Peter Cashmore posts Cyworld US Launches - Will It Topple MySpace? flashshot of priavate beta of Cyworld US site. Now this site is closed. Cyworld US is the American version of the popular korean social networking site simliar with MySpace or Facebook. Cyworld has opened local sites such as Cyworld China and Cyworld Japan. It’s same interface of korean version. You can see also pop-up based mini window including various functions via Mashable’s screenshot.
Peter thought it will be very popular among pre-teens and teens, but there are many users including teenager, housewives and university students. It’s not first korean popular social network service, but it offers various digital items such as wallpaper, furniture and backgroud music to decorate so called one’s mini-hompy. Cyworld brought in $12.5 million on sales of $110.4 million to sell these digital items last year.
I think global culture is different from korean’s, so it’s not sure to succeed this service. But, Marc Canter is working with the Korean Cyworld team to get Cyworld started over there. It will be exciting to see how Korean internet concepts can be transferred to Western countries. Cyworld has to face a market with a lot less broadband penetration in the US and compete with Myspace and Facebook too. Already Daum, the korean community based portal and owner of lycos.com launched Lycos Planet, same concept of Cyworld in last year. But, it’s not popluar yet.
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- Jung Dae Hwan Says
July 27th, 2006 at 2:58 amWell, seeing how Cyworld was become a huge Korean trend, I think it will attract global users. True, Global trend is different than Korean, but anything can change. I truly think that at the beginning, pre-teens and teens will use it first. Then it moves on to older girls and boys as that generation gets older. As the previous generation becomes role models that use Cyworld, the younger generation will use it as well. It’s pretty logical. Besides, Myspace is pretty crude, simple, and a bit ugly. It also attracted tons of negative attention. Seeing how Cyworld is much safer, I think Cyworld would be the better choice in most people’s minds.
May 2nd, 2006 at 9:44 pm
[…] I have been looking into Cyworld myself since all my Korean friends have them and done some personal analysis and am surprised to learn that it will launch in US, finally. I have my doubts, like KoreanCrunch mentioned but only time will tell. To be honest, I’ll be surprised if it succeeds outside of Korea, I can’t see Americans willing to pay for wallpaper and mp3 background music amongst other things you can do in Cyworld (I haven’t read enough into Cyworld’s US strategy yet and I am only guessing it is based on the current Cyworld model in Korea, please correct me if I am wrong on this). As a user, part-time Cyworld Korea user (I use my girlfriends account since I can’t register in Korea w/o ID number, but soon I can! ) . I actually have a Cyworld China account, but gave up because I couldn’t link to my friend’s Cyworld Korea sites, at that time. […]
June 22nd, 2006 at 12:56 am
[…] Look at the opposite case, Cyworld U.S. is noted by KoreaCrunch and Mashable as a potential myspace challenger. While its true that Cyworld creates a social networking environment its method are completely different. Cyworlds is more comparable to companies like Hive7, Habba Hotel and Gaia Online which will historically atracts pre-teen through teens. A very differnt age catagory from myspace’s. […]
August 4th, 2007 at 12:51 am
[…] I have been looking into Cyworld myself since all my Korean friends have them and done some personal analysis and am surprised to learn that it will launch in US, finally. I have my doubts and concerns, like KoreanCrunch mentioned but only time will tell. To be honest, I’ll be surprised if it succeeds outside of Korea, I can’t see Americans willing to pay for wallpaper and mp3 background music amongst other things you can do in Cyworld (I haven’t read enough into Cyworld’s US strategy yet and I am only guessing it is based on the current Cyworld model in Korea, please correct me if I am wrong on this). As a user, part-time Cyworld Korea user (I use my girlfriends account since I can’t register in Korea w/o ID number, but soon I can! ) . I actually have a Cyworld China account, but gave up because I couldn’t link to my friend’s Cyworld Korea sites, at that time. […]