SK Communications seeking to overtake Facebook

By Kim Yoo-chul

SK Communications, the nation’s operator of web portal Nate and blogging website Cyworld, said Tuesday that it will step up efforts to catch up with Facebook by offering differentiated services.

``We’ve lost customers to Facebook. With more updates and steady investment for our existing social network service (SNS) platforms, SK Communications will attract users that went to Facebook back,’’ said company CEO Lee Joo-sik in a news conference at its headquarters in downtown Seoul.

``I can say Cyworld users are the first-generation, while Twitter and Facebook users are the second-generation. But updated Cyworld could be the third-generation in terms of categorization of SNS development,’’ said Lee, adding the firm is aiming to become the trend-setter in the third-generation SNS platform.

Cyworld was popular a decade ago. But the social networking site has so far seen a steep fall of page views, mainly due to the sudden rise of Facebook and Twitter.

The number of net visitors declined to 15 million in July from 22 million in January this year, while Cyworld grabbed just 3 million using the site via mobile not traditional PCs, though Facebook and Kakao story were strengthening their client bases.

``Cyworld’s business model was focused on PCs. That’s why we lost users to rival companies such as Facebook. The key point is how SK Communications to attract them again. Advanced Cyworld system will help,’’ said the CEO.

The news conference comes a year after SK Communications suffered from an astonishing data breach. It suffered a hacking attack in which the personal information of 35 million Korean users was compromised.

But the chief executive admitted a major turnaround in profit is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future. ``It’s not easy to see a turnaround in profit within this year. We will try hard. But I can’t say about the exact timing,’’ Lee told reporters.

The rather pessimistic outlook comes after SK Communications failed to yield any visible results from its attempts to add more page views. ``We had expected to see a turnaround either in August or September. But that hope has evaporated,’’ he said.