South Korea, which leads the world in broadband penetration and delivers much faster average data rates than typically found in the U.S., is also a leader in the growth of online communities and grassroots journalism.
According to Business Week, less than four months after its launch, Cyworld, an online community service owned by SK Telecom, Korea’s largest wireless service provider, has attracted nearly a third of South Korea’s population and 90% of those in their late teens and early twenties. Though the service is free, it is already profitable, thanks in part to users’ purchases of “digital currency” with real money. SK plans to launch customized versions in Japan, China, Taiwan and the U.S. by yearend.
In the arena of grassroots journalism, South Korea’s five-year-old OhmyNews, whose motto is “every citizen is a reporter,” has, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “engaged its audience in ways that U.S. print and television news outlets, faced with a steep decline in readers and viewers, only dream of…The site has a cultlike following, among both writers thrilled to see their views spread widely and readers who say they like getting an uncensored, if uneven, version of the news.”
The site gets 1.7 million to 2 million page views each day, a number that shot up to 25 million during the December 2002 presidential election…When reformer Roh Moo Hyun won the tight presidential race, he granted his first domestic interview to OhmyNews — a slap to the conservative corporate daily papers that supported his rival.
The success of OhmyNews can be attributed in part to the high level of public engagement in this heavily wired, young democracy, where less than two decades have passed since military rule ended. Street protests are common, and citizens are eager to speak out online.
The privately held Web site has been profitable since September 2003 and is projected to pull in $10 million this year, [Jean Min, director of the international news division] said.
The site began an English-language edition in May, at english.ohmynews.com, and now has its sights set overseas. Several hundred citizen reporters have already signed up. So far, about 36 percent of English-language edition readers are from North America, 38.5 percent from Europe, and 16.7 percent from Asia outside South Korea.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 5:43 PM | Print | Comments (0)
VoIP is suddenly everywhere, and it’s not just because VON is taking place in Boston. Literally, consumers can currently pick from among three or four VoIP providers, whether Vonage, AT&T, a cable operator, Skype, Verizon, or any of a growing number of providers. Now AOL has taken the wraps off its VoIP initiative, announcing three tiers of service, with the unlimited local and long distance option priced at $29.99/month.
Microsoft is planning to enter the game, having announced last month its acquisition of VoIP company Teleo and unveiling a partnership today with Qwest to target small business users. ISP EarthLink is also planning a VoIP option, naming today two vendors, Level 3 and Sonus, to help with that effort.
Meanwhile, Google has some VoIP plan up its sleeve, with the launch of the GoogleTalk voice-over-IM service presumably just the beginning of the Internet giant’s voice plans.
It’s too soon to say “stop the madness” but in truth the voice market can’t sustain this heightened level of competition — the collective cash flow margin can’t be split five, six or seven ways without some of these providers going belly up. Skype, which had the good fortune to find eBay as an acquirer, may, ironically, emerge from this competitive brawl on top because the company has never banked on high prices or fat margins, and as a consequence is one of the lowest-priced (most customers pay nothing) providers in the market.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:39 PM | Print | Comments (0)
According to a piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning, the FCC is on the cusp of approving Verizon’s purchase of MCI and SBC’s purchase of AT&T, with Commissioner Kevin Martin pushing for approval as early as tomorrow. But there could be some conditions attached to the approvals that neither acquirer likes.
The Justice Department, the main government arm charged with approving, rejecting or modifying mergers on antitrust grounds, is apparently concerned with the reduction in competition in the enterprise market in areas where Verizon currently overlaps with MCI, or SBC overlaps with AT&T. One possible merger approval condition that DOJ is eyeing would be to require the telcos to divest their enterprise businesses to a third party in overlap situations. Rejected MCI suitor Qwest is apparently a good candidate to buy the business lines, and compete against the merged companies, if such a divestiture were ordered.
DOJ is also apparently troubled by the telcos’ practice of selling DSL to local voice customers only, and wants to end these tying arrangements by requiring the sale of “naked DSL,” which would allow anyone to buy DSL regardless of whether they also purchase local phone service from the companies.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:33 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Blogs We Read
