TechnoKimchi

In this 3-minute video interview, I talk about the impact of the Internet and new media on society, the candlelight vigil, and the fading of Cyworld. I look pretty nervous in the video, so take that into consideration :)

Yesterday, I came across an interesting article about the the Internet usage stats in Korea in 2008. (As you know, it's the end-of-the-year time and we're getting tons of statstical reports summarizing 2008, so it's good time for TechnoKimchi.)

So, to make it brief, you know that the top 3 traffic sites in Korea are Naver, Daum, and Cyworld. And guess what the top 3 search keywords for 2008 are? Yup. They are Daum, Cyworld, and Naver.

Wait a minute. Am I saying that people don't type in the URLs for those sites, but search for them to get there? Apparently so. Basically what this means is that Naver is the biggest traffic generator for Daum and Cyworld. It's like saying "most of Yahoo traffic comes from Google."

Indeed. Among other top 10 search keywords are gMarket (4), Auction (5) (gMarket and Auction are the top two ebay-like sites in Korea), Kookmin Bank (6), Yahoo (7), Woori Bank (8), and Shinhan Bank (9). Take notice the keyword ranking almost exactly aligns with the the most popular sites in Korea.

I've been personally watching some young kids at my church (around elementary school age) use the Internet. They actually do search on Naver for the names of sites they want to get to and get there by clicking on the links. I asked them, "why do you search instead of typing in the URLs?" The answers typically come in two ways: "Why not?" or "URLs?"

This is the power of the search economy. The fact that the top search keywords are Daum and Cyworld, not Naver and Cyworld, means it's the No.1. search portal Naver that sends out traffic to Daum and Cyworld, making them the greatest beneficiaries of their greatest competitor in Naver. Traffic means money, but apparently that's the cost Naver will gladly take.

Display ads are dying. URL games are dying. Newspapers are dying. The only thing that seems to be certain in the midst of economic downturn and flood of information is the efficiency of search engines. No wonder Google is the king no matter what.

(After reading through comments provided by Channy and Chang, I realized this is not a trend only unique to Korea but rather a universal one. Guess who's been behind, haha. Sorry, folks :)

1. Why TechnoKimchi?    Explains what this blog is about and for.
2. What the "digital generation" in Korea looks like    A quick snapshot of what every day life technology is like in Korea.
3. Are you excited about the 3.5G networks, too?    A brief introduction to 3.5 generation networks deployment in Korea.
4. First Wibro experiment: watching Joost on the bus and on highway    My tiny test on WiBro in the middle of Seoul.
5. What goes around comes around.    My interview response on the social media landscape in Korea.
6. Things are crazy over here!    A knock on cultural differences on how we approach getting things done.
7. Commenters, not commentators, as citizen journalists    The power of portals in online journalism and a portrayal of what we do as citizen journalists.

...But these days, Insoo and his friends don't simply use their phones to send an SMS, or to take pictures or listen to MP3 music. Whenever funny things happen during the day, Insoo and friends shoot video with their phones and send the clip to portal sites, hoping their clips will be featured on the portals' homepages.

...The first thing Insoo does after Hakwon is, of course, turn on the PC. Insoo has a difficult math problem as homework. He posts it up on Naver Knowledge iN, a popular online Q&A service with some 70 million entries.

Within about 10 minutes of posting, someone chimes in with a good answer, and Insoo awards him with some "Knowledge Power" points -- knowledge-based economy in action among 14-year-olds.

...Gone are the days when kids bought CDs by their favorite singers. For the young generation, music is deemed something that must be consumed over the 'Net -- CDs are for their parents. To date, Cyworld's minihompy streaming music sales amount to more than 200 million songs, or $100 million in revenue.

These virtual worlds are crucial building blocks of global civil society. As such, they harbor the promise for relationship-building and cooperation across national borders. Solutions to the cross-cultural growing pains of this new medium require a sincere commitment to transnational dialogue.

1) A decision to require Web readers to use their real identities when posting articles online on Internet news sites is sparking concerns over privacy and free speech. What is your view on this?

While there’s been a great number of occasions where anonymity caused lots of real world problems in Korea, I don’t think the real identity regulation will be the cure for all. There will be lots of new problems springing from this kind of approach: freedom of speech will be threatened in many ways as there’ll be lots of people unable to honestly expressing their opinions. Privacy is obviously even a bigger concern. Making your real name up there won’t naturally create more responsible comments online. It’ll reduce both good and bad behaviors online.  I’d say rather urging and educating many Internet users and companies to create an environment where people will be more responsible will eventually pay out.

2) What are some of the restrictions that the Korean online community is facing which prevents for further development in social media?

Practical applications, like flickr of del.icio.us, aren’t really taking off in Korea. Most of the popular applications except search are about making sites people-friendly. It’s social nature of the Web users in Korea, which I believe need some change.

3) What impact does citizen journalism have on the social media arena in Korea? How are sites like News 2.0 driving change?

Unfortunately, News 2.0 isn’t actually doing particularly well in Korea. OhMyNews has also lost its brightest shining moments as well. Online media has been completely concentrated around portals, like Naver and Daum, where both mainstream media and citizen-based media (often called UCC-User Created Content) are both very strong.

4) How powerful are Internet mobs in Korea? Does the “Dog Poop Girl” controversy have any consequences?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/6112754.stm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/07/06/AR2005070601953.html

We actually have seen incidents like Dog Poop Girl so many times that many people are almost numb to such things happening. People carry around digital cameras and camcorders all the time that you basically have eyes and ears everywhere. People sometimes try to act more responsibly out in public since they know the horrifying and tremendous consequences of things spreading so quickly online. Often people take for granted how (private) things can be discovered so easily. It’s happening at a greater scale and there isn’t much that can stop it from happening, I think.

5) How are Korean businesses using Web 2,0  to their advantages? Please highlight an example. For example, how are businesses leveraging on Naver?

The best case is obviously Naver Knowledge-iN, which has used user participation to answer other users' questions. This mechanism eventually made Naver the Wikipedia + Google of Korea. We have seen a very high level of participation among the Web users in Korea across many areas. However, Internet companies, especially portals, have been accused of not being particularly keen at opening up their services to the masses.

6) Why is the Korea online community so advanced in terms of using social networking sites(e.g. CyWorld) and Web 2.0 applications? Does Korean Culture or Government play a part in this?

It’s mainly two things: a great broadband connection (this is the govenment part) and a culture where everyone just loves flocking together. Unlike MySpace, Cyworld is much about “decorating” your own space with lots of fancy stuff, like avatars and virtual items. That’s played a great deal in the development of services like Cyworld.

7) How different is the Korean online community different from other communities in terms of internet behavior with regard to social networking sites?

The active Web participants in Korea in general are much younger in contrast to other countries, especially the Western ones. So we see a Web that is a lot more social and entertainment-oriented than heavy and more serious one in the West. Lots of bloggers in Korea only write about travelling, food, photography, relationships, or games while many in U.S., for example, would write about business, tech, and media.

8) At the moment, what are new exciting Web 2.0 developments taking place in the Korean Online Community?

There’s been a good number of venture startups putting efforts into developing the new “web 2.0” services in Korea. As mentioned above, the Web in Korea has been greatly concentrated around portals. While there has not been too many great success stories among those startups yet, many portals are slowly moving in the direction of finally distributing more traffic to outside of the portals. I see it as a great sign of the Korean Web moving in the right direction. The Web was never meant to be so concentrated.

9) What are the signs that the lines between mainstream media and social media are blurring?

Daum, one of the major portals in Korea, has started a service named “Blogger News”, where it’s a combination of Digg and OhMyNews. It’s trying to find the right balance between a completely user-based quality news and professional journalism. Many of the content sites, including blogs, video sites, and picture sites, are also displaying and leading traffic to both mainstream content and user generated content. What we often see is the social media content generated off one big mainstream news article.

1. we have better broadband connections and mobile infrastructures,
2. we have a better "gadget culture" where teens are not hesitant to easily spend $500 on mobile phones or PMPs, all coming at the expense of their parents,
3. we have a culture which values the virtue of "flocking together" much higher than that of "staying as individuals", empowering the growth of mass collaborative efforts across the Net, and
4. we have a mental world where the virtual stuff is often blurred with the physical reality.