The South Korean Internet market is ruled by the big, green giant called Naver (www.naver.com), but its undersized rivals are retooling relentlessly to shake the status quo.
The biggest noise is coming from Nate (www.nate.com), the No. 3 Web portal behind Naver and Daum (www.daum.net), which is promising new product innovations and strengthened search capabilities as it prepares to reveal its revamped site in March.
The newer version of Nate will absorb the services of Empas (www.empas.com), which will be closed from next month, and better leverage the popularity of the Nate-On instant messaging services and the Cyworld (www.cyworld.com) social networking services, according to SK Communications, which operates the Web sites.
An earlier offensive against Naver has been provided by Daum, the perennial industry runner-up, which introduced a lavish digital map service, based on a detailed photographic map of the entire country, last month.
Daum has more tricks in the bag, as it plans to revamp its news section in its startup page, allowing users to customize the section through subscriptions and content feeds, responding to Naver recently revamping its main page to resemble Google’s iGoogle startup page.
“Nate-On is the country’s most used instant messenger service and Cyworld has been utterly dominating the social networking business for years,” said a SK Communications official.
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