By Kim Tong-hyung
Yahoo! Korea, which struggles for popularity here, has redesigned itself as a gateway for popular social networking services such as Twitter (www.twitter.com) and Facebook (www.facebook.com) in attempting to attract more traffic.
It bears further watching whether Yahoo’s strategy for establishing a social media hub will be enough to make it matter again, with industry watchers wondering whether the new platform will be anything more than a glorified bookmark.
Yahoo’s patchwork of Internet services also include Google’s Gmail e-mail service, SK Communications’ Cyworld (www.cyworld.com) social networking service, eBay’s Gmarket (www.gmarket.co.kr) online shopping site, Zynga (www.zynga.com) computer games and the popular features of rival web portals like Naver (www.naver.com), Daum (www.daum.net) and Nate (www.nate.com).
Yahoo aims to provide a seamless experience, implementing a single log-in process for a variety of its imported Internet services, which also enables users to check for updates on different social media services without opening a new Web page. Users will also be allowed to customize Yahoo’s main page and add connections for up to 25 other Internet services through the ``My Page’’ menu.
Yahoo officials are hoping that its wealth of globally popular social media services like Twitter, Facebook and Zynga, which built its reputation on games for Facebook users, will provide its distinctive strength over Naver and other Korean Web portals.
Foreign Internet services like Yahoo and Google had been blown away in their competition against the likes of Naver, Daum and Nate, which had managed to do a better job in integrating user-generated content into their search offerings.
With the sudden popularity of smartphones, such as Apple’s iPhone and Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S, ushering in the era of the mobile Web, globally popular services like Twitter and Google, which also has the edge of having its own mobile platform, are finding a growing Korean audience.
According to a recent survey of Korean smartphone users by Internet site Job Korea (www.jobkorea.co.kr), more than 80 percent of the respondents said they use Twitter, in spite of the fact that the San Francisco-based social media giant has yet to open its Korean office.
The blurred geographic boundaries in Internet services are exactly what Yahoo! Korea general manager Kim Dae-sun is looking to exploit.
``Korean Internet users have developed a global appetite and they no longer want to be limited to Internet services tied only to Korea,’’ Kim said in a news conference in Seoul.
``Our one-stop log-in process, which allow users to watch the recent photos and messages of their Facebook and Twitter friends without visiting the websites separately, will be our distinctive strength. We are also in talks with NHN and SK Communications to expand the log-in process for Naver’s e-mail and Cyworld’s personal Web pages.’’
Yahoo’s share in the search traffic barely touches 5 percent, but Kim said the company’s goal is to at least double its share.
Yahoo, which opened its Korean-language website in 1997, enjoyed a bright start as Korea began its broadband Internet era. The website soon lost its supremacy to Daum, which gained popularity in the early 2000s with its Hanmail e-mail services, and now finds itself reduced as an also-ran in a search market dominated by Naver.