Web 2.0 Summit 2006 - Day 2 / CyWorld Revealed
Day 2 notes from Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, CA:
[my analysis and notes are in these square brackets.]
CyWorld Revealed, Hyun-Oh Yoo, CEO of SK Communications, owners of CyWorld
- We have 20M subscribers, 40% of the population of Korea (!); 96% of 20-29 year olds (!); 20B monthly page views; [Wow – those numbers are unbelievable.]
- We are Myspace + iTunes + Google + IM + eBay in that we are offering social networkinng + music downloads + search + commerce engines.
- Key success factors: young women in their early 20s were the early population; we brought young women (who didn’t use the internet) to the internet. We made the entire system appealing visually to young women.
- [So they went after non-consumers rather than trying to convince people to switch from competitors; they used the principle of “know your customers” (it’s not everybody – it’s young female non-internet users) and build the service to appeal to them; they also made it visually appealing which both fits their customer and also adheres to the principle in “A Whole New Mind” – beauty is just as important as function in this era.)]
- business model: the base service is free…but charge for the personalization (downloading of wallpapers, gifts, avatars, etc.)
- [The cell phone market could probably soon get away with this model. Give away the phone and the service and charge for personalization and ringtones only! This personalization/identity stuff is coming up more and more often.]
