Web Knows Where It Is, Where You Are
Mapping on Internet Adds Value to Online Services
By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
With the presidential election just a day away, political parties and newspapers are most likely busy predicting voters' minds, as results of opinion polls for up to six days before an election day cannot be announced.
Meanwhile, an Internet firm thinks that it can provide a rough guide on the geographical distribution of the candidates' approval rating.
Daum, the second largest portal site of Korea, is the first in the world to come up with the Web metric system, which gauges the popularity of politicians by region. By carefully measuring the number of news pages viewed by each user and by tracking their location, the site can publish the real-time rankings on political news items by province and major cities.
On Monday morning, for example, Chung Dong-young, the candidate of the United New Democratic Party, appeared to be the most popular subject for readers in the southwestern Jeolla provinces, where people used to support more liberal candidates in previous elections. In the conservatives' haven of Daegu city, readers opted for articles featuring Park Geun-hye, a Daegu native who supports Grand National Party and its candidate Lee Myung-bak.
The regional rankings service finds out the location of each reader, without violating their privacy, and takes statistically relevant data, Daum says.
``We have been doing Web services for a long time, so we have accumulated enough data to identify the location of users without tracing their IP address,'' its spokesman Lee Seung-jin said.
According to Lee, Daum's system uses complicated ``data mining'' techniques to analyze each computer's history ― which Web site it has visited previously. The method is not always 100 percent accurate, especially when the PC is shared by multiple users from different regional backgrounds. However, it still can show the region's general trend because the amount of data is so massive, Lee said. The firm has filed a patent for this technique.
Daum's idea of using the geographic Web metrics for political research is one of the latest inventions in the era of Web 2.0. Many big Internet firms such as Google and Yahoo have already launched street map, satellite services and other applications in and out of Korea. Furthermore, they are opening the geographical data source to the public, to encourage outside firms and programmers to develop cleverer and more creative Web services.
For example, ParkingSearch.com borrows Yahoo's street map data to provide parking information in the United States. When a user types in a town's name or a zip code, the site then gives a list of available parking lots in the area, also showing a map of the nearby areas. The site boasts that it can locate more than 100 million parking spaces in the country.
Google is another leading player in the field. The company has been allowing outsiders to utilize its two popular geography services Google Maps, which shows street maps and shop information, and Google Earth, which show satellite images of the earth. An example is a Web poll service by Vizu.com. On the site, users can create a poll on a specific subject for other users to participate in. The result is usually shown in a pie chart, but it can also display the geographic distribution of each vote on Google Maps by using colorful map pins.
Firms operating in South Korea have had trouble in offering detailed satellite images to users because of the strict national security law. But the local firms are fast catching up in the global trend.
On Monday, Yahoo Korea said it opened its geographic sources to users. Even casual bloggers who do not have an in-depth knowledge in Web programming can insert maps and satellite images onto their Web pages by simply copying-and-pasting programming codes, called a Widget.
The Internet firms do not charge users for the geographic data. Instead, they hope the service can raise their reputation and create more traffic to their site.
``Sharing is what the industry is heading toward,'' said Sunny Park, a spokeswoman for Yahoo Korea. ``We hope our assets can be spread and developed further.''
Sometimes, firms are not as philanthropic. They are creating revenue from the location data service in a number of ways. Google has set up its Adsense advertising system to deliver ads of relevant topics to customers in a specific region ― German ads to German visitors and Korean ads to Korean visitors.
KT, Korea's telephone giant, which launched an Internet TV service last year, is even more ambitious. The firm is to apply the geographic mapping service in delivering user-tailored ads to its Internet TV service users from next year.
``We can deliver user-oriented advertisements, depending on his or her taste, favorite programs and the location of his house,'' said Chung Man-ho, executive vice president of KT's Growing Business Group, adding that it is a year-long marketing technique in the telecommunications industry.