Today MySpace, the most popular online social network is expanding to South Korea by launching its Korean version. MySpace Korea seemed well equipped to take on South Korea, with a sleek design and all of its content found on the landing page has been translated to Korean. As usual, music, video, and social networking profiles are allowed for the Korean users. To celebrate their official launch, MySpace Korea will also host an official launch party tonight at design museum near Seoul’s Hongik University, and the party will be started from 7pm. Frankly, I do not know what will be the response of the Korean youngsters toward this site, but MySpace will try to make their site attractive and competitive in South Korea’s market place. Perhaps what makes them different from the other Korean social networking platforms might be its unique feature, a Twitter-like or Facebook Status-like Minilog.

South Korea, notably for a tech savvy nation, its consumer behavior much the same as China. It is a very important and difficult country for a foreign firm in building a solid base there. What role should a foreign firm play when it entered the South Korea market. MySpace said that they already have the answer. “We’ve done a lot of studies on what went wrong with those companies and why,” DeWolfe, co-founder of MySpace said in response to a question at a forum at a Seoul university. At present, MySpace Korea has created a lot of tools that cater to this country’s uniquely culture.

As the first day MySpace Korea strutted its stuff in South Korea, they definitely face stiff competition from the leader in social networking, i.e. Cyworld. Cyworld has owned the biggest crowd in South Korea’s social network arena. They’re strong, not only in term of user base, but also financially, particularly in viewed of its parent company SK Telecom, just honored as South Korea’s innovation leader.

Source: available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120785449587405545.html, accessed 15 April 2008

via [The AP]

Friendster, who already conquered the Southeast Asian countries in online social network activities, is launching the Japanese and Korean version of its site. The initiative is another example of Friendster moving aggressively into the Northern side of Asia, Japan and Korea since it launched its Simplified Chinese version in October this year. With these two new additions, Friendster is now available in English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and Korean.

This type of language venture of Friendster is something sets it apart from other successful social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Friendster is focusing on Asian countries, and each different country represents different types of markets. For example, China is developing and very competitive, whereas Japan and Korea are two developed countries, while Singapore is competitive, Philippines and Malaysia are relatively stagnant, and Indonesia is a huge market waiting for them to tap in. They knew if they can make it big in all of the Asian countries, they can avoid to face tough competition in the U.S. market, and if they lose out in one single market, it’ll not affect their total market share in Asia at all.