Web 2.0 Asia

Michael Hurt left a long comment to my post "Social network fatigue is clear and present". To re-post the comment (with Michael's consent - boldings are mine):

Cyworld and their ilk are pumped-up, top-down, bloated extensions of Web 1.0-ware: Friendster/Cyworld are the same.

The difference between those and Facebook is that FB isn't a "social networking site" per se, but a network and PLATFORM upon which 3rd-party developers can add all sorts of (monetizable) functionality.

That difference is seen in the success of Scrabulous, or the fact that any OTHER non-FB service can write a plugin for FB that adds the user's existing network to the utility if that particular application.

What you see is nearly unbounded potential in FB, whereas Cyworld is still very much just a MINI-"hompy." Much more than they know, Cyworld is less than a homepage and not really much of anything else.

That's why I saw Cyworld moving anywhere outside of Korea as a stupidly arrogant mistake. I called this as soon as Cyworld went into the US and Europe.

The only reason half of the Korean Internet even remains used by the Korean population is because there's no other choice – they're prisoners of the Korean language barrier. If and when FB made a platform in other languages, namely Korean – goodbye Cyworld, with a quickness.

I trust that Cyworld (or some other Korean internet chaebeol) is busy getting ready to roll out its own version of Facebook for the Korean market as we speak. But the question Koreans will rightfully ask is: "How is this different from Cyworld?" in a Korean Internet environment in which you don't have lots of hungry startups and developers making all kinds of cool programs, in which the very trait that makes FB strong continues to be underdeveloped in Korea.

The same idiocy is shown by that guy you mentioned who thinks he's going to create some new blogging platform in the US market, with open-source Wordpress dominating everything marketable/professional, and Wordpress.com, Blogger, Typepad, and several others continuing to divide up a well-saturated market.

First of all, thanks for the long and thoughtful comment, Michael.

Now I think this can open up an interesting thread of communication. We could perhaps take the issue to a higher, more general level.

One area I find myself disagreeing with Michael is that I don't think localized versions of Myspace and Facebook will take off in Korean market either, just as Cyworld didn't take off in other markets.

Maybe there's a reason why Niko Niko Douga and 2Ch are popular only in Japan; Maybe there's a reason why Orkut is big only in Brazil and India. In some cases, what might seem like a universal success could actually be a hit in the US and the rest of English-speaking world, whose success has been bloated by the extensive coverage in English media. (Of course this shouldn't be the case for all services)

So I'd like to put up an instant poll of some sort and hope the discussion will continue... I think this is an important issue faced by many startups in Korea and other parts of the world that are considering about bringing their products to international markets.

a) If a service is "inherently good" enough, the service will become a hit anywhere in the world with only minimal amount of localization efforts;

b) When it comes to internet services, especially social nets, there's no such thing as a "guaranteed universal success" - even if a service is successful in its own local market, they shouldn't be naive enough to believe the same service will work in other cultures with minimal tweak and therefore should come up with fresh strategies for every country/culture it wants to be in.

I know the right answer lies somewhere in between :) But in any case, I hope you'll add your thoughts to this.