Web & People

No growth engine for Internet Industry

2009-10-31T07:36:42-08:00

You might not find out what kind of web service now lead the internet industry in Korea. It's an very unusual situation. Since 1996 from the begining of internet industry in Korea, there had been a leading sector. For example,e-mail the late 1990s,the search the early 2000s,community 2002-2003,mini homepage 2004-2005,UGC(User Generated Contents) site 2006,blog 2007-2008. But there is no growth engine for internet industry this year. According to rankey.com(the internet research company), the traffic of all sectors of web service has been declining. It had never happened before. I mean all sectors of web service include portal,SNS,community,UGC site,blog,open market,game portal. You may try to point out the micro blog as twitter,Metoday(it's a Kroean style twitter operated by NHN). But the statistics for the micro blog betrayed your expectation. The unique visitor(UV) of the micro blog was 1.50 million on July,and 2.60 million on August.However,the UV of micro blog plummeted to 2.00 million on September. This statistics are also based on the research of rankey.com. Why do you think there is no growth engine for INternet industry in Korea? Blog can not play the leading role in the development of web service.Neither do UGC and community service. Someone said it's due to the regulation of Korea Government. From my perspective,however,it's maily because of lack of innovation in this industry. You may remember Neowiz's Avatar(1999),Naver's complex search(2000),Naver's Knowledge search(2002),Cyworld's mini hompi(2003). They are definitely creative services.And we can call them the web service of the innovation. But it's gone since 2004. For five years, there has been no innovative services in internet industry. The Korea web industry's leading company had just imported or copied innovative services from oversea's companies. Why? What happen? I will show you the reason of this phenomenon in my next posting.

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Youtube,took first place in the ranking of Korea UGC market

2009-10-11T01:58:34-08:00

Finally, the world's biggest UGC(User Generated Contents) site Youtube took the first ranking in Korean market.It's Youtube's 20 months record since January 2008 in which Youtube launch its Korean version(http://kr.youtube.com) Acoording to Rankey.com (web research institute), the monthly UV(unique visitor)of September 2009 was 3.21 milion. Youtube surpassed its competitor PandoraTV.com which had 2.90 million UV at the same period. January 2009, the monthly UV of Youtube was only 1.80 million,but the number has been increasing rapidly. 2 million in February,and 2.50 million in May. On the contrary, PandoraTV,the previous local champion UGC site in Korea, had been losing its visitor since last year. PandoraTV's monthly UV on February 2008 was 6.70 million. No one can expect that PandoraTV lost its guests so fast. Then, what happen to Korea UGC market? Why did PandoraTV-the previous biggest UGC site- plummet? A lot of researcher and commentator find out the reason in the view of regulation. Korea government forced all the web site to adopt the real name system for logging in.But Youtube oppose to adopt this regulation.Many Korean netizen,who support Youtube's idea on freedom of speech, move on to the Youtube from PandoraTV,Diodeo,Mgoon and so on. Of course,it is one of the reasons,but maybe the most important one.

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NCsoft launch Aion 22 Sep.

2009-09-13T01:07:16-08:00

NCsoft will release its new MMORPG,Aion to USA on 22nd Sep.2009. Even before it is started, however, there is already a good sign for the Aion's soft-landing (at least). On 5th Sep. Jae-Ho Lee, NCsoft West Inc. CEO announced that pre-order for Aion reached 300 thousands copies for two months.Yes,it's surprising news, as he said. But these numbers can not guarantee Aion's ultimate success in U.S. market. We won‘t know until the results come out. Nonetheless, 300 thousands copies as a pre-order is an encouraging result. According to Mr. Lee(CEO of NCsoft West) 300 thousands copies pre-order is definitely a record. No Korean online games launched in the U.S. have gotten such mass copies as pre-order. Ncsoft expects to gain approximately 10 million dollars from pre-order. TJ Kim,founder of NCsoft, assumed that Aion will compete with World of Warcraft(WoW) in the U.S. market. Of course, NCsoft has never said that Aion is aiming to beat WoW up in public, only said that Aion will challenge WoW. NCsoft has already attracted 6 million players by Guildwar for 4 years. But they are still hungry. They needs more than that. Maybe 10 millioncopies sale? Aion has some strong points comparing with WoW. The main one is flight: at level 10 your character gains wings, so the action turns into a 3D experience with some quests requiring you to fly around, and with some options for combat in flight. The other one is graphics. Some of U.S. online game media appreciated that in matters of graphics Aion wins, as expected, the comparison with WoW. But gaming is not all about the graphics as everybody knows. Especially MMORPG has to offer more than just it looks. It will not take long time. We can accounter the conclusion for this competition between WOW and Aion.

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Twitter party in Korea!

2009-09-13T01:03:41-08:00

The first offline Twitter party was held in seoul Korea,10th Sep. More than 200 Twitter users(mania) were there to verify each other. They really want to see who is using twitter in Korea even though Twitter has not provided its Korean version service yet. Most of the people who were gathered at offline Twitter party in Seoul Korea were businessmen working for the Information Technology industry.Google Korea,Daum Communication,Neowiz,and various IT startups etc. As you know(or you may not know), there were not so many Twitter users in Korea comparing with U.S.Less than 200 thousands,that's all. It's just presumption,but it can't be more than that. So few,but so coherent. Mr.Hur(Jinho Hur is his full name),president at Korea Internet Company Association propose and host this offline Twitter party. He is also a CEO of 'Neowiz Internet'.Neowiz Internet, Wikitree and some other companies sponsored Twitter party. Offline Twitter party was held only for friendship.There might be no other purposes.But that almost participants are engineers or leader in IT industry can trigger business opportunity.

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Kroea startups rush to USA

2009-09-02T07:26:24-08:00

The Korea startups which are trying to going into Silicon Valley are increasing.Why are they going into Silicon Valley directly? There are three reasons for which these startups are headed to Silicon Valley in USA, not to Teheran Valley in Korea. The first reason is financial one.Finding venture capital is easier in Silicon Valley than in Korea.The second reason is that there are more opportunity in mobile service,in particular iphone,than they stayed in Korea. A various SNSs such as Twitter,Facebook,Myspace.com in USA can also give more business opprtunities to these startups. ◆Rush to USA. Do you know ‘Paprica Lab’? Paprika Lab is a developer and publisher of game and learning software.Founded by John S. Kim, Paprika Lab claims to become the world’s best social web game and mobile game aggregator.Their first outcome will be uncovered by the end of this year. ‘Wetoku’ is doing business out of Korea,focusing on Silicon Valley as well.Wetoku is a new web service that open up a new arena of interview.They call it interview 2.0.Wetoku makes doing an interview as easy as filling out some basic info,creating an interview session, and sending the created interview session’s URL to the target interviewee.Wetoku have a plan to begin its initial service in USA within this yaer. Qbox,social music service,launched its English service 4th June 2008.Qbox indexes the music on MySpace,YouTube and Bebo and empowers users to search,organize,and listen to the entire catalog of music available through a single point of access.Ian Kwon,a founder of Qbox,originally established Qbox.com(Korean Version) early 2006,but quit Korean Service to move out to Silicon Valley 2007.Qbox expects its English version 2.0 next month. Spotengine is web and mobile startup company.Its main service is Stix.Spotengine was founded by two teenagers:Todd Oh,Korean high school student and Travis Cunningham, U.S. teenager.Spotengine is located at the California,USA,and get ready to launch its first mobile LBS service within 3Q. SundayToz is a social games startup,and they are just about to unveil an Role Playing Game(RPG) on Facebook.The concept of their service is self made RPG,or so called user generated RPG.Sundaytoz is also prepared to go into silicon Valley on long term base. ◆Get a financial opportunity As like other venture companies,the startups mentioned above are short of money.Each of them is full of idea,but doesn't have enough money.In Kroea,their idea had not appealed to venture capitals and angel investors.Actually only a few venture capitals which was willing to invest web 2.0 startups remained in Korea since 2001,internet bubble. Korean startups regard Silicon Valley as different situation.They hope to find out venture capital or angel investors at Silicon Valley.Of course,it's not easy to encounter investors,but Korean startups believe that Silicon Valley would give more opportunities to them. Mobile services and various web-based SNSs should be a good chance for them to expand their service territory to USA,Europe and so on.For example,Sundaytoz made their service as Facebook base in order to adapt their service for various platform.

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About me and this blog

2009-09-02T07:21:59-08:00

Hi,my name is Obed W. Lim. My full name in Korean is Wonki Lim. Obed is my English (first) name. I'm working at Korea Economic Daily(KED or Hankyung in Korean) Yes,I am a journalist. That's my full time job. Korea Economic Daily is basically domestic business publication. Korea Economic Daily has focused on business, finance and careers. But also KED expands its cover to technology advancements and its applications. I just started this blog right now as yoy see. I want to let you know Korea web industry,people who lead IT in Korea and web culture and so on. I've been running my blog in Korean since 2007 and now I open another blog in English version as my personal project. As you know,Korea is one of the most developed ‘internet’ country and almost everyone in this industry all over the world knows about it. However, they didn't know much about why Korea web industry has developed so fast, why Korea has so many outstanding internet companies and who lead IT industry. In this blog I will write the story of people who made today's Korea Web industry and culture. As I already mentioned above,English is not my first language. I usually just quickly “write away” and don‘t look back. Please don't expect this blog to be perfect and just relax and read what happened in Korea web industry and its inference to world IT. For more information including my more resume, click my profile at the right side of this blog. If you‘d like to contact me in person, please send me an email(wonki.lim@gmail.com)

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