Social networking is leading the latest future wave on the Internet. At left is a screen capture from “Club Audition,” a social networking game, while the photo on the right shows the Cyworld homepage, Korea’s biggest networking site.



By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter

The wall between social-networking sites and portals is being taken down.

Online community sites such as Cyworld are evolving to provide Web search and news services on their top pages. At the same time, portals are helping its visitors to form networks via a web of blogs and other online communities.

Cyworld, the largest social networking site in Korea with more than 22 million users, recently revamped its main page. The new outfit has a bigger search window on the top of the screen and a real-time list of most searched keywords on the right side, which has been a trademark of Naver portal.

The page also displays a news list in the center of the screen, making it look just like big portal sites such as Naver. The only noticeable difference is that orange is Cyworld's predominant color, while green rules at Naver.

``The page view has been rapidly increasing since we strengthened the content, such as user-create videos,'' said Lee Hae-yeol, Cyworld's executive in charge of its business. ``We want to use this increasing traffic to create various portal services and profit models.''

Cyworld uses the Empas search engine, which is owned by the same company SK Communications. The company hopes that the transformation of Cyworld will help it attract the visitors of traditional portal sites, such as Naver and Daum.

Portals, on the other hand, have been implementing various social-networking techniques. Naver, the largest portal site, provides free blogs and allows them to connect with each other via a buddy system, just like U.S. online social network directories such as Facebook or MySpace. Buddies can also give virtual gifts, such as songs, special fonts and wallpaper, to each other.

Portals are not the only ones embracing the social-networking concept to improve profitability.

Audition, is an online game where the users control their characters to dance to the tune of Korean and Western pop songs in groups. The company had some 40,000 concurrent users during its peak, a moderate number for a free online game in Korea. But an average user spends 28,000 won per month to buy various virtual items such as clothes, shoes and fashion accessories for their game characters, which is unusually high considering that many of its users are teenagers.

Such a high per-user revenue and its low attrition rate, says the game's publisher Yedang Online, is thanks to its unique system of ``families,'' or Fam. The company let the Fams have their own homepages where members can chat with each other, like they do in any other online communities provided by social-networking sites. Most members upload their photos and they frequently have offline meetings, which in turn make their bonds in the virtual world tighter.

The concept of social networking on the Internet flourished in South Korea earlier than any other nation. Iloveschool, an alumni network site, showed in the 1990s that helping people find their old friends on the Internet can be a profitable business.

Then Cyworld took over the reign to dominate the market. It provides each of its users a small pop-up window, which is called a Minihompi ― short for mini-homepage, where he or she can blog, upload photos and play music. A song usually costs 500 won ($0.50). Wallpapers and other decorations for their minihompis cost a little more than that.

The popularity of such social networking sites, however, began to wane from last year, as people have become fully connected with each other on the Internet and do not expect more networking in the virtual world. Iloveschool, for example, is only ranked 439th on Rankey.com's most visited Web site list in Korea.

Not to repeat the fall of the alumni networking site, SK Communication has been trying to transform Cyworld as a portal site while not deserting its 22 million loyal users. The company has been acquiring a few companies and services such as Empas ― a search engine, Egloos ― a blog service, and Nateon ― an instant messaging service, to create synergy from them.

The converging of social networking and search engine sites in Korea is likely to be a case study model for Web companies in other nations. Many major global social networking and portal services such as Google, Facebook, Youtube and MySpace have all been struggling in South Korea, but they have been expanding Korean operations and hiring local engineers and marketers to learn from the cutting-edge market.

indizio@koreatimes.co.kr