There's something about blogging? sharing?

It took me this long to get it started.
My friends in Korea have been almost begging and sometimes warning me to keep a weblog for years.
They usually have more than one blogging sites. One for personal life, the others for work related.  They are using personal blogs to share their lives with friends and family. They rarely use emails, instead leave messages and photos on the blogs.

I am not really care for making public my thought, let alone my daily lives? I've been away from Korea since the weblogging boom which started with Cyworld, a social networking site hit the whole country.  Anyhow I had to register and open my own miniroom there in order to keep in touch with them.

I haven't maintained, or posted anything. So take a look at what I look like inside that world. I am bald and only wear underwear in empty room!

(www.cyworld.com)

Look what they look like.

(www.cyworld.com)

You need to buy things to decorate your miniroom. Right, cyworld.com has successful business model and revenue not only the big social impact.

Here are some statistics:
S.Korea Population - 48 million. About 80% own a cell phone.
Number of wireless data service subscribers(fixed monthly rate) - 3 milliion
Cyworld members- 17 million
90% of 20s are accessing cyworld everyday.
Mobile Cyworld subscribers(fixed monthly rate)- 2.6 million  (!!!)
While Helio is suffering in USA, mobile Cyworld is making a good succeess in Korea.
Now cyworld started the service in USA(us.cyworld.com) and it's the Helio's mother company SKT who services mobile cyworld in korea, it's going to be interesting to see how Helio deals with MySpace and Cyworld. Is it going to provide both?

I am wondering what makes them spend time and energy on these: uploading photos, writing journals, visiting others and reading and leaving messages, decorating their cyberrooms.
People don't do that unless it has some real value.  Sharing could be that valuable?
I am going to figure it out.
 

Posted at 12:00AM Aug 25, 2006 by Yoojin Hong in General  |  Comments[1]