Cyworld
Cyworld is a South Korean social network service. Cyworld was originally part of SK communication, and became an independent company in 2014. Members cultivate relationships by forming Ilchon or "friendships" with each other through their minihompy. Avatars and "mini-rooms" are features of the service, which can make for a Sims-like experience.
The "Cy" in Cyworld can mean "cyber", but is also a pun on the Korean word for "relationship".
Cyworld is a rough equivalent to Myspace of the United States, with the main difference being that revenue is generated through the sale of dotori, or acorns, which can be used to purchase virtual goods, such as background music, pixelated furniture, and virtual appliances.
Cyworld also has operations in China and Vietnam.
History
Overview
Cyworld launched in 1999 and was purchased by SK Communications in 2003. It became one of the first companies to profit from the sale of virtual goods.Cyworld was wildly popular in its home market, with 2005 claims that nearly every South Korean in their twenties
and 25 percent of the South Korean population were users. By 2006 its domestic user base numbered 19 million, but this dropped to 18 million by 2008.
Cyworld's reception in some overseas markets did not prove as enthusiastic, and by 2010 Cyworld had ended its operations in Germany, Japan, and the United States. As of 2009, it continues to provide service to the Chinese and Vietnamese markets where it has subscriber bases of seven million and 450,000, respectively.
Initial stages
The idea for Cyworld started in August 1999 by KAIST student organization the 'EC club', a club that took on online business projects. The club members got the idea to create a social networking website while discussing topics for a research project. Though most club members abandoned the project after graduation, Dong-Hyung Lee continued to pursue the project, taking on the role of CEO from December 1999.The word 'cy' is a Korean word meaning 'between people', underlining the networking aspect of the website and connoting a close relation between the website users. However, most misinterpret 'cy' as an abbreviation for 'cyber' due to its fortis; 'sai' corresponds to a more accurate pronunciation of a Korean word for 'between.' The original nature of the term 'cy' demonstrates Dong-Hyung Lee's vision for the site. He wanted to create an Internet community that allowed people to form close relationships, rather than a community where people merely sought information for business prospects.
Cyworld in its early stages was quite different from what it is today. It was a website that showed a list of members from the same hometown or school. The address book for each member was updated automatically according to the personal information its members provided. It was not a place where people could express themselves, but rather a website that allowed people to gain means of contact, so that members could meet offline. Cyworld at its early stages was far from successful, once running a deficit of 1.5 billion won.
Minihomepy
In the summer of 2002, Cyworld launched the "minihomepy" project, a last chance to turn things around before the business had to shut down. CEO Dong-Hyung Lee put contents provider Ram Lee in charge of the project. It was an instant success.Offering many methods of expressing oneself, the minihomepy had features such as a main picture, history, user profile, photo story, story room, background music, photo album, diary, bulletin board, video clips, and decorating links. Another component of the minihomepy was the miniroom, a decorative online room furnished with virtual furniture.
One of the main reasons for minihomepy's success was people's dissatisfaction with the "individual homepages" that were prevalent in Korea at the time. While individual homepages were initially widely popular because they enabled people to express themselves online, the programming knowledge required to create an individual homepage was too daunting for most people. Although knowledge barrier was partially resolved through homepage programming services such as High Home, there still remained a significant issue: the means of communication between individual homepage users was absent. Individual homepages were like "stranded islands" in the vast sea called the Internet. Minihomepy addressed the desire for interpersonal communication. Minihomepies were easy to create and maintain. Minihomepies had components like visitor logs and comments, which provided a means of contact, while features such as the diary and bulletin boards allowed for individual expression; it was amicably received by the public. Members had to become Ilchons in order to gain access to each other's minihomepies.
The minihomepy service was officially launched on 9 September 2002. Cyworld uses its own form of cybermoney, called dotori. The items for decorating the minihomepies and minirooms could be bought with dotoris, and people voluntarily spent money on dotori as their minihomepy decoration was perceived as another expression of themselves.
Cyworld gained further success when in November 2002, its competitor Freechal decided to charge its users 3,000 won per month. Freechal also announced plans to shut down communities operated by those who failed to pay the fee. This "pay-or-shut-down" policy prompted a horde of members to cancel their subscriptions and move to other free online community hosts, including Cyworld.
Merger with SK Telecom
In August 2003, Cyworld merged with SK Telecom, a Korean communication company and owner of the domain Nate. The rapidly increasing number of subscribers was getting too difficult for Cyworld to manage on its own, and SK promised resources for further growth in the market. Although it was incorporated into the SK community department, Cyworld retained its brand name, service, and independence. The CEO of Cyworld Dong-Hyung Lee was appointed as the general manager of the Cyworld department, and he moved on to be the CEO of Cyworld Japan in May 2005 until he left the company in December 2008 to pursue other business adventures.The merger immediately led to significant market success. By the end of 2003, Cyworld gave rise to the terms "cyholic" and "cyjil". Cyworld became a sensation among the Korean public, more than tripling in monthly visitors from early 2003 to November 2003.
Cyworld's success grew even further when it began to collaborate with Nate-on, the largest online messenger service in Korea and also owned by SK. The collaboration was established in 2005, allowing Cyworld and Nate-on members to use both services simultaneously by logging into just one site.
In early 2007, Cyworld topped 20 million members for its services giving rise to the term 'sa-chon era', meaning any two Cyworld members are likely to be Cyworld ilchons through fewer than four connections. In 2009, Cyworld unified its domain with SK's Nate. This move was meant for "user convenience", as the two domains had over 17 million overlapping members. No significant change was made to the site after the union. As of 2011, Cyworld had over 25 million members.
2011 data leakage and decline
As Facebook began its services in Korea in 2009, Cyworld slowly began to lose its status as the only popular SNS service in Korea. According to some research, Facebook's simpler design and function were more appealing and easier to use than Cyworld. As Cyworld did not offer global services, it was an undesirable service for people who wanted to contact friends around the world. The introduction of smartphones to the market was also a key factor in Cyworld's decline, as both Facebook and Twitter offered stronger interconnectivity with mobile platforms. Kakao Story, an SMS service exclusive for smartphone users, had an advantage over its rivals due to its connection with mobile service KakaoTalk, which has over 55 million members. Cyworld's inability to keep up with the trend made it fall behind in the market.Cyworld's declining market share was further aggravated by a 2011 data leakage. In July 2011, Cyworld/Nate was hacked into by criminals who stole the personal information of more than 35 million users. The information for almost all of the Cyworld/Nate members, and by extension about 70 percent of the Korean population, was compromised. The hackers accessed Cyworld's system by using an Internet protocol address based in China. Because Cyworld/Nate requires its members to submit personal information for membership, the 2011 data leakage was quite detrimental as the hackers had the members' resident registration numbers, phone numbers, and email addresses. Though SK communications insisted that the resident registration numbers and passwords were encrypted and are not likely to be abused even in the hands of the hackers, nobody gave the company the benefit of the doubt.
SK Telecom took measures trying to minimize the harm, but it was soon flooded with lawsuits demanding compensation for the leakage. The leakage yielded costly lawsuits for the company, in a country with virtually no precedent in class-action lawsuits. The public's discontent with the data leak led straight to the plummet of stock prices. The company's reputation was tarnished and information-sensitive Koreans moved to other SNS service after the leakage. This phenomenon was directly reflected in the plunging page views for Cyworld/Nate. Between March 2011 and April 2012, the monthly UV and PV for Cyworld dropped from 21.5 million and 7.5 billion to 16.5 million and 1.7 billion, respectively. Statistics show that the fall in UV and PV became more dramatic after the July 2011 data leakage.
In September 2012, SK Telecom announced its decision to allow membership for Cyworld without obligating members to register resident registration numbers and real names. A minimum amount of personal information, such as email address and nationality, would be asked of future members.
Cyworld brought an end to its minihompy service on 31 September 2015 and had announced plans to change over to a new platform named Cyhome.
In July 2020 the site was not supporting TLS 1.2, causing browsers to issue a warning. It is expected that support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 is removed from all major browsers in the second half of 2020. Cyworld's shows it to be vulnerable to several well-known and fixed attacks.