Cyworld - the virtual society of Koreans

If people know America with MySpace and YouTube, Japan with Mixi are the most crowded "virtual societies" on the planet, SK Telecom's Cyworld network is also investing and developing. The largest online companion in Korea.

According to SK, the number of members registered to participate in the virtual social network has reached more than 20 million in early February 2007. During the development phase, the number of registered members exceeded 10 million in September 2004, and added the 15 million member of the network in September 2005. Currently, Cyworld has an increase of 10,000 registered members every day. Notably, 950,000 members are retired urban people, aged 50 and over.

Korea is one of the countries with the highest net population rate in the world, this is the image of Cyworld members

Cyworld was launched in 1999, and SK acquired it in 2002. The company now operates branches in 6 countries and territories including China, Japan, USA, Germany, Taiwan and Vietnam.

The profit from this famous network also jumped. At approximately 300 million Totori, a virtual currency is collected daily. Annual sales of the Totori money unit grew to 100 billion won in 2006. The corresponding figure for 2005 was 64 billion won.

The interface of Cyworld is usually based on a mini-hompi, used as a small square window to browse instead of a full-size window. Users share pictures and music with their friends using a separate link.

Despite the increase in profits, Cyworld has reduced momentum in recent years. According to the international website ranking website Alexa.com said, there are more than 1 million daily people accessing that social network in 2004, but statistics have begun to decline while similar communities and the blog service started firing guns on this site. The number of hits there currently averages nearly 2 million times a month. It ranked at 5,585 out of the most visited websites in the world, down 1,331 from 3 months ago.

Before that situation, SK investors have started upgrading for this network to keep up with the latest trends of the web. A Cyworld 2 model was introduced and is expected to be released for the first time in March 2007. In the new version, users can freely build mini personal pages by combining available services such as alarm clock, weather information, calendar, email, search function, Personal blogs, all converging in a single window of the new interface.

Vu Anh Tu