CyWorld: When Habbo Hotel meets Blogging

The most fascinating lesson I learned from my week in Korea was the phenomenon that is CyWorld.

To those familiar with our book or this blogsite, it is like marrying Habbo Hotel with mobile blogging. And a sure-fure hit. With already 15 Million users, CyWorld has become the must-have service for the 20 year olds in Korea. And to put it in context, there are more bloggers on CyWorld in Korea than all other bloggers in the rest of the world today..

What is it? Well, first of all its your mini home page (called minihomepi) where you have much like the rooms in Habbo Hotel, your miniroom and, of course, your digital persona in the form of an avatar, as your minime. The miniroom can be decorated like your home or office, or it could be aspirational of what you'd like your real life to be. You can invite friends to visit your miniroom, where you can exhibit your pictures, blogs, etc. Much like the use of premium SMS to pay for content and services in Habbo Hotel, in CyWorld you buy "acorns" and these form the trading currency in CyWorld.

It gets interesting when we add the blogging part. CyWorld is provided by the internet arm of SK and there is direct mobile blogging opportunity from the mobile arm of SK. The traffic in pictures and blogging posts is enormous, with picture posting and viewing of picture galleries considered now the most addictive part of CyWorld. Mobile blogging (mostly for CyWorld) is the second biggest value-add service in Korea today, ahead of music, behind only gaming revenues, averaging 3.40 USD per user.

But its not only pictures. Koreans want to have music in the background, and Universal Music in Korea already sells 100,000 full-track songs per month just as background music in CyWorld. And while it is a youthful service attracting those between ages 15 - 25, there are plenty of older users already, such as several politicians who have set up CyWorld pages to interact with their voters. And now, in 2005, we see CyWorld taking on the real world. They already expanded into China with another 700,000 users there already.

Marrying two of our favourite services - and case studies from our book - Habbo Hotel and blogging. This is a surefire winner, and yes, of course this was going to be done in Korea first. Amazing.

Comments

[Kang-Bao]

i was wondering though, do you know when the american CyWorld is going to be released? i have been trying to find around when they think its going to be released.

[alan moore]

good question Kang-Bao. we don't know. Tomi any idea? Or who can we ask.

In fact it seems insane that it hasn't been launched anywhere else.

Alan

[alan moore]

More info on Cyworld

http://theage.com.au/articles/2005/05/06/1115092684512.html?oneclick=true

Alan

[alan moore]

Link to Wikipedia entry on Cyworld

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyworld

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi Kang-bao

I have not yet heard any definite plans to launch an American version of CyWorld. I think the Chinese launch was an experiment to see if the concept can work abroad. I am certain CyWorld will be either launched or copied into every market. A third of the whole population already as members? This is going to be huge everywhere.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[kang bao]

well, i have been looking around and i notice japan, china and of course Korea have, but i have yet to see one stitch of info on an American CyWorld, or anything cyworld at all. i am reading the same stuff over and over trying to find out something, just anything..

so if you can find out anything please hit me up.. i have asked a much of people and this is the only place i get responce..

hope they share some info on this stuff sometime.. hopefully soon.

[jaeroe]

If SK is behind this, and they are also behind the new MVNO Helio in the US, i'll bet they have something in the works

[raju]

http://us.cyworld.com is online. Deutsche Telekom and T-Online announced the launch of Cyworld Germany for December 2006. They grouped up with Cyworld to built up Cyworld portals all over Eupope.