Twitter! So Far So Good

The world-renowned new media service products from the U.S have been battling it out in Korea. In fact, Second Life, a free 3D virtual world developed by Linden Lab where users can socialize and connect through the Internet, was withdrawn from Korea market; Barunson Games, which has been in charge of serving Second Life in Korea, announced their intention to give up re-contracting with Linden Lab on November 13, 2009.  Last February, MySpace, one of the largest social networking websites in U.S., closed its entire Korean division a mere 10 months after they started to provide Korean service. Google, which has more than 70% of market shares in the worldwide Internet search industry, has only a single percent of the market share in Korean search engines industry due to a local Korean Internet search engine company which is Naver. Facebook, which has 300 million users worldwide, has considered a foray into the Korean market, but they do not have a detailed strategy to do so yet.

The Korean Internet service industry analyzed that U.S. new media service companies entered into Korean market late, and they failed to localize in Korea.  Because most U.S. new media services such as MySpace, Second Life, and Google provide the same services in Korea, Koreans who are accustomed to using Korean services, find it difficult to easily adopt the U.S. services.

However, Twitter, a mirco-blogging and social networking service, entered the Korean market before me2Day, a Korean micro-blogging serviced by NHN, the largest Internet content service operator, has not settled. Compared to other U.S. new media services, Twitter has attempted to localize in Korea by entering into inter-connection service with cyworld, the largest Korean social networking service in Korea, and SK telecom, the largest Korean cell phone company. Also, Twitter made a name for itself by marketing Korean celebrities. For instance, Twitter became popular in Korea after it became known that the famous ice skater Yu-na Kim was using the site. Also, as Koreans learned that novelist Weosee Leest talked about his daily life and his novel through Twitter, more people have been interested in the social networking site.

Last September, Neilson KoreaClick, the professional group for Internet media research, reported that me2Day has overtaken Twitter in terms of numbers of monthly visitors. The Korean Internet Industry analyzed that Twitter is the first U.S. new media product to succeed in settling in Korea since its users also continuously increase. However, me2day is pursuing Twitter with an aggressive strategy.

Twitter and me2Day are both micro-blogging sites, which provide Short Message Service (SMS). There is little difference in the numbers of characters that can be posted per message: Twitter is 140characters, and me2Day is 150 characters. There is also not much difference in how to post characters on the website.  Suman Park, who developed me2Day, says, “Although me2Day was born by adopting Twitter’s micro-blogging system, me2Day has different goals and targets from Twitter. For instance, me2Day tries to provide service that allows people to strengthen their existing relationship through me2Day instead of following strange people.” In fact, according to the KoreaClick’s research, main Korean users for Twitter are sales people in early thirties who are interested in economy or politics, early adopters, and experts in the IT industry. On the other hand, main users for me2Day are teenagers or those in their early twenties. 

Koreans like Twitter for several reasons. Sung-Jun Kim, who works at an IT company in Korea says, “Twitter has very easy to use service. Therefore, I didn’t have to study how to use the program differently from other services. In addition, since the reply of my Tweet is so fast, I feel so interactive and I spent much time checking replies without recognition.”  Ji-yeon Lee, who works at Hana Bank says, “I like Twitter because much information is shared through Twitter. Also, since the information is posted by people who have an experience about the article or people who work at the field which are related to the information, I think the information is more reliable than news articles.”

Twitter and me2Day are closely connected to the mobile application. Twitter provides web-services based on the smart phone. This is reflective of U.S. culture in that there are many kinds of smart phones, and there are various applications for Twitter in the U.S.  On the other hand, me2Day is connected to the cell phone, reflecting the Korean culture of using cell phones.  However, ever since the iPhone finally emerged on the Korean market on November 28, 2009, Twitter has even more opportunities to enlarge their Korean consumer base.

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