Lee Hyo-sik is Finance Desk editor at The Korea Times. He manages finance-related stories on macroeconomics, banks, stocks, bonds, crypto etc. He is passionate about covering what's happening in Korea's financial industry and explaining it to both Korean and non-Korean readers. You can reach him at leehs@koreatimes.co.kr. Your insights and feedbacks are always appreciated.
Salaried workers building digital human network
By Lee Hyo-sik
Staff Reporter
Kim Sung-tae, a 37-year old reporter at one of the nation's major wire news service providers, regularly posts messages on Twitter through his iPhone about work and other notable daily events, and monitors postings uploaded by other Twitter users.
He is also a member of an online tennis community and plays with other members on the weekend, while maintaining a personal page on the world's largest social networking site Facebook to keep in touch with foreign friends he met years ago while studying in the United States.
Like Kim, a growing number of salaried workers here, mostly in their 20s and 30s, have begun forming the so-called ``digital'' personal networks by taking advantage of the readily available high-speed wired and wireless Internet connections, in conjunction with widely used smartphones and other advanced digital handheld devices.
In its survey of 1,129 salaried employees in their 20s and 30s, online-based job portal, Career, said Monday that 56.8 percent manage at least one social network in cyberspace.
Nearly 62 percent of those who regularly keep in touch with other individuals through various Internet-based social networking tools said they received help from online peers. Workers engaging in online social networking were found to have maintained regular contact with an average of 20.2 individuals.
About 54 percent said they formed the digital human network through a range of local online community sites, including Cyworld, with 42.7 percent citing individual blogs and personal homepages as the primary tool to start cyber relations with other Internet users.
About 43 percent said they established online personal relations through Twitter, which combines the strengths of blogs and instant messaging services and enables users to send and receive short messages on personal computers and mobile devices.
Around 12.6 percent said they sought to build broader human networks in cyberspace through Facebook and other similar Web sites.
An executive at Career projected that the popularity of Twitter, Facebook and other online social networking instruments will make more young salaried employees turn to cyberspace for human interaction, while increasingly moving away from conventional human networking due to a hectic modern lifestyle.
``Besides job performance, having an extensive human network is the key to the success of salaried workers in the workplace. With the wide use of digital devices and high-speed Internet connections, they will have a greater importance in cyberspace in the coming years,'' he said.
By Lee Hyo-sik
회사원들 온라인 인맥 구축에 노력
유력 언론사에서 기자로 활동하는 김성태 (37)씨는 아이폰을 통해 트위터에 업무나 중요한 하루 일정을 포스팅한다. 또한, 다른 트위터 사용자들의 게시물을 본다.
김씨는 또한 온라인 테니스 커뮤니티의 일원이며 주말에 소속 회원들과 게임을 한다. 트위터뿐만 아니라 전세계적으로 큰 소셜 네트워킹 사이트인 페이스북을 통해 수 년 전 유학 중 만난 외국인 친구들과 연락을 주고 받는다.
김씨와 같이 대다수의 20대나 30대 회사원들은 "디지털" 인맥을 구축했으며, 이들은 빠른 인터넷망과 무선 인터넷 접속이나 근래 유행하는 스마트폰이나 다른 진화된 모바일 디지털기기를 통해 자신의 페이지를 유지하는 것으로 알려졌다.
온라인 구직사이트인 케리어는 월요일 20대 및 30대의 1,129명의 회사원들 대상으로 설문 조사한 결과, 56.8 퍼센트가 적어도 하나의 네트워크 사이트에서 활동하는 것으로 밝혀졌다. 이 중 62퍼센트가 여러 인터넷 사이트를 통해 다른 사람들과 연락하며 조언을 받는다고 응답했다. 이같이 사이버공간에서 인맥을 관리하는 사람은 평균 20.2 명과 꾸준히 연락을 하는 것으로 조사됐다.