KoreaCrunch

I read US Republicans who are vying to lead the national party offered a mix of reactions Saturday to the decision by one candidate for the job to mail a holiday music CD including the song “Barack the Magic Negro.”

It seems that someone don’t want to accept this fact even though Mr. Obama had the great victory in this year. His election of US president is very meaningful not only in his skin color but also democracy in the Internet. Many people helped him with online participation and campaign as like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

I remembered South Korea staked a claim to be the most advanced online democracy on the planet with Mr. Roh, Moo-hyun of a president who styled himself as the first leader fully in tune with the internet in 2003.

He just graduated a commercial high school and didn’t study in college and US before election of president. But, he just passed bar examination and became human rights lawyer. Also someone didn’t wanted to accept him as a president and the South Korean National Assembly voted to impeach Roh Moo-hyun for illegal electioneering and incompetence charges.

Obama and Roh is very similar cases to overcome their handicap background and make web based democracy. As like Mr. Roh, I guess Obama will be hard to do his job in economic crisis. Good luck, Mr. president!

The Korea Internet Association was released top news of Korean Intetnet industry in 2008.

1. Making culture of online social controversy and problems (Daum Agora was a playground user-participated debate in US beef import, economic crisis etc. As well malicious comments, rumors, libel on news articles and bulletin board made many social effects for famous star’s suicide and defamation of character.)
2. Governmental internet regulation over freedom of expression (Government strengthens monitoring obligation, real identity in web site and the introduction of a law of online contempt etc.)
3. Personal journalism and its growing influence (Fast growing of bloggers, Live news in candlelight protest, Online expert called Minerva etc.)
4. Internet presidential election Ohmaba opening president 2.0 Era (”the Internet led the most powerful tool for change”)
5. Economic crisis reflected in the Internet industry (Poor business performance in 2008)
6. Big connections between wireless and broadband companies (SKT + Hanaro Telecom and KT + KTF)
7. IPTV was started (IPTV operator selection including KT, SK Broadband and LG Telecom with real-time TV broadcasting service over IP network)
8. Mobile Internet of the global competition ignition (Apple iPhone’s sensation, Google released Android Phone, Symbian acquired by Nokia)
9. Acceleration open wireless Internet network (SKT - opening promise of the merger subject network, LGT OZ and full browsing service, the abolition of WIPI controversy, High-end smart phone such as T-Omnia Enabled phones)
10. Strengthening crackdown on illegal copyright (Three-strikes copyright law including site blocking, increasing a special judicial crackdown on illegal web sites by the police and prosecution, copyright infringement lawsuits and settlement by law firm)

My blog has been very long silence and its rare posting will be sorry for my “thankful” readers. Although I declared restarting of blogging, I could not keep my promise. One of reasons is still to focus my Korean blog. Another is because of low attention for Korean market from global audiences.

As you know, some of guys made “Open Web Asia” work group gathering Asian bloggers to write their own market such as China, Korea, Japan and others. In October, the international conference also was held in Seoul, Korea. I respects these efforts to spread Asian activities to world because this blog also has same purpose.

But, I felt it’s very hard to do that. According to the statistics of compete.com, Most of representative blogs have very low attention from global readers although CK’s blog had a temporary popularity by Google’s buying his company. They have almost 1,000~3,000 unique visitors per month.

Recently I read a story of cultural collision about Silicon Valley and Europe between Michael Arrington and Loic Le Meur caused by LeWeb08’s Gilmore Gang panel. Though the controversy was focused on work-life balance, I think major point was the size of market. Valley has very high density of workaholics and money for one US market.

On the contrary Europe is very different market with different nations and languages although it seems like one market. Still the success in US doesn’t mean the success in global. (Myspace, Facebook still are based on US.) Most of Valley success stories are not global success.

I think Europe has still important possibility despite of claiming by Mike for their work culture rather than US. CrunchVision shows up Europe has meaningful numbers of startups. But, Asian is very small yet and it proves that it’s very hard to pay attention to Asian market. Here is the source of trouble to continue my blogging.

Although iPhone was not released in Korea till now because of Korean WIPI regulations, some of iPhone applications have been shown up in Appstore.

Korean twitter, me2day’s application is very excellent and fantastic developed by ias.

Also Daum’s tvPot - video sharing service also was released too. You can see Korean top playing video from iPhone tvPot player. The tvPot is Korean #1 video service property right now.

Fortunetly Korean govenment decided to finish WIPI regulation from 1th, April 2009. Although KTF, one of telecommunications company in Korea has tried to launch iPhone with Apple, it must be delayed to April in next year.

Some of iPhone developers made small programs as like Korean subway and dictionary for Korean iPhone touch users. But, we must wait for official iPhone release in here. This situaltion is one of a deep disgrace as the largest broadband country in the world.

In May 2006, I made Korean Web 2.0 Logo type gathering Web 2.0 startup service in Korea from 2005 to 2006. After that, I updated some of web services in my blog, but most of them in 2007 and 2008 weren’t done my blank time.

I searched new web services except big portals and gathered them again. Over 70 sites were made from 2007 to 2008. Compared with Silicon Valley, it’s very small.

I’ll make a brief introduction for most of new services with above logos. You can see first logotype in May 2006 too.

I want to introduce some of English based web service made by brilliant Korean young startup. If new startup is appeared, I’ll do again with numbers.

FaceWorthy
FaceWorthy is a social discovery network that allows you to upload photos and gain recognition. Show your best through photos and get people to vote for you. If you collect lots of votes, you get to access special features, and may even earn money.

It is not designed for shy people but here for people who are passionate about expressing themselves and communicating with others. It is for people who have healthy desire to show who they are and get people’s recognition and understanding.

StoryBlender
StoryBlender is an online collaborative video production platform where people can work together to “blend” their media for rich, interactive storytelling. Story Blender CEO Hyoung Yong Joon is the original founder of Cyworld, which is South Korea’s first and most popular social networking community.

StoryBlend’s online editing tool lets users create videos by “blending” images, sound, text, and video clips. When users have created new video blends they can then share it with their friends and the StoryBlend community. (See Techcrunch 40 presentation.)

MusicShake
MusicShake is a Korea-based online music creation service developed and distributed by SilentMusicBand Corp that provides music composing solutions aimed at the general public without previous musical knowledge or expertise. The service lets users create personalized, professional quality music using various tools and pattern-combination methods.

They hope to meet the growing demand for customized ringtones and personalized music that mobile phone users and Internet users have for adding personalized creativity to their personal blogs, websites and social network pages. (See Techcrunch 40 presentation.)

Pagii
Pagii in one of social network sites where you meet new friends around the world. Users can make stylish and creative web pages about anything you like and upload and share your photo with friends, family and oter people and browse and search new friends and enjoy fun activities with a cute pet and talk and play with oter people in Pagii Forum.

It also offers “Friend Feed” is where users can check out their friends’ activities on Pagii. It is based on the most recent actions user’s friends take on the site, including photo uploading, page update, commenting, friending, status update, etc. It has normal social network functions.

PlayTalk
PlayTalk is another microblogging cum social network service inline with Twitter and Jaiku. However, instead of being limited to a mere 140 characters, PlayTalk gives you a more expansive 250—thus you need not limit your post to merely what you ate, you can also throw in a few details about the garnish.

Users can also choose to post photos in addition to text. The service works with mobile phones, iPhones, SMS and MMS. PlayTalk is available in English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. Messages may be tagged according to the content of the post e.g. usual, think, food, culture, sports and games. They may be kept private, for friends only, or available to the public. Posts are dated and time stamped. Networks contribute to the site’s interactive features; there are lounges for different countries, colleges, and high schools.

Papree
Papree is a simple tool to collect interesting pictures on the web. By using ‘Papree button’, users can collect any picture on the web with a single click that is really easy and quite fun to use.

There are gazillions of beautiful pictures out there, so start collecting all the pretty pictures you find. Paprize button is a kind of bookmarket that lets you collect any pictures on the web with a single click. Whenever you find a picture you like on the web, simply click Paprize button.

Sketchpan
Sketchpan is an open oline drawing community site where anybody can participate and share their pictures and animations made by drawing tools. It provides a canvaspan that users can draw, modify pictures with simple method and animationpan that make movie by order of drawing action.

If you share your drawing contents in public, someone can modify yours in togetherpan that lets you utilize collaborative artwork as a team. You can sell this artwork in shoppan too. It’s similar with Oekaki tool. The “pan” means drawing palette.

It’s almost one and a half years to stop blogging Koreacrunch.com. There was no special reason to do that and just wanted to focus on my job of open APIs evangelism for Daum’s 3rd party developers and writing my Korean blog with over 6,000 readers. I guess you may get informations from Web2.0 Asia and Technokimchi.com.

I decided to restart blogging with new prospects not to cover only Korean news that treats less important relatively. I regretted topics were limited in myself in this blog. There have been my own thoughts about global IT news, but I didn’t treated them. Also I has been interested in open source, open standards and open web too.

I’ll cover these topics related with Korean Internet culture although my English writing is very poor. If you’re my old readers in my blog, please encourage me.

Thanks.

Channy

With my lovely children in beautiful Jeju beach in this summer

Recently Google Korea firstly acquired TNC, the famous blog service developing company that has made Textcube (a.k.a Tattertools) similar with Wordpress case. It became buzz in a flash by many famous blogs such as Techcrunch, GigaOM, NY Times, VentureBeat, InformationWeek, The Inquisitr, Epicenter, p2pnet,  Portfolio, WebProNews, AppScout, Webware.com, Valleywag and Pulse 2.0.

They have developed Tattertools as an open source software under GPL and developed and sold Tistory.com to Daum - now Tistory became one of top 20 properties in Korea. Before this acquisition, TNC are preparing Textcube.com resembling Wordpress.com. Surely its success is based on philosophy of open and user-participation service model.

After announcement of acquisition, there are two prospects 1) recovering a lack of local search power by offering new blogging service, 2) giving synergy effects to blogger.com in dull compared with Wordpress and Sixapart’s excellent blogging functions.

But, many Korean people disappointed to read interview of Google Korea in ZDNet Korea. Ms. Jung of Google Korea said “The purpose of TNC acquisition is just for empowering search technique and there is no relationship with increasing blog contents and not to confirm whether the new blog business will be started or not”. They confessed its acquisition just absorbed the man power into Google.

Google has acquired many companies with rich cash. There are successful cases as like Keyhole for map service, Youtube for video contents, whereas some of them were disappeared or depressed as like Dodgeball, Jaiku and Zingku.

Three companies were a promising social network service with mobile capability, especially Jaiku was only competitor against Twitter. But, founders of Dodgeball were disappointed to Google and left their company and Jaiku and Zingku didn’t get registration any more after shopping by Google.

Measuremap.com was closed after “buying famous UI expert, Jeffry Veen” who recenlty left Google again. Feedburner also shows a downward trend that didn’t have offered own advertisement service (FAN) since May in this year. It is a matter of course how weird Blogspot.com is now.

There is a common point that Google is not successful to grow social communication and content-generating after buying services. According to Google’s mission to gathering all of informations for universal access, services based on social activities will be a sad lot. To so called “Information addict” such as Google, social messaging of gossip and small talk may not be treated as an information.

Short messages and blog comments are classified by garbage not to be indexed. It means social communication service may be excluded in the order of priority of Google. But, I knew Google has given efforts to build open platform for social network and communication such as Open Social. But, If Twitter or FriendFeed are acquired by Google, there will be high possibility that they become Google’s another dead ducks.

The Web is not only composed by “information”, which it has been made by human and “communication” called by the media power is one of important part of Web. I think it is a sole vulnerable point of Google. TNC was very hopeful startups for us. It depends on Google that their vague possibility becomes the success case that catches local big players such as Naver and Daum that have a great power of user-generated contents.