Those of us in the US can finally get our very own minihompies in the newly launched US version of the South Korean social network CyWorld. Minihompies are now called MiniHomes in the US version and they are these strange little spaces for user avatars (MiniMe) and cartoon charms that people apparently spend real money on. Most of the charms appear to cost 5 acorns – the CyWorld currency (around 50 cents?) though purchasing more acorns with cash will not be enabled on the US site until next month. So spend your acorns carefully when souping up your hompie.
The new US site is experiencing some technical problems on its first day, account creation is a little messy but you can go in and look around the site.
According to a report by Katie Fehrenbacher, CyWorld parent company SK Communications has set up a 30 person office in San Francisco, spent around $10 million to the US version and pledges to spend whatever it takes to be succesful in the new market. Still to come are a mobile play and music sales through CyWorld. The company already has localized versions in Japan, China and Taiwan. Localization for most of the rest of the world is in the works.
Up to 90% of South Koreans under the age of 20 are reported to be registered on CyWorld, a market share even MySpace must be envious of. Whether CyWorld can translate its success in one country elsewhere is a great test case concerning the challenges of localization in the social networking space.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the vast majority of US users will prefer the wide open space and clumsy code of MySpace to the minihompies, acorns and silly cartoon avatars of CyWorld. I suppose the employment screening perils of MySpace could be averted if you were able to say “that wasn’t me – that was my MiniMe!” Whatever.
If MySpace and Facebook are struggling to define themselves as places that include young adults with money, how hard is that going to be for CyWorld? Perhaps in other parts of the world very young children make frequent micro-payment online purchases online (see Finland’s Habbo Hotel – $30m in twenty cent transactions), but I don’t think that’s common practice in the US. Perhaps they are targetting the demographic of adults who love HelloKitty, perhaps I’m wrong and will be surprised.
One notable limitation of the system is that US users are not able to make friends with users in other countries and data can’t be ported from one country’s CyWorld to another. But I guess it’s all about the acorns, anyway.
Much too complicated for our mostly “stupid” US audience …
Worst captcha experience ever. I tried 5 times to register and it says I failed the Captcha test every time. They need some more QA.
Having major problems with the site in Firefox 1.5. IE seems to work fine.
Yeah, they’re having problems now. I don’t see the captcha image in FF; in IE I see a broken image. Guess we’ll have to wait a bit longer.
It is suprisingly fun to play around with and pretty well designed.
silly cartoon avatars of CyWorld: are you trying to say that 90% of South Koreans under 20 are silly? That’s kind of what it sounds like.
BTW, why did the title of this change from “This is nuts: CyWorld US opens for use” to “Massive Korean Social Network CyWorld Launches in US”?
I can’t speak for anyone in South Korea, but I think these avatars are silly. I think the whole thing is massively nuts.
I feel Cyworld to US reminds me fancy mobile phones popular in Asia. Txt msg has been popular for years in Asia but just recently caught up in US. Would Cyworld follow the same fate? Americans are notoriously indifferent to fancy features and gadgets, Cyworld represents the Asian culture symbol just like cartoon animation movies, kungfu, yes, it will catch some favor in US, but would it become main stream? I doubt, afterall, culture defines everything.
Why did you change the title of the post? It said ” This is nuts! Cyworld…..”
Why did you change it?
What about these avatars do you find silly? Is it the fact that they’re so childish? or the fact that you have to pay real money for items in their rooms?
Finally a web 2.0 site that really deserves the “beta” status… nothing seems to work as it should on that site. Maybe they should take it back to Alpha status and put some more time into it.
So, they’re trying to bring Gaia Online to the US? Amazing!
I’m going to go out on a wild, crazy limb here and say that this doesn’t have much of a chance. Gaia already has a lead in the “customize your avatar” paper-doll area, which is, to be fair, addictive to a lot of people. In any case, success in these things is really a matter of chance, not money. Think of Orkut, the Google-backed social networking site. It’s might be owned by what is probably the most influential company on the Web, but Myspace still kicks its ass when it comes to the social-network market.
I think squirrels would love it!
Eh, another social networking site that you can add to the other 100+ that have launched. I dont think something like this will stick in the US.
South Korea is for all purpose an IE-only country. Most Web designers there have very little clue about the world outside IE, ActiveX and their cherished EUC-KR encoding. My brother-in-law is one of the few Korean web designers I know who will code so that sites work in all browsers. But then again, he’s moved to LA…
CyWorld is a huge hit in South Korea. While it may look too “difficult” for the “stoopid Yanks”, but it may not be; the Korean version was actually designed with what they call _com-maeng_ ie “computer-blind” people, people with little experience with computers. There’s an image editing system in the Korean version, people who’ve never heard of Photoshop [not that they're comparable, of course] can create or edit images and post them. The whole thing is also built on the concept of social network, the Asian way. Members set up the relationship degree with other members, using vocabulary usually used in family relationships. The stuff they buy – mostly via mobile phones – is not only for themselves, but are also given out to “relations”, for birthdays or else.
I don’t like it – although I would like it very much if I was a stakeholder – and I am not sure it translates well into the Western mind. But then again, it’s an Asian website, and they’re based in SF, there’s quite a lot of young Koreans who might be attracted, as well as other Asian-Americans. Hit or miss, I’d say.
I think they will marry in th Cyword.
To buy a dummy baby by cash.
Truthfully I should admit I haven’t actually tried CyWorld but I’d like to add my vote that this will stay in a small niche market and never reach MySpace status. CyWorld appears to thrive on cuteness, which is essentially the the sole focus of anything youth-geared in Asia (I just came back from a year in Taiwan). America doesn’t share that at all.
I also think the MySpace attitude towards layout (the erm, ability to fully express oneself, aka splatter pukalicious CSS everywhere) is one of the major reasons MySpace stuck. With the exception of the avatars and rooms (which cost money to furnish), CyWorld seems a little static. At least in comparison to MySpace.
If you think avatars are stupid and American people are so indifferent about having virtual selves, what’s your take on Second Life? Much of what you get out of Cyworld is very simliar to that from gaming experiences.
Of course, Cyworld will never be where MySpace is. Well, nothing will eve be. However, it’ll create a respectable challenge for many other social networking services.
^^ fighting! cyworld!
cyworld is unlikely to win american teen’s hearts. and myspace will never get popular in korea or china. they are different animals and can only live in their own habitats. take a look at sohu.com, one of the most popular portal in china. you will be bombarded by all kinds of pup-ups and fancy ads without mercy or respect, which is unthinkable in US.
it’s true that most korean commercial websites only work in IE. this is due to their overwhelming usage of ActiveX.
Korea had youtube, google maps-like multimedia services since like at least 6 years ago, and at that time, alternatives like flash wasn’t so advanced and ajax not yet ‘discovered’, so korean developers turned to activex, (then IE was still the best browser available, netscape was shitty) to provide advanced features. it’s like they were trying to povide web2.0 services on web 1.0 technology.
that became the habit of the developers, and now it’s a big problem. IE7 is around the corner and IE7 has activeX disabled by default. firefox, linux and mac users are slowly growing, and with this ajax and flash8/9, korean developers are trying to make their services ActiveX-less and browser-independent, but it’s taking too much time and money because they practically have to rebuild the whole damn thing. but efforts are nonetheless being put in.
cyworld in korea only works properly in IE. but oh well, it’s good to see that Cyworld US seems to be compatible with all major browsers.
It’s interesting how TechCrunch and Mashable differ in its readership. Mashable seems to have very naive readers…or worst, the only readers are part of the company being profiled.
I left a comment stating how these avatars are similar to anime and appeal to the asian markets because of their shy teen and preteen culture…and I got slammed.
marshall is right..cyworld will be as popular in the u.s. as hello kitty. with youtube, myspace, facebook, etc. etc….how many u.s. teens are going to spend their time with avatars and talking bubbles? and their business plan is to have the members spend real money to decorate their little virtual corner? if it was free, u.s. teens would not even be interested. i honestly hope the parent company blows 30 mill on this u.s. site to learn a good lesson on market research.
http://us.cyworld.com/jclove
ironically, i’m probably going to get a korean cyworld since i cannot connect with the korean cyworld with the usa site.
ddf
just got back from korea, where I saw a demo of CyWorld. i think it’s very culture specific, and will not find resonance in Europe or the US, but will do well in Asia.
your right i also think that it can help asia a lot
thanks. . . . .
^_^
FREE CODE = DEATH to CyWorld in USA
Fortunately – users in the US have many options, and CyWorlds – take-it-or-leave-it from their collection of graphics and mini items is not likely to appeal to many myspace users.
MySpace may be terrible tecnnically – and not appeal to the geek “technorati” in elegance – but it is King with users – and it’s easy to see why:
FREEDOM
The fundamental problem is diversity with the CyWorld Approach – MySpace has created a huge ecosystem of companies like http://www.skem9.com http://www.blemeshack.com http://www.glit...er-graphics.com http://www.dolliecrave.com http://www.myonda.com http://www.createblog.com
the list and diveristy of sites serving different interests – with different layouts, graphics, video, music etc. to customize your profile – or ANY OTHER profile on another social network is astounding. There are litterally millions upon millions of items from thousands of sites. CyWorld only offers their items – yes for cute acorns, but C’mon?? Who would pay? All the sites offer Free Code – that you can put on any blog, website, profile, wherever…and they are not going away.
http://www.blemeshack.com has even launched a meta search engine to search all the other sites to find these free items and the free code…
You Tube is another Major market force – in distributing their video codes free – they have grown to be the market leader – and the dozens of video offerings that have followed – have all had to offer their video codes for distrbution – to MySpace profiles, blogs, and anywhere else…
Other social networks will grow – and in time – one may top myspace – but it will be based on leveraging all the FREE decoration and enhancement codes ALREADY out there… not by building a closed walled community – and trying to trick users with cutesy garbage into paying for a poorer choice of items.
Look at Tag World – which has tried to push and push it’s own “widgets” (technically elegant and loved by techies) to enhance your profile – after tons of money spent – it’s numbers still suck. Lost Cherry is a good example of an SN that is embracing all of the MySpace content sites – and enhancing some messaging features – and growing like a rocket. They have another revenue idea which is getting users to review advertisers offerings more closely – in exchage for points – but they are doing nothing to try to lock users in, and fully support HTML grabbed from any where – and stored in users bleme Shacks.
In the end – the equation is simple:
Free Code + Leveraging Existing Content + Demographic focus => Social Networking success.
Hi there.
I’m looking to hire on a full time basis a web/print designer & production person who speaks, reads, write and designs in Korean. If anyone knows some folks who are looking I would greatly appreciate it. The salary is 50K and the position is in Oakland California. Please email or call me at stevek@filtertalent.com 415 284-3061.
Many Thanks,
Steve
PRESS DA BUTTON
Speaking of South Korea:
The people of South Korea would despise George W. Bush.
Bush is a raging racist.
Bush committed hate crimes of epic proportions and with the stench of terrorism (indicated in my blog).
And I do solemnly swear by Almighty God that Bush committed other hate crimes of epic proportions and with the stench of terrorism which I am not at liberty to mention.
Many people know what Bush did.
And many people will know what Bush did—even to the end of the world.
Bush was absolute evil.
Bush is now like a fugitive from justice.
Bush is a psychological prisoner.
In any case, Bush will go down in history in infamy.
Respectfully Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang, J.D. Candidate
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
(I can type 90 words per minute. In only 7 days, posts basically like this post of mine have come into existence—all over the Internet (hundreds of copies). One can go to Google right now, type “George W. Bush committed hate crimes of epic proportions and with the stench of terrorism,” hit “Enter,” and find more than 550 copies indicating the content of this post. All in all, there are probably more than 2,000 copies on the Internet indicating the content of this post—it has, in a way, become headline news. One cannot be too dedicated when it comes to anti-Bush activities. As I looked back at my good computer work, I thought how fun and easy it was to do it.)
“GEORGE W. BUSH IS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN U.S. HISTORY” BLOG OF ANDREW YU-JEN WANG
_________________
I am not sure where I had read it before, but anyway, it goes kind of like this: “If only it were possible to ban invention that bottled up memories so they never got stale and faded.” Oh wait—off the top of my head—I think it came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.
eventually, cyworld withdraws from united states.. too bad.
Great info, thanks for sharing
you know i really wanted to register in Cyworld but i don’t know how to. . . .
please give me some advice ^_^
just visit my friendster. . . .
thanks. . . .
^_^