The concentrated Web in Korea
July 31st, 2007 19:53
The World Wide Web carries the spirit of openness and decentralization. It’s based on one of the fundamental characteristics of life, called “connectivity”. We’re all connected to each other and other things and that’s what makes life so complicated and exciting at the same time.
One of the main themes of Web 2.0 is the “loosely connected-ness”. We make things independent, but always make sure to provide ways to connect them all—through adhering to various technical standards, OpenAPIs, RSS, and widgets.
Not so much with the Web in Korea. The Web in Korea can be notoriously characterized by everything being so concentrated and centralized. This nature widely spans across many aspects surrounding the Web: social, governmental, technological, demographic, and even geographic aspects. After all, Korea, especially the South, is a very tiny country with 50 million people living in it!
Here are some stats on where Korea is in terms of its Web development:
Notice how I wrote “the ever-increasing dominance of portals and the growth of online/citizen journalism around portals” twice for both good and bad. The thing is that that’s the way Korea is right now. The entire Web revolves around portals—content creation, search, reuse, and consumption are all done within portals. In the Web 2.0 age of de-portalization, isn’t that so weird that portals are only getting stronger?
Naver, Daum, and Cyworld are the 3 biggest portals in Korea. Each has its own merits, however, it’s not too far-fetched to say these 3 are basically where most of online activities occur in Korea. And from there, many interesting things can be watched. Seriously, Naver is doing so well that even Google is having a very hard time setting foot in the Korean search market.
Openmaru is dedicated to bring in more “openness” into the Korean Web. Why we are doing it and how we are going to do it is what the next post is up for!
For more information on the Web in Korea, here are some useful resources:
One of the main themes of Web 2.0 is the “loosely connected-ness”. We make things independent, but always make sure to provide ways to connect them all—through adhering to various technical standards, OpenAPIs, RSS, and widgets.
Not so much with the Web in Korea. The Web in Korea can be notoriously characterized by everything being so concentrated and centralized. This nature widely spans across many aspects surrounding the Web: social, governmental, technological, demographic, and even geographic aspects. After all, Korea, especially the South, is a very tiny country with 50 million people living in it!
Here are some stats on where Korea is in terms of its Web development:
- South Korea has a population of 49 million. 14.3 million out of the country's 15.9 million households nationwide are linked to broadband Internet connections as of May 2007. In particular, Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province posted 106.8 percent and 100.7 percent in the broadband penetration rate, respectively.
- The average person visited the internet 13.8 days a month, and spent 20.2 hours viewing 2,172 pages--below the global averages of 17.1 days, 25.2 hours, and 2,519 pages. However, South Koreans topped the world averages--with scores of 17.4 days, 31.2 hours and 4,546 pages.
- According to the new research report by ROA Group the number of mobile users in South Korea will reach 41.95 million by 2010, which is 85% of the total population.
- In South Korea, a single service (Cyworld) already has 18 million accounts—enough for 30 % of the entire country's population. The survey was done in 30 days. Within that 30 days, more than half of all Internet users in South Korea have accessed a social networking site.
Notice how I wrote “the ever-increasing dominance of portals and the growth of online/citizen journalism around portals” twice for both good and bad. The thing is that that’s the way Korea is right now. The entire Web revolves around portals—content creation, search, reuse, and consumption are all done within portals. In the Web 2.0 age of de-portalization, isn’t that so weird that portals are only getting stronger?
Naver, Daum, and Cyworld are the 3 biggest portals in Korea. Each has its own merits, however, it’s not too far-fetched to say these 3 are basically where most of online activities occur in Korea. And from there, many interesting things can be watched. Seriously, Naver is doing so well that even Google is having a very hard time setting foot in the Korean search market.
Openmaru is dedicated to bring in more “openness” into the Korean Web. Why we are doing it and how we are going to do it is what the next post is up for!
For more information on the Web in Korea, here are some useful resources:
- Social Media in Korea: a nice summary page of the snapshot of the digital Korea.
- TechnoKimchi: a blog which is exclusively dedicated to covering the digital generation in Korea.
- Web 2.0 Asia: another amazing blog which covers the Web 2.0 environment in Korea. Lately, much has been written about the Web in Japan as well.
- Seoul Digital City: subtitled “a blog on Korea’s digital futures”, the blog well depicts what the Korean digital world is like.
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