In Korea, you can see that many people use smart digital devices such as smart phone and tablet pc anywhere and everywhere. Up to April this year, the number of smartphone users has reached over 2,500,000; it’s almost a half of Korean population. The number of smart pad users have also increased to about 140,000 people recently, thus making mobile web development as one of the fastest growing businesses.

Recent data from Neilson research & KDB Daewoo securities(bit.ly/H0dfIV) indicated that web traffic grow PC traffic has decreased. However, mobile web access time has grown via smartphones as application usage and SNS users have grown. So the web traffic via mobile has consistently grown since last 2 years.

Because smart device population is growing in Korea, many companies now consider running a consumer promotion via mobile device. They utilize mobile application, mobile web page or mobile advertising for engagement and to draw fans and consumers to take part in their events and promotional activities.

<http://www.youtube.com/openhappinesskorea>

For example, Coca-Cola ran an advertising promotion with their fans via YouTube. It was one of very first promotion which ran on mobile devices without redirecting to microsite. Daewoo securities also made a mobile game application using their new advertisement, providing a chance to remind customers of their new TVC and brand messages.

Just off stage from their presentation, I caught them for a few extra thoughts on the topic:

KakaoTalk, KakaoStory, and what’s next? Kakao, which has launched KakaoStory, now jumped into smart phone game market. Its first step is to collaborate with ‘Wemade Entertainment.’ On 26th of April, Wemade and Kakao have presented approximately 20 games they are planning to release through all year around. The most remarkable thing is that users can register their Kakao friends as their game mates. Wemade newly introduced smart phone game, ‘Viking Island’, at app store. Wemade now seems to be the next leader of the game market. Read more

카카오톡, ‘카카오스토리’ 다음엔 바로 이 서비스? 카카오 스토리를 런칭한 카카오가 스마트폰 게임 시장에 뛰어들었습니다. 그들은 위메이드 엔터테인먼트와 손을 잡고, 4월 26일 위메이드와 함께 앞으로 1년간 출시할 20여개 스마트폰 게임을 공개했다. 가장 주목할만한 점은 카카오톡 친구를 게임 친구로 등록할 수 있다는 것인데요. 이날, 위메이드는 ‘바이킹아일랜드’라는 스마트폰 게임을 앱스토어에 등록하기도 하면서 공격적인 행보를 보이고 있네요. 위메이드는 모바일 게임 개발 노하우를 이용하여 스마트폰 게임 시장에서도 두드러지는 모습을 보일 것으로 기대되어, 게임 업계가 잔뜩 긴장하고 있습니다.

Declining of Internet users is because of SNS? According to a market research specialized agency Trend Monitor, the number of new users to Internet communities is gradually declining. 83% of Koreans joined Internet communities in 2010, but it has reduced to 76.1% in 2011 and 73.8% in 2012. Trend Monitor has explained this by the advent of SNS, such as Facebook and Twitter. Online communities still have the great influence, however, SNS seems to replace the functions of the online communities. Read More

인터넷 커뮤니티 가입률 점점 낮아져, “SNS의 영향인가?” 인터넷 커뮤니티 가입률이 점점 낮아지고 있는 것으로 나타났습니다. 전문기관 트렌드모니터에 따르면 지난 2010년 83%였던 인터넷 커뮤니티 가입률이 지속적으로 낮아져 2012년에는 73.8%를 나타냈다고 합니다. 트렌드모니터는 “페이스북이나 트위터와 같은 SNS의 등장으로 최근 인터넷 커뮤니티의 이용은 점차 줄어들고 있는 추세다. 여전히 인터넷 커뮤니티의 영향력이 유지되고 있지만, 보다 동시적이고 불특정 다수에게 빠르게 전파되는 SNS의 속성이 인터넷 커뮤니티를 대체해 나가는 것”이라고 분석했습니다.

Who do you talk to the most on SNS? According to the report issued by Korea Internet & Security Agency, 9 out of 10 Koreans talk mostly to their ‘friends and alumni’ through SNS. 85.8% of Koreans use SNS for ‘socializing,’ 67.6% for ‘hobbies,’ and 55% for ‘sharing personal interests’. Interesting fact is also found through the report: Men seem to talk more liberally to people in their business field by showing the gap of 24.8% male respondents versus 9.9% female respondents. Read More 1 Read More 2

SNS대화, 당신은 누구와 많이 하세요? 한국인터넷진흥원의 조사 결과에 따르면, 우리나라 SNS이용자 10명 중 9명이 SNS를 통해 ‘친구, 선후배’와 소통하고 있다고 합니다. 아울러, 직장동료 등 업무관계자와 교류하는 경우는 남성(24.8%)이 여성(9.9%)보다 많았다고 하네요.

Korean Social Commerce Market to be worth over a trillion won The growth of social commerce market in Korea is astounding. The market of social commerce in Korea surpassed a trillion turnover (in Korean currency, Won) in two years. Furthermore, the number of social commerce is constantly increasing. In spite of the fast market growth, many small and medium sized social commerce companies are reconstructed by several major companies. Now, those major social commerce companies try harder to diversify their items and services to their target consumers. Read More

[소셜커머스] 소셜커머스가 뭐길래…국내 시장 규모 1조원 넘어서 2010년 국내에 첫선을 보인 소셜커머스가 채 2년이 되지않아 중소업체까지 포함한 업체 수만 500여군데, 시장 규모는 1조원을 넘어섰습니다. 이 성장 속도라면 2015년까지 연평균 50% 가까이 성장할 수 있을 것으로 예측된다고 하네요. 소셜커머스가 어떻게 이런 ‘폭풍성장’을 하게되었는지 더 자세히 알아보세요.

Internet ads are more effective than main TV channels for teen to twenties. It is reported that young generation purchases more after watching Internet ads rather than TV commercials. According to Nars Media asking people about which media channel they consume the latest ads, main TV channels (46.4%), Internet(42.8%), cable channel(5.5%), Newspaper(2.2) are taken places respectively. Comparing to the last year’s result, the category in main TV channels was 63.6% and Internet was 29.4%. This result shows that Internet is becoming more and more important in influentially performing on ads and content delivery. Read More

10~20대 광고 영향력, 지상파 보다 인터넷 선호 젊은 세대에서는 지상파 방송보다는 인터넷을 보고 물건을 구입하는 등 인터넷 광고의 영향력이 급증하는 것으로 조사됐다고 하는데요. 20일 나스미디어의 여론조사에 따르면, 신제품 광고를 어느 매체를 통해 접촉하는지 물은 결과 지상파(46.4%), 인터넷(42.8%), 케이블(5.5%), 신문(2.2%) 광고 순인 것으로 드러났습니다. 작년 조사에서는 같은 질문에 지상파(63.6%), 인터넷(29.4%), 케이블(3.3%) 순으로 나타나, 올해 조사에서 지상파 광고의 접촉도가 급락했다는 걸 알수 있습니다. 관계자는 이번 조사에 대해 “인터넷 이용자가 많아지면서 광고와 콘텐츠 영향력이 그쪽으로 옮겨가는 추세”라며 “미디어의 이용이 다변화 돼서 매체 간 경쟁이 치열하게 될 것으로 전망된다”고 밝혔다고 합니다.

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 Source: www.facebook.com/sktworld

 The finalist will be hired as “social manager” for 6 weeks internship and have a chance to manage SKT’s online and offline media channels. This hiring competition is unprecedented attempt among Korean companies, and shows how SNS is becoming more and more important in in business.

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As a movement, #Bersih3 has taken the world by storm, with rallies taking place simultaneously, all over the world – with 85 rallies being held across the world on April 28th, 2012.

Essentially, what they’re calling for are free and fair elections to be held in Malaysia, and they seek to reform the current electoral process in Malaysia to be more transparent. Their demands the previous year (Bersih 2.0) are as follows:

1. Clean the electoral roll
2. Reform postal ballots
3. Use of indelible ink
4. Minimum 21 days campaign period
5. Free and fair access to media
6. Strengthen public institutions
7. Stop corruption
8. Stop dirty politics

The demands of Bersih 3.0 this year are:

1. The current Electoral Commission must resign
2. Meet all 8 demands before the 2013 General Election
3. Invite international observers for the 2013 General Election

In Australia alone, the estimated number of participants were in the thousands, which is extraordinary considering how the rally impacted Malaysia alone. Academics, socialists, politicians, media and – largely – the Malaysian diaspora – participated in a movement that was globally enabled by social media.

According to Radian6, there have been 159,165 mentions of the #bersih hashtag, the @bersih3 Twitter accounts, and its variants, all across the social web – globally.

Malaysia’s press freedom is currently ranked at 143 of 196 countries surveyed, and social media has played critical role for the dissemination of information, mobilisation of supporters and transmission of real-time updates from Bersih organisers, and between stakeholders, advocates, detractors, and participants of the event.

Due to intense government control of mainstream media, organisers and proponents of the rally have taken to social media in order to communicate to their stakeholders and to rally support. Why? Beyond the obvious reason that social media is far harder to police, Bersih organisors understood that the rally critically needed support from the people of Malaysia. And what better way to do that than a dialogue that is facilitated by Twitter, Facebook, and blogging? Ms Tricia Yeoh, a researcher cited in this article, said that “social media provides people a common space to identify themselves together and publicly was the drive for this social movement.” She believes that “social media allowed people to know about current issues in addition to enabling frustrated Malaysians overseas to participate in Bersih rallies that took place in the respective countries they were in, which sparked an international Bersih movement. It also pushed fence sitters into a corner and made debates more visible and highly interactive.”

The report below reflects the impact and power of social media in the transmission of information of and about the event globally.

Photo: Meld Magazine

These 159,165 mentions have achieved a total reach of 200,499,725 Twitter impressions (number of mentions x number of each user’s followers). For perspective, the population of Malaysia currently sits at 28,401,017 according to the World Bank – meaning that the global number of impressions from Twitter alone would have reached every individual living in Malaysia – 7 times.

Pretty impressive, considering that currently, only 2.6% Malaysians have access to the internet (according to Wikipedia, a 1998 statistic) – or 738,426 Malaysians. If you take the total number of Twitter impressions globally, and divide them by the number of Malaysian with access to the internet, this would mean that every Malaysian with access to the internet would have individually encountered about 272 mentions of the Bersih event in the past 30 days – on Twitter alone.

Compare this with the estimated 75,000 Malaysians in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that were physically present in the rally [source].

The breakdown by media type shows that Twitter held by far the largest share of conversation – 99.4% of all global conversation took place on the micromedia platform. In fact, you’ll see that social media (i.e. excluding mainstream news websites, grouped under “Other”) constituted a shocking 99.9% of all conversation about the Bersih rally globally, eclipsing mainstream news coverage of the event (20 articles in the past 30 days).

The graph above shows a breakdown of locations – showing where the conversations about Bersih were happening. Unsurprisingly, the largest amount of the conversation took place in Malaysia – but there were also 59,196 mentions of Bersih outside of Malaysia, which is 37.2% of the total conversation.

The region that held the second-largest share of conversation was the United States, with 43,847 mentions, likely due to the large amount of global coverage of the event. Interesting to note are the large number of mentions of Bersih outside Asia – a surprising result. There were 46,382 mentions of the Bersih hashtags and Twitter accounts in the US, UK and Australia alone – 29.6% of the global conversation. This might be due to the large number of Malaysians residing in these countries, as there are an estimated 1,000,000 Malaysians who currently live abroad, according to the World Bank.

The graph above is a breakdown of languages that have mentioned the Bersih hashtags or Twitter accounts in the past 30 days – Malay, the national language, is not represented as on this graph due to the low volume of mentions that have purely utilised the language. The overwhelming majority of the conversation was in English, and all the languages following are – interestingly – European language variants, showing the permeation of the issue in conversation all over the world.

The #Bersih3 rally in Malaysia took place at 2pm Malaysia time. The graph above shows a peak of conversation that shows at 1pm on April 28th (Sydney time) – which is 11am Malaysian time on the same day (2 hours prior to the rally in Malaysia).

This means that the graph above is not reflective of the likely flurry of conversation that took place, real-time, during the event at 2pm – which is likely to be a much larger volume of conversation compared to the build up to the event at 11am.

The conversation on Twitter that took place at on April 28th alone has achieved a total of 98,570,653 global Twitter impressions.That’s 3.47x the total number of people in Malaysia.

CONCLUSION

The Bersih rally is just the latest, current, example of how social media has been able to mobilise the global village around a political cause that may affect sincere and resounding political change. What other examples have you seen of social media impacting a movement, or influenced government policy?

NB
The full list of keywords used in Radian6, a social media monitoring platform, for this report are as below:

@bersih3oz
@bersih2
#bersihpic
@bersihstories
@bersihpics
@bersih3
#bersih
#bersih2
#bersih3
#cleanbefore13
#bersihrallly

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According to National Election Commission, voting rate of this election has been increased by 8.2% compared to the last election. (from 46.1% to 54.3%) Voting rate rapidly increased particularly in the afternoon with a lot of photo uploading of SNS users on the polling location. One of outcomes of this phenomenon is that now citizens are more freely talking about politics and encourage voting through SNS. The power of social media brought friendly atmosphere around ‘vote’ which was the heavy subject before.

However, social media fad in election also brought negative impacts too. In this election, social media also used to spread misleading information and allegations of some candidates. Social users Retweeted these messages quickly without checking the truth.

In summary, social media was actively used during this election and it helped to increase voting rate of the younger generation. This new culture contributed to generate new perception that election is the thing that everyone should participate in. As citizens participate more in politics through SNS, I think politicians should use SNS not only for promoting their political campaigns but also for listening carefully about what people think.

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Kakao launches a photo content-based app, Kakao Story On March 1, KaKao has released its new service ‘KaKao Story’, a picture based profile service. Kakao Story allows users to express their life styles by displaying various pictures. This new service became a huge hit with the number of users surpassing the 5 million mark in 3 days of its release. Kakao Story allows sharing of photos, stories between users and further provides emotional fuctions like Facebook’s ‘Like’ feature.

Moreover, Kakao has made a contract with PR agency to provide news service targeting to start in early April. Mobile messaging service, Kakao Talk now has surpassed 42 million users and 2.6 billion messages are delivered in daily basis. Kakao Talk is now one of must-have application to smartphone users in Korea. It is truly looking forward what kind of revolutionary movement Kakao will make in future. Read more 1, Read more 2, Read more 3, Read more 4

 카카오스토리 써보니…새로운 SNS의 등장 카카오톡 운영업체 카카오가 사진 콘텐츠 기반의 프로필 앨범 서비스 앱인 ‘카카오스토리’를 3월 20일 출시했습니다. 카카오스토리는 사진과 글로 자신의 일상을 실시간으로 전할 수 있는 서비스입니다. 출시 3일만에 500만 명이 가입할 정도로 대박 행진을 이어가며 이용자 반응이 벌써부터 뜨겁습니다. 카카오스토리는 페이스북과 싸이월드처럼 사진과 글로 일상을 공유할 수 있으며, 페이스북의 ‘좋아요’ 싸이월드 ‘공감’처럼 올라온 사진이나 글에 ‘좋아요, 기뻐요, 멋져요’ 등의 감정 표현을 할 수도 있다고 합니다.

아울러, 최근 카카오톡이 언론재단 대행사와 계약을 맺고, 이르면 다음 달 초부터 카카오톡을 통해 뉴스를 서비스하기로 했다고 합니다. 서비스 2주년을 맞이한 카카오톡은 가입자 수 4200만을 돌파했고, 매일 2천만명이 카카오톡을 통해 메시지 26억건을 전송한다고 합니다. 앞으로 카카오톡이 제2의 네이버로 발돋움할 수 있을지 귀추가 주목됩니다.

References:

1. 모바일 메신저의 PC점령…’카톡’은 제자리 걸음? Read more 1
2. 2.카카오스토리 써보니…새로운 SNS의 등장 Read more 2
3. 뉴스제공•게임… 카카오톡, 제2 네이버 야심? Read more 3
4. [주간SNS동향] 카카오톡 가입자 4200만명 Read more 4

459 out of 1,000 major Korean firms have SNS channels According to Job Korea, it is reported that 459 companies use social network service to better communicate. Twitter was the most frequently used platform as 81.3%, and blog (41.2%) and Facebook (35.1%) respectively out of 459 firms. Companies that use all of the three platforms which are Facebook, Twitter, and blog are taking 17.9% out of the respondents. Read more

1000대기업 중 459개사 SNS 운영 잡코리아가 국내 1000대기업의 SNS를 분석한 결과, 1000대기업 중 459개 기업에서 SNS를 운영하고 있는 것으로 조사됐다고 합니다.  459개사 중 가장 많이 활용하고 있는 SNS로는 ‘트위터(81.3%)’가 꼽혔으며, 이어 블로그(41.2%), 페이스북(35.1%) 순 이었다고 하네요. 트위터와 블로그, 페이스북 모두를 운영하고 있는 기업은 전체 17.9%를 차지했다고 합니다.

Top 4 Korean social commerce companies’ monthly turnover surpassed 100 billion monthly turnover The four Korean major social commerce companies’ monthly turnover surpassed 100 billion won by February, 2012. Compared to the amount in July of 2011, this amount is increased 1.6 times in 6 months. Moreover, the monthly turnover of the top 4 social commerce companies is grown by 2.7 times compared to the numeric figure in last April. Read more

소셜커머스 빅4, 월거래 1000억 돌파 국내 상위 4개 소셜커머스 업체의 월 거래액 합이 2월 기준 1000억원을 돌파했다고 합니다. 지난해 7월 대비, 6개월만에 1.5배 가까이 성장한 것인데요. 상위 4사 집계가 시작된 작년 4월과 비교하면 당시 거래액에 비해 지난 10개월 간 2.7배 성장한 것이라고 하네요. 소셜커머스의 놀라운 성장에 앞으로의 귀추가 주목됩니다.

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