6. Myspace Korea - Can they be successful in Korea?

As the posibility of the growth of SNS(Social Networking Service) companies have been going up, the world famous SNS company like Myspace and Facebook have started to have partnership with other related companies which can bring synergy effect, like Google and MS. Myspace, which is one of the most famous SNS companies, starts to expend their business to the other countries, including Korea. On 15th April, the CEO of Myspace publically introduced Myspace Korea(http://kr.myspace.com/). To compete with Cyworld, which is the most famous Korean SNS company, Myspace is planning to focus their strategy on making competency in entertainment field- music, TV and so on. Their strategy is to find Korean artist and send them to the world stage through Myspace website. They put actually up Myspace Music(http://music.myspace.com/) and Myspace TV(http://www.myspacetv.com/) as the main contents for it.


However, there are some critical opinions that there is nothing new comparing with Cyworld. In China and Japan, Myspace have been already collaborating business with famous domestic SMS companies, but not in Korea. They also need to localize their service for Korean users throughly if they can learn something from Google Korea. Gooogle, which is the world wide famous search engine is not working well in Korean because Korean users has so different taste and interest, but they did not apply it to the service well. (Actually, I think they could not. Korean users have a tendency to visit search engine site for entertainment as much as for searching. However, if Google do the similar thing like NAVER, it will hurt their strength.)

So what is the main difference between Myspace and Cyworld? Cyworld is based on connecting people who already knew each other in the off-line world. Each user can make their own homepage easily, and record their life on there with many pictures, diary and any other information to show others. So friends and other people can know what you are thinking and doing recently. Myspace connects not only the people who know each other, but also who have similar interests. Each user decorates his/her homepage about what they are interested in. So if you can find someone who has similar interest with you, you can share information, and findinging imformation what you need can be more intensive. It seems like Cyworld is focusing on how to share one's life, but Myspace is more for sharing one's interest with others. I think Myspace might be a new form of online community like the combination of blog and online community club. Myspace has an advantage that they can share and gather interest-related information effectively because each person can manage and contact individual friends in their homepage. However, Naver Cafe and Cyworld Club can be managed by one or a few managers. That is the reason they are many ghost members.

There is another question. You have heard the Web 2.0 era is arrived through 1 person media such as blog, but in Korea, sharing information through blog is not working effectively that much. A research shows that most of bloggers in Korea manges their blogs in the closed or private way becasue Korean users are adjusted to be provided information from closed web management of portal sites like DAUM and NAVER. So it is a key point to know how they can open up the thinking process of users and how to develop and apply the function of SNS site effectively to the complex Korean users. /posted by 20500580

P.S Which point do you think Cyworld reach on the product life cycle? I think they are almost reach to the maturity point. Cyworld has tried to upgrade their service, but I think as time goes by, its affectiveness is getter less. They maybe need to think about how to innovate the strength of SMS site.