I found a lot of news article about this issue: Why Web2.0 sites are failed in Korea.
The articles are mainly published in 2006-2008.
This means that Web2.0 was a hottest topic in 2006, and many Web2.0 technologies were trying to expand their service to Korea. But they were failed.
Why?
The answer is a monopolization of a certain website: Naver.com
In other word, everything users want exists in Naver.com.
Users don't need to get any other Web2.0 sites.
Also Naver provides a blog service for its users.
For Korean, other blog services, such as Blogger, Wordpress, etc., are unnecessary, because they have Naver blog
Yahoo.com stopped its service in Korea in 2013. As a result, Flickr stopped, too.
Do you know another story about Youtube.com in Korea?
Korea Internet policy required users to enter their social ID numbers when they sign up any websites.
Because of this reason, Youtube.com prohibited Korean until 2012.
In 2012, Korea Internet policy changed, and never require any social numbers.
Why was Korean Internet policy changed in 2012?
In 2011, another popular search portal, Nate.com, was hacked by Chinese hackers.
35,000,000 users information including social numbers, address, cellphone numbers, etc., were stolen.
In other word, 70% of all Korea population information was stolen by Chinese hackers.
Yes, my social information is being used by others probably.
Anyway, in conclusion,
Web2.0 is losing their power in Korea due to a domestic site, Naver.com.
To think, we complain about privacy in the states while in Korea you have to give your social ID number just to sign up for a site! That is unbelievable that Chinese hackers were able to gain 70% of Korean population information! I am amazed that Naver.com is running the whole show and completely in control of everything online. Does Naver.com have social media networking abilities like Facebook or LinkedIn?
ReplyDeleteNaver has its Blog service like Google Blogger.com.
DeleteNaver Blog is currently still prevalent in korean blogs.
However, Naver.com has no social networking like Facebook.
I'd like to point out that most prevalent social networking in Korea is 'KAKAO TALK & KAKAO STORY'.
Basically KAKAO TALK is a smartphone messenger app like 'Whats app'. But KAKAO corp. launched its social networking service based on its messenger. KAKAO Story is ranked on the second popular social networking service. (The first one is Facebook, probably.)
Amazing thing is that KAKAO STORY is just a smartphone app.
There is no website of KAKAO STORY.