By Yoon Ja-young
Enswers is advancing into the U.S. market, having taken over Soompi, a website dedicated to hallyu, or Korean wave.
Enswers, announced Monday that it had acquired Soompi, the biggest online community in English language dedicated to Korean and other Asian celebrities, music and dramas. The two parties, however, decided not to disclose the price.
Founded in 2007, Enswers, one of the country’s most successful IT startups, is known for its video search technologies. Users find the video they want among tons of material on the Web, through the firm’s its audio and video signal processing and large-scale clustering technology. It provides video monitoring solutions and video search technology to portals, and advanced into the Japanese market last year with a monitoring service on World Cup games online.
Soompi started as the personal website of Susan Kang, a Korean American, dealing with Korean culture. It attracts 1.4 million daily visitors and page views average 22 million. Over 90 percent of the members are non-Koreans. The community is depending mostly on the website’s 100 volunteers and 1 million members. Its users are very active, with offline meet-ups continuing in some 50 countries around the world.
“Enswers has been looking to advance into overseas markets, through a media outlet dedicated to hallyu. Soompi was in need of good technology and a development team. We decided that the two satisfy the needs of each other,” a representative for Enswers said.
Enswers plans to set up Soompi Media this month, and launch the new Soompi site within the first half of this year by adding news on Korean pop culture and the video search technology of Enswers.
Lee Jun-pyo, an Enswers executive, will be heading Soompi Media, but Susan Kang, the website’s founder will continue leading the community as “Chief Evangelist.”
“We determined that hallyu would be the best content that could go global when coupled with our technology. Soompi inspired us most in this determination,” said Jack Kim, Enswers CEO. He said that the new business would prove the excellence of the country’s video search technology.
The deal made Enswers the first Korean start-up to take over a venture business in Silicon Valley. Enswers received investment from Softbank Ventures in 2008, followed by KT and Stonebridge Capital the following year.