much “global” experience. I also see many Korean men in their late 30′s and 40′s that have hopped into the whole iPhone-Twitter-Facebook bandwagon. Beyond that, I still want to wait and see if Facebook will ever reach that point. As I mentioned in “What brands do well in Korea” post, Facebook is a “social utility” and in Korea any utility-like services must be optimally localized for Korea; will Facebook ever reach that? That remains to be seen.
Personally, I hope the popularity of Facebook and Twitter is going to continue to rise in order to help reducing the isolation of Korea in terms of its culture and language. Naver becoming Google + Facebook + Twitter + … is just going to strengthen the “frog in the well” syndrome…
In other words, Naver becoming Google + Facebook + Twitter + … is maybe interesting from an economic point of view. However, from a social point of view…
Looking at what iPhone singlehandedly has accomplished for the entire Korean consumer tech and Internet market and industry, I see your point as a very valid one. In fact, the balance between the pure-breed Korean products/services and global ones will be one of the main recurring themes on this blog. How globalized is Korea itself? Korean consumer? Tech buyers? This topic branches out to a much larger one, possibly even including politics. Thanks for the comment.
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Hello there!
Interesting post; I came across this website through Google and my company is currently in the process of opening a Naver Blog.
Are you familiar with the Naver Blog platform? It would be amazing to be able to read a post on the topic, which is pretty much unexplored! Just saying
Naver IS indeed owning the market. South Korea is the only country where I see Google and Yahoo as being second or third class citizens!