Cyworld announces its going Open Social

Korea's social networking king, Cyworld, FINALLY to crack open its doors

[GrendelKhan TSU]

This is probably the best and most encouraging news I've heard in a LONG time.

Cyworld the true predecessor to facebook and myspace with over 20 million unique registered users (ie: like over 80% of TOTAL Korean actual internet users o_0!) has finally.....FINANNNLLY... come to its senses and announced it will open its doors integrating Open Social technologies, (instead of its lame attempts to just cookie cutter port its system to the US and abroad).

Its not too clear to what extent this happen, but the possiblities are endless... including the potential opportunities and effects this could have on the entire internet economy in Korea or better yet, outside of Korea.

Heck, given years of my complaining about the "walled-garden" of Korean internet properties (especially true of cyworld), ANY opening up is better than none, imo. It even says they want to be as "open as Facebook". One can only hope.

but bottomline is: this can only be good.

article (in Korean) [news.naver.com] (will try to find English articles on this)

[bill]

I know you've told us about the power of Korean online communities years before any of this MySpace/FaceBook mania took hold in the West. Cyworld is a true pioneer in this space. Unfortunately their US offering fell flat. I'll look forward to some news in English. ;)

[GrendelKhan TSU]

heh.

just noticed... youtube (in korea) now allows sharing to cyworld! (you know that "share" button below vids). First significant use of the new cyworld api I've seen. And its a big one (youtube for all the troubles its had in Korea... is still a major player to be watched)

[bill]

Is the YouTube connection a direct tie-in? Are they showing something on the YouTube site, or is this just something that CyWorld now allows?

Can you post videos to YouTube from Korea again? I thought that feature was blocked.