[IP] Why the future is in South Korea
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 10, 2006 10:32:33 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Why the future is in South Korea
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Why the future is in South Korea
Smart investments in broadband there have paid off in the form of a
hyperconnected society --and now we can start reaping the benefits of
the Korean experiment.
By Chris Taylor, Business 2.0 Magazine senior editor
June 8, 2006: 3:43 PM EDT
<http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/08/technology/business2_futureboy0608/
index.htm>
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - I, for one, welcome our South
Korean overlords.
Ninety percent of the country has blazingly fast, 3-megabits-per-
second broadband at home, and similarly high-speed wireless
connections on the road. The telecom market is fiercely competitive,
and broadband service costs the consumer less than $20 a month.
There are 20,000 PC baangs, or Internet cafes, where you can rent a
superfast machine for $1 an hour. Online gaming has become a way of
life, with nearly 3,000 South Korean videogame companies boasting
combined revenues of up to $4 billion.
As a result, South Korea has become the world's best laboratory for
broadband services - and a place to look to for answers on how the
Internet business may evolve.
Smart bet on broadband
How did this come about? In 1995, the South Korean government made
what must rank as one of the most shrewd and far-sighted investments
in business history. It spent big on a nationwide high-capacity
broadband network that any telecom operator could offer service on,
and offered subsidies so that 45 million Koreans could buy cheap
PC's. Cost: a mere $1.5 billion.
Fast-forward 11 years: Korea is now the most connected and Net-
addicted country on Earth. There are a few American companies who
have benefited from the South Korean broadband boom: Blizzard, for
example, makes a popular online game called Starcraft which is so
widely played in South Korea that two TV channels broadcast Starcraft
matches between professional players.
But the most popular services are homegrown.
Cyworld, for example, is a social network owned by a subsidiary of SK
Telecom, the country's largest wireless provider. To an American eye,
the Cyworld service looks like a mixture of some of the hottest US
properties: it's MySpace meets Flickr and Blogger and AIM and Second
Life.
Users have avatars that visit and can link to each other's
"minihompy" - a miniature homepage that's actually a 3-D room
containing a users' blog, photos, and virtual items for sale.
Cyworld's digital garage sales include music, ringtones, clothes for
your avatar and furnishings for your own minihompy.
Cyworld has penetration rates that would make Rupert Murdoch, CEO of
MySpace parent News Corp. (Research), green with envy: An astonishing
90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s use the service. Celebrities
and politicians set up their own minihompies, and the way to get
ahead in twentysomething Korean society is to found a popular Cyworld
club, or chat room.
Printing money
Most importantly, Cyworld is a license to print money. The service
itself is free (and available on cellphones as well as online), but
to buy all the extras - like ringtones and virtual furnishings - will
cost you "acorns," the service's virtual currency. Cyworld sells its
users $300,000 in acorns every single day.
[snip]
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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