In a not unrelated topic to yesterday’s post, ZDNet takes a look at the startling progress of Facebook and Twitter in Korea this year, and what local SNS services are doing to respond.

As the article notes, both Twitter and Facebook have captured the Korean imagination in a way that previous internet imports — MySpace, Yahoo, even (until very recently) Google — never managed. The number of Koreans using Facebook has jumped by 50 percent in the last six months to reach more than two million, while debates and news on Twitter now wield a sizeable influence on public opinion.

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Google’s relative anonymity in Korea has long been a symbol of the country’s peculiar mix of extreme high-tech and general disdain for international internet platforms and standards. In a country with some of the fastest internet connections and highest rates of broadband penetration in the world, many websites still use Adobe Flash or ActiveX, and it’s not uncommon for web designers to be completely unaware of Firefox, let alone Chrome.

Even today, Google holds just 1.2 percent of the portal market on Korean PCs. But a look at the figures for mobile devices, from this piece on ZDNet, reveals a very different picture.

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From Korea’s social media news:

• In its 2010 Hot Issues, ZDNet Korea heralds the “scary” levels of growth Facebook has enjoyed in Korea this year. Last month, according to research agency Korean Click, Facebook had almost 6.7 million visitors in Korea, who stayed for an average of 37.3 minutes, and viewed a total of 500 million pages. Of the domestic SNS sites, only Cyworld could match that.As if that weren’t tough enough for local SNS companies, Facebook has launched an all-out offensive to crack the Korean market. Last June, Facebook entered a deal with KT to include the SNS service on regular mobile phones too, while in July, the SNS giant showed off an “open market” application all in Korean. More recently, Facebook also struck a deal with the LG Uplus carrier to exempt users from any data charges incurred while using Facebook on the Oz Generation mobile internet service.While domestic SNS sites have been scrambling to launch or upgrade their own “social services,” they have largely been falling short so far. They have been falling further behind in terms of page views and traffic, and because they’re benchmarking Facebook, many have yet to develop a clear identity.And with Twitter set to open a Korean office next year, things are set to get even tougher for Korea’s own SNS developers.
• Also on ZDNet, the site reveals which search terms have been most popular with netizens this year.

Of no surprise to anyone, Kim Yu-na, American Idol clone Superstar K, Park Ji-sung and Girls’ Generation are all in there (as is Twitter!). For those unfamiliar with them, No 1 and No 2 are smash hit dramas Baker King, Kim Tak Goo and Sungkyungwan Scandal.

• Bloter reports on yet another new development in Korea’s social commerce realm, which seems to be growing, mutating and innovating almost by the minute.This time, it’s a kind of CSR campaign by Korea’s biggest social commerce site, Ticket Monster (or Timon [티몬], as it’s increasingly known). Called 소셜 기부 (somewhat awkwardly renamed “So speCial Give” in English), the campaign aims to overcome the difficulties small- and mid-sized companies (such as Timon) and socially-conscious enterprises face in conducting CSR: namely, already wafer-thin margins and high-production costs.To counter these problems, the So speCial Give campaign will see Timon selling goods from social enterprises at a 25 percent markdown (rather than the usual 50 percent) while also allowing said enterprises to use Timon’s services commission-free.The first such campaign took place from December 10 to 12, and saw Beautiful Coffee, a Korean fair-trade organisation, offering “fair hot chocolate” for 25 percent off. Future campaigns will involve Beautiful Coffee’s sister company Beautiful Store (a string of charitable shops around Seoul), andWe Can, a charity for disabled people, who will be making cookies to raise funds.
• On a similar note, Daum has extended its annual “Make Korea’s Winter Warm Campaign” onto mobile devices.

Run since 2005, Daum’s flagship CSR campaign, in ZDNet’s somewhat apocalyptic turn of phrase, aims to have participants “glance back at your estranged neighbours, and warm up a society that seems to have been left barren by [economic] stagnation.”From this year, whenever someone checks in to the “donations of love” section via Daum’s location-based service Daum Place, or snaps the QR code on the Digital Views installed on stations on subway lines No. 1 to 4, Daum will donate 1,000 won to charity.

After having a think about the direction of this blog, I’ve come to some conclusions:

1) For it to be worthwhile, I need to update it more often and give it a more distinct identity.

2) For me to do that, I need to come up with stuff that perhaps isn’t covered in such depth elsewhere.

3) Given my increasing professional and personal interest in all things social media and tech-related,  why not produce more content about those things?

So, in an experiment starting from today, I’m going to try and post (along with all the other not-so-regular gubbins) regular updates summarising stuff from a few Korean-language sites covering social media and tech issues. There are some undoubted challenges in doing this, not least my still far-from-perfect knowledge of Korean and the tech industry. For these reasons, I would be delighted to hear any (constructive) feedback on mistakes I make. However, I’ll give it a go and see if I have the stamina to get up early a few times a week and post about three or four big stories.

So, without any further ado, here are a few choice bits for today:

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A few months ago, something peculiar happened on my Twitter feed. Having only recently started using my long dormant account, I was slowly building up a list of contacts and news feeds when I got an e-mail saying that someone from my recent past in Korea was now “following” me. That, in itself, wasn’t odd, but his identity did give me a bit of a jolt: It was my 40-something ex-boss at Morning Calm, a man I’d never have pictured being into social networking sites, least of all a foreign and (to me at that point) relatively marginal one such as Twitter.

As a long-standing and very active Facebook user, I had noticed a gradual increase in use among my Korean friends. From virtually zero a couple of years ago, I had befriended perhaps 40 or 50 Koreans over the intervening months. With very few exceptions, however, those friends would conform to a certain pattern, namely, in their 30s or younger, more internationally oriented (due to their work or upbringing) and English speaking. As a result, Facebook’s progress, at least among Koreans I knew, was slow and steady, rather than all-conquering as it had been back home.

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