The success of Naver Japan would be critical in NHN’s efforts to expand to search markets in places other than Korea. / Korea Times |
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
South Korean Internet companies claim they represent the world's best. Too bad they don't have the results to prove it.
Granted, it's hard to dispute their contributions as trendsetters ― online computer games, social networking services and question-and-answer search engines are clearly among the roll call of the coolest Internet inventions of the past decade and Korea is responsible for pushing them out of the gate.
But aside from online game publishers like NCsoft and Nexon, Korean Internet companies have struggled to convert their sophisticated services into profit in markets other than home, learning the hard way that geography still matters in cyberspace, or at least for them.
The most painful experience comes from Japan, the world's second-largest Internet market, whom the Korean Internet companies had aggressively attacked to gain a meaningful share.
The logic for their optimism was simple ― Japan shares similar social and cultural backgrounds with Korea as an east Asian country, allowing the Korean companies to prevail with the same, community-based services they perfected at home.
Of course, Japan now looks more like the valley of death to Koreans than a land of promise.
Last week, SK Communications, the operator of Cyworld (www.cyworld.com), a social networking service that is immensely popular in Korea, announced that it is officially retiring Cyworld's Japanese service.
The company proudly claims that Cyworld, launched in 1999, paved the way for other social media platforms such as Facebook (www.facebook.com) that are changing the way people stay connected and get information.
However, after striking out in the United States, Europe and now Japan, while not doing much better in China and Hong Kong, SK Communications has nothing to show for its creation other than its 23 million Korean Cyworld users.
Perhaps Japan, representing a much more developed mobile Internet culture and where local social networking services like Gree and Mixi were fully established when Cyworld reached its shores in 2005, was not as similar to the Korean market as SK Communications thought.
Cyworld is just the latest of many Korean casualties in the Japanese Internet market. Daum (www.daum.net) announced it is closing the ``Cafe Star'' Web community services it had been operating in Japan since 2003. Oh My News (www.ohmynews.com), the Korean online news site, decided to bail on its Japanese site as well.
The slew of failures leaves NHN in a lonely position as the only major Internet company with a commitment in Japan. If any company can make it in Japan, it would be NHN, the undisputed kingpin of the Korean Internet industry.
The company operates Naver (www.naver.com), Korea's most popular Web site that controls more than 70 percent of the country's search traffic, and Hangame (www.hangame.com), the popular online game portal.
NHN had been determined to flex its muscles in Japan, but its efforts have so far produced mixed results. Hangame Japan (www.hangame.co.jp) is established as a popular destination for Japanese gamers, but the company was forced to close Naver Japan in 2005 after five years of irrelevance.
However, NHN has no intention of missing out on the Japanese search market. And in a rare move in the Internet industry that chews and spits out Web services with regularity, the company is challenging the Japanese market again with the very same brand that failed four years ago.
NHN has been operating a closed beta version of its new Naver Japan (www.naver.jp) since June 15, recruiting a group of 5,000 local Internet users to evaluate the new services. A commercial launch is expected during the next month or August.
The company is betting that its community-based approach to a search engine, which was behind its successful Knowledge Search question-and-answer search engine in Korea, would influence the Web browsing habits of Japanese users.
It remains to be seen whether Naver Japan will gain a meaningful position in a market that is quickly reshaping under the duopoly of Yahoo! Japan and Google. NHN's decision to close its struggling Japanese blog service, Cururu, by the end of the year doesn't inspire any confidence, as the user-generated-content from Naver Blogs and Knowledge Search had been key to the success of Naver's search services in Korea.
NHN could only hope that its new Japanese blog platform, Naver Land (http://naverland.naver.jp), would perform better than Cururu.
The initial feedback from Naver Japan's closed beta testers had been generally positive, although that would be far from a surefire indicator of how the larger group of Japanese users will respond at the start of commercial services.
``NHN has already proven itself as an international player in games, rated for its high-quality products and good planning and creativity. However, getting some results from the search engine will be critical for NHN in getting more revenue from overseas markets,'' said Park Jae-seok, an analyst from Samsung Securities.
``Needless to say, Naver Japan will represent the most critical test.''
Community-based Search?
At first glance, the new Naver Japan looks like a neater version of its Korean sibling. The main page is splashed with green, the distinctive color of Naver's Korean page, with the search bar and category menus ornamented with fancy designs and flash graphics that provide a distinctive comparison to the simple user interface of Yahoo and Google's Japanese sites.
The search menus include the usual suspects in Web search, images and blogs, but also a question-and-answer message board that shows the latest hot topics in cyberspace and a new feature called ``Matome,'' which is a Japanese word for ``arranging.''
Matome follows the success formula of Knowledge Search ― which allowed users to edit search results ― and expands it, making it a cross between Web search and Wikipedia.
Users are allowed to create a page dedicated to a certain topic and fill it with a variety of content, which will be exposed as search results. Users could also create a links collection page for text, images, videos, quotes and chat. For example, a Web page named ``Tokyo Tourism Guide'' could have users posting articles about tourist attractions, latest culture events, restaurant reviews and provide a collection of links on photos, videos and tourism Web sites.
thkim@koreatimes.co.kr
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‘3초면 환자 죽일 수도…’ 막말 간호사 논란
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