SmartPhone, Social Networking and Celebration
It has been a little over a year now since my return to Korea and each day I find myself appreciative of being back in my “second home.” While many things remain the same – heavy traffic, the stifling humidity that sets in around July, the nonstop energy of the Seoul citizens from the early hours of the morning to late night - there are many things that have dramatically changed and changed in a way that truly reflect the dynamism of the country.
When I left Korea in 2008, most everyone was using a Cyworld account (Korea’s most popular social networking platform) and no one was carrying around Apple iPhone. When I returned last year in 2010, most everyone was connecting through facebook and were just starting to discover twitter thanks in part to Korean figure skater Yuna Kim – “Queen Yuna” in Korea - opening her own account after her glorious gold medal finish at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In March of this year, the number of smartphone subscribers in Korea surpassed 10 million. Interestingly, Apple iPhone launched in Korea in November 2009 and now the number of users has soared more than tenfold from 800,000. Samsung and LG have also entered the smartphone market and so the question of which manufacturer will take over as the uncontested leader is not the issue at hand for us in public relations but rather how many more Koreans will start to turn to the smartphone for communication and exchange. For us, there is indeed a direct correlation between smartphone usage and social networking. In fact, with the smartphone explosion, more than three out of every five Koreans use online social networking services such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook .
A great example of how things do evolve so quickly in Korea can be exemplified in the case of the British grocery chain Tesco. Tesco has had a very hard time competing with local marts such as E-mart – Korea’s number one offline store - in attracting new consumers. So instead of trying to open up more stores, the retailer instead brought its stores to the mass by installing virtual operations in South Korean subways! Korean commuters can take pictures of things they need – a carton of milk to a bottle of shampoo - and items are delivered to their doorstep at the end of the day. The results: an expansion of new registered users by 76% and online sales by 130%.
In consideration of Koreans’ speed in high tech adoption and social media reliance, it only makes sense that B-M tap into the market to provide insight and perspective into how companies can better understand social media networks, trends and discussions. While there are many agencies that do utilize social media analytics, there is no single agency that possesses leadership or recognition on a specific point of view in social media search and measurement.
I met with the founders of Konan Technology a few months ago as we were both interested in discussing possible collaboration and I came out of the meetings thoroughly impressed with the team’s approach and philosophy to web searching, software and natural language analysis especially Pulse-K, Konan’s independent web-based social media analytics service.
While Konan possesses the search engine technology and the engineering platform, B-M’s expertise sits with communications insight and analysis as it relates to clients. Together, as partners in a MOU alliance, we expect to advance the Korean social media landscape. In my view, if we are able to build a relevant model here in Korea, the model can serve as a benchmark elsewhere.
We have seen many developments over the past month and more to come! Thank you again for your support of B-M Korea…we have many things to share and celebrate since our first newsletter and we hope you will enjoy the second edition of B-M in Motion.
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