LinkedIn versus Facebook in Korea

As elsewhere around the world, social networking in South Korea is in a rapid state of flux, in no small measure because of the proliferation of smart phones and the social capabilities that mobile devices make possible.  As noted in earlier posts, social networking via Cyworld arrived half a decade before Facebook appeared in the U.S.  However, with the arrival of Apple's iPhone near the end of 2009 and the rapid proliferation of Android devices, both Facebook and Twitter began to gain significant market share here.

Gigaom has an interesting article entitled "LinkedIn and Facebook:  Personal Versus Professional in the Identity Wars."    Like many users of internet services, I've found myself much more comfortable with LinkedIn than with Facebook, precisely because the former deals with professional identity rather than close family or personal ties. I suspect that Korean users of both services have noted this difference as well, especially since the boundaries between personal and professional, culturally speaking, are different in Korea than in the West.  This much can be seen from the rather dramatic differences between Cyworld and Facebook.  When it comes to social networking, it seems apparent that one size doesn't fit all.

Korean Social Networking Trends in the Smartphone Era

This is a follow-on to the previous post and earlier posts about social networking in Korea.  The Joongang Daily has an interesting article with data from Metrix showing what happened to social network service traffic in Korea during the year following arrival of the Apple iPhone and the so-called "smart phone shock" here.  As shown in the accompanying graphic (click on it to see a larger version), although Korea's homegrown Cyworld still has far more members than Facebook or Twitter, the latter two services have relatively more pageviews---many more per user!

There are several main reasons for the relative success of Facebook and Twitter in the face of a well-established Cyworld that was already dominant in the Korean market and had operated here for nearly half a decade before Facebook was even invented in the U.S.   First, Cyworld was designed as a Korean language service, with Korean users in mind.   It failed in its efforts to penetrate such international markets as the U.S., Germany, Taiwan and Japan.  Second, while Facebook and Twitter took advantage of the mobile broadband and smartphone revolution, Cyworld neglected Apple's iPhone and the new Android phones, instead concentrating on the outmoded Windows mobile platform.  Finally, the internet is inherently a global phenomenon.  Such SNS services as Facebook and Twitter allow networking throughout the world, across most national borders.  As the Joongang Daily article points out, Cyworld's image of being a Korean company rather than an international one was a big obstacle.

Twitter Now Available in Hangul 트위터 한국어 서비스 시작

As reported in the Joongang Daily and widely noted elsewhere, Twitter has launched a Korean-language service, with some fanfare.  The co-founder of Twitter held a press conference in Seoul to announce this development.

As readers of this blog are well aware, I'm very interested in the role of language in Korea's remarkable digital development.  If you are new and doubt this, just do a search for "language" using the Search This Blog feature to the right and see how many entries turn up!  Or, consider the following.

• South Korea is the world's most highly networked nation, yet it is also one of four countries in the world where Google does not have a substantial share of the search market.  Why?  Because of the strength of Naver, which is a Korean-developed, Korean-language-based intranet of sorts. (see one of many earlier posts).


• Language was a major factor in explaining the long-delayed arrival of the Apple iPhone in the South Korean market.  In important respects, it is only because of the "iPhone shock" or, more broadly the "smartphone shock" that Facebook and Twitter are gaining market share here.  However, Cyworld remains by far the dominant social networking service in the Korean market, in no small part because it is a Korean-language service, designed from the ground up for a Korean market.

Despite the phenomenal growth of the internet and the emergence of "smart" digital media, language remains a basic element of communication flows and patterns, and nowhere is this more evident than inside Korea and among Koreans worldwide.  The surprising element is that so many non-Korean companies actually think they can succeed in Korea while using only English or other languages.

Facebook versus The Korea Communications Commission

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) is in the news again, throughout the tech blogs and even in the mainstream press around the globe.  The KCC, formed in 2008 by the incoming Lee Myung Bak administration, is South Korea's top communications policy and regulatory agency.  This time it is in the news for issuing what The Register called a "stern warning" to Facebook about its privacy policies.

As reported by IDG, the KCC sent a letter to Facebook indicating that it is in breach of South Korean data privacy laws and needs to do a better job of getting consent from users when getting their personal information.  The KCC said the U.S.-based company has 30 days to respond to the complaint, so this may be a developing story.

Much of the blog and mainstream press coverage of this development, while interesting, fails to convey adequately the following obvious points.

• Traditional conceptions of privacy in Korea, and in Korean language web content and services, are not at all the same as ideas about privacy in the West and other parts of the world.


• Social networking in Korea, epitomized by Cyworld, and social networking in the U.S., led by Facebook, have significant differences.  As noted in earlier posts, even though Cyworld swept through the Korean internet experience almost half a decade before Facebook appeared, it cannot simply be treated as the Korean equivalent of Facebook (as noted in earlier posts on social networking.)


• Notably, Facebook did not have much of a presence at all in Korea until the arrival of Apple's iPhone about one year ago.


• Finally, it seems to me that the KCC complaint to Facebook represents another excellent illustration of the global scope of the internet.  While the activities of Facebook impinge upon Korean society and Korea's laws, the question of what impact the KCC complaint will ultimately have on Facebook's behavior is an interesting one.   Some months earlier, when the Korean government sought to regulate how users could log  in to Google's Korean Youtube site, that company reacted by closing the site.  Subsequently Korean users of Youtube flocked to sites hosted in other countries to make use of the service.