Go where the market is
If you were Korean, you might heard of Cyworld which is the biggest social network website in Korea. However, you might not heard of MySpace or Facebook. Both MySpace and Facebook is the biggest top two social network websites in the U.S. They ignored Asian market before, but recently they start to open Asian local website with Asian languages. The reason is that Asia Pacific users are getting larger. Friendster has become the largest social network in the region with 35 million Asia Pacific users, out of 50 million worldwide. They also cannot ignore the Chinese market. In China, 230 million people are using the Internet, more than in the U.S.
Localization
Myspace opened Korean website with Korean in March. To localize in Korea, they created MyspaceTV and Music contents. They judged that Korean go wild with enthusiasm. They also think that UCC is bit hit in Korea, so by providing place to contest like MyspaceTV, Korean will visit and use a lot.
Opinion
I believe that the choice to open Asian website and trying localization was good choice for both Myspace and Facebook, because Asian market is bigger. However, I think that they should try harder to localize.
I have used Cyworld for a long time. I signed up Facebook recently and it was not handy for me. The interface was different and culture was different. For example, Cyworld has more group culture than Facebook. Facebook is more personalized. Facebook is also hard to hide information such as memos that guest wrote. I think that both Facebook and Myspace need time to localize in Korea. They need to research more on Korean website and Korean culture.
Source: Olga Kharif and Nandini Lakshman, 'MySpace, Facebook Get Serious About Asia', Businessweek, 2007, 10, 08
Student #: 20400152 - Entry 10
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