Yesterday's article in the Korea Times certainly caught my eye. Daum (www.daum.net ), the country's second most popular portal site, and Paran (www.paran.com ) have announced this month that they are supporting Google's ``Open Social'' initiative. Open Social is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) developed by Google and other Internet companies like MySpace that aim to create a unified system of tools at different social networking sites and allow interoperability of applications. Industry watchers believe that Daum's commitment in Open Social could start discussions over the development of an open platform and common service standards for Korean social networking sites.
Although Daum has announced support for the Open Social initiative, it is significant that Naver and Cyworld have not, at least not yet.