US Microblogging Fad Taking Korea by ‘Small’ Storm

By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

The global craze over Twitter, the instant messaging service that lets users send and receive short messages on computers and mobile phones, seems to have finally hit Korean shores.

Twitter, created by a 10-person start-up in San Francisco in 2006, is the latest Web sensation with more than seven million subscribers, a staggering 1,400 percent increase from the sub-500,000 users it had at the start of last year.

People would know that a Web service has arrived for real when it reaches even North Korea whose state-run Korean Central News Agency recently starting to provide news feeds in ``tweets'' ― possibly the ultimate compliment.

And it looks like Twitter is becoming hip among South Korean online users, who are known for rarely venturing out from the familiar, feature heavy services provided by domestic Internet companies.

Twitter couldn't have found a better spokesperson to generate interest here. Kim Yu-na, the immensely popular figure skating athlete, television commercial queen and perhaps the only personality who has a prayer for competing with the late-Roh Moo-hyun in local search word counts, recently became Twitter's most famous Korean user.

After writing her first entry on May 10, which read ``I somehow found myself subscribing to Twitter while eating lunch at the club,'' Kim has so far posted seven messages on her Twitter page (twitter.com/Yunaaaa). She already has nearly 3,000 Internet users subscribed as her ``followers,'' listed to receive her postings.

``Kim Yu-na is clearly the most marketable personality in Korea bar none and her using Twitter just might lead to an explosion,'' said an official from Daum (www.daum.net), the country's No. 2 search engine and Web portal.

``There has been an increasing interest in Twitter and other micro-blog services among Internet-savvy users, who are looking for more simple ways to always stay connected to people they find interesting, or to receive information. This is a trend that will catch on, especially with the heavy use of mobile devices and the sophistication of social networking services here.''

Numbers back the claim that Twitter is gaining popularity here. According to Rankey.Com (www.rankey.com), a market research site, the Korean visitors to Twitter's Web site reached 32,000 last week, compared with the 6,000 for first week of January, when Twitter had yet to become a buzz word here.

However, Twitter still can't compete with other popular blogging platforms or social networking services here.

Naver's (www.naver.com) blog services and the Cyworld (www.cyworld.com) social networking services get more than 10 million weekly visitors, and Daum's Tistory (Tistory.com) blogging platform draws nearly six million users per week.

However, it also seems clear that Korean Internet users are developing a fondness for the simplicity, quickness and ``always-on'' network presence provided by Twitter and other similar services.

NHN, the Internet industry kingpin that operates Naver, said it is getting more interest for its Twitter-like micro-blogging service, me2DAY (m2day.net), with traffic increasing by nearly 50 percent compared to last year. NHN has recently improved me2DAY to work better on mobile phones and introduced a monthly fixed-rate for the service.

Popular me2DAY users include Sohn Hak-kyu, a former Gyeonggi Province governor and ex-presidential hopeful, Dreamwiz (www.dreamwiz.com) chief executive Lee Chan-jin and Neowiz (www.neowiz.com) boss Hur Jin-ho.

Another Korean micro-blogging service is PlayTalk (playtalk.net), which generated interest when novelist Lee Woe-soo combined his short stories on his PlayTalk blog to publish a new book.

``The increasing popularity of Twitter is interesting, as its growth trajectory in traffic is incomparable to that of domestic micro-blogging services such as me2DAY and PlayTalk,'' said a Rankey.Com official.

``With the use of mobile Internet increasing, as more and more people are equipped with handsets that support full Web browsing, more people are expected to use micro-blogging services to stay connected through short bursts of content.''

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr
Source From http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2009/05/123_45796.html