So it was with bit of a loud-ish groan and inner sigh that I found a new SNS site aptly called Faceworthy. Think of it as Hot or Not spliced into Flickr. (Big nod to Chang-won Kim for the heads-up on this site).

Yes, you upload your photos, members can vote you faceworthy and save you as their favourites.

Lovely.

As Flickr members do, Faceworthy users an share and rate uploaded photos into photo-albums. There is also room for ads on individual member pages.

The site promises fame and money, that is, if you’re faceworthy.

The folks behind Faceworthy quickly followed with couple of other apps. CouchMob is a “Q&A and poll community where people can post questions and poll anonymously.”

The beta version of Papree was launched only a couple of weeks ago. It’s a photo-gallery app for bloggers and web publishers. By placing a short javascript in your website, Papree will “automatically create a nice photo viewer for your images.” It will also aggregate visitors’ votes on your uploaded photos.

The brilliant minds behind this new venture are a two-man team at Paprika Lab, based in Seoul, Korea. Chang-won was impressed by these two Ruby-on-Rails talents with global ambitions.

Their business model is different from other Korean start-ups in that they offer their services in English and aim to compete in the international market (They recently released Faceworthy as a Facebook app.) In contrast, most Korean SNS ventures restrict themselves to the Korean market at the outset, building their network and services before moving onto the global scene.

As for Paprika Lab, theirs is the stuff of faceworthy dreams.

A brief perusal of it, gave me social media anxiety, instead. A minute into it, I fatigued and dropped the post from my mind.

That is, until I dropped by chance onto Andrew Shuttleworth’s blog, who blogs on social media in Japan, and who drew up the original aforementioned mindmap of what he calls “Social Media Information Flow.”

Well, this time, my attention was captured and I took a better look at his graph.

Andrew wanted to figure out how all the information he creates online, flows through. He discovered that there were 12+ different types of online info flows in his world. He then wanted to configure how to do organize and manage the information in the most efficient way possible. (This is where my anxiety begins: I get drowsy and give up, making up excuses.)

But I plugged away at it, because as Alex Iskold writes, in our “Attention Economy,” managing our limited attention or “scarcity of attention” is key to both individual and market success. (And to protecting my sanity.)

Josh Cantone points out the key point in Andrew’s work:

“One of the approaches that is currently gaining steam, especially in the area of social networking, is data portability.

Data portability will allow users to theoretically mashup and interact with all of their social media information from a single place. While that won’t cut down the number of sites and services tugging at our attention, it does promise to make managing that attention vastly easier. Shuttleworth points to services like Profilactic and Plaxo Pulse that are already attempting to bring our online social lives under a single umbrella.”

Last summer I was considering buying a UMPC to consolidate my data to a more portable-friendly hardware device.

Now, the question is different, but it concerns a similar issue of managing and organizing information: mine, yours and ours.

Micro-blogging is a big thing in China, he pointed out and told me to look into it.

So I did.

Well, first of all, microblogging is popular in China because it goes back to an earlier point that in China, more people have access to mobile networks than broadband. A desktop computer costs a year’s wage for the working class. Only about 13% owns one. A cell-phone is cheaper and has a deeper, broader reach.

Culturally, microblogging makes sense for a generation raised on cellphone texting and IM. And this net-saavy generation in China is young and dynamic, expectant of instant communication and continual flow of information.

Rather than a 300-500 word blogpost review of a popular movie, these media prosumers might send a quick twitter feed to all their friends giving a thumbs up or down and maybe a call-out for a friend to the next movie opening.

Ergo, these factors of form and function go to explain how the young and Chinese haven’t acceded to SNS from the West like Facebook and MySpace and their Chinese copycats.

Instead, Chinese tech firms are creating mobile social networking applications, including microblogging applications.

A Newsweek article pointed out:

“Instead of adding instant messaging as an afterthought, Chinese Internet firm Tencent Holdings started out as an IM company in 1999, then launched social services such as games and virtual pets, all built around IM. Tencent now has 273 million members and 30 million peak simultaneous users—three quarters of China’s IM market—and is “on the cutting edge of business-model innovation,” says Duncan Clark of BDA, a consulting firm.”

From an industry meet-up in Beijing, Alvin Yang from Tencent said:

“Tencent now has over 288 million active accounts either on mobile or on web, that’s about two times of the number of whole Internet users in China.”

Tencent’s mobile services range from IM, games and virtual pets!

Virtual pets, you say? Remember Tamagotchi?

It goes to show how Asians are awfully good at ways monetizing all kinds of

net activity.

Following the last posting on video-sharing sites in China, I’ve found a cool new Korean video-sharing site.

It’s called ‘free egg’ an ambitious new company jointly owned by JoongAng Ilbo and alticast. JoongAng Ilbo is a top Korean news outlet and alticast is a market leader in providing MHP solutions for digital interactive TV, using open standards technologies. It’s a mouthful, but basically, they provide the tech services for video-sharing sites, including SEO and data mining solutions.

The site itself is pretty. It’s also fast and provides HD-quality videos. Impressive.

I’m a sucker for fun but semi-useless tools like free egg’s tag-cloud. A work colleague poo-poo’ed it, saying it was a waste of time. But part of the fun of Youtube and other sites are the recommended postings and related tags, right? (Well, that’s true as long as they’re smart and find you what you didn’t even realize you were looking for.)

Since I can’t join (membership is restricted to Korean nationals and foreigners with visas) I can’t examine the networking functions too closely but it wasn’t the online SNS that caught my attention.

It was the offline services that stood out.

free egg has built a “UCC Factory” where members can go to shoot videos, edit them and share them online. You can take a virtual tour through the four-story building here.

Having a cool office where the public can come and work on their videos is part of their CI-corporate identity/branding to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack.

free egg wants to provide online video-creation/editing services to its users. Kinda like a one-stop shop or the Konglish “NONE Stop” service as they call it.

free egg runs counter to the advice given by Chinese media experts on their burgeoning video-sharing market: make it simple, faster, easier, and take out the frills!

It shows you the difference between China’s young market and Korea’s mature one. Korean online services are full of frills and whistles (ah the freedom of mixing metaphors in bloggrammar).

Koreans are different too in that their online communities do like to meet offline. When I discussed the free egg “UCC Factory” and offline meets to my colleague at NowPublic, he joked, “Why meet at all! The whole point of online groups is that you never have to meet these people!”

Oh and why is it called free egg?

Google or Wiki egg of Columbus. There’s your answer and the brand mythology behind free egg.

It’s also very convenient when I’m looking for videos from the motherland. I remember way back, when my mom and I would borrow soap-operas from the local Korean super-market, hoping that the old VHS tapes wouldn’t get eaten by the video player (VHS-tapes? I realize I’m really dating myself here…sigh).

My Chinese friends don’t have such problems these days. They can go onto any number of Chinese video-sharing sites where they can watch their fave soap operas and Canto-pop stars.

In fact, there’s a huge turf-war raging in China over these video UGC-sites. At one point, over 200 video-sharing sites operated in China. Now there are about ten, excluding video-sharing services by the big portal sites such as Sina and QQ.

In the battle for video-UGC “eyeballs” in China, here are some issues to mull over.

Let’s start off with the basic proof. Video-UGC is big and will only grow bigger. It’s a pretty obvious point to make but it’s important to note that monetization strategies are not well-formulated at this point. Despite this, people are willing to invest and invest big in the field.

In China, the race is heating up because of the Beijing games. It’s “make-it or break-it” time, because the UGC site that catches the most public attention and usage during the games will win a lasting reputation.

The 2002 World Cup in Korea was a classic ‘tipping point’ example. The big portal sites, not the mainstream media sites, became the go-to sites for the Korean public to post and share their news about the Cup. The mainstream media sites failed to capitalize on this huge surge of “crowd-powered” content during the Cup.

Having said that, there are numerous issues and hurdles in the battle for Chinese eyeballs.

1. As always, money is key. Even basic bandwidth is a key expense for the video UGC-market and the past year has seen furious amount of venture capital into a number of popular UGC-sites.

2. Some Chinese observers think the UGC-sites need to pare-down. Less social-networking functions, they say, and more of the essentials of a UGC-site: more online storage, faster speed, and better SEO (search engine optimization). This is an interesting point, given that UGC-sites focus on social networking tools and applications.

3. Another is the issue of content. Chinese bloggers complain that despite the craze over UGC-sites, the Chinese public doesn’t create original content for these sites, especially for the video-sharing sites. They point their finger at the public and argue that the Chinese public is not part of that “You” deemed person of the Year by Time Magazine.

I understand these criticisms, but content does not always have to be original to be interesting and informative. What characterize the UGC-experience are the mash-ups, the derivations and commentaries. Heck, most of my blog-content belongs to the latter categories.

4. Finally, mobile-phone based UGC-applications have the potential to reach a lot more of the Chinese public than Internet-based UGC-applications.

The CWR guys write: “MU Rong (Founder/CEO of PepTalk) told us that in some high WAP traffic generation area like Guangdong province, lots of people don’t have a PC. Mobile phone is their only way to access Internet. So when we talk about mobile UGC in China, we are looking at a much larger market than only thinking of Internet UGC.”

Whew, this battle for the Chinese UGC-market is turning out to be a doozy.  Guess, I’ll keep an eyeball or two glued onto it.

Gang Lu’s post on BBS (Bulletin Board System) has great points, well worth noting when considering SNS in China.

The key point is that Web 2.0/SNS companies should incorporate BBS applications into their platforms. Otherwise they’re missing an important piece of the Chinese Internet puzzle.

Lu cites high BBS numbers in China:

“In China, registered BBS users have reached 3 billion (one netizen might register in more than one BBS); 80% of Chinese sites are running their own BBS and the total daily page views are over 1.6 billion and 10 million posts are published every day.”

“In China around 36.3% users spend 1-3 hours on BBS, about 44.7% users spend 3-8 hours and even 15.1% users are on BBS for more than 8 hours a day. Over 60% of users will login at least 3 BBS more than 3 times each every week.” (from an iResearch Consulting Group report)

Lu spoke with Kevin Day, the CEO and founder of Comsenz Inc., owner of Discuz!, the first ever social platform in China.

Kevin described the importance of BBS in China: “BBS provides a perfect and easy-to-setup show stage for everyone. BBS has evolved as a media platform, it is not the main stream media yet and might never be in China, but the latest and hottest news are always from various forums, spread and discussed by millions of users.”

Kevin went on to state that SNS will not overtake BBS in Chinese Internet culture: “BBS is a must-to-have application in SNS, at least in China. The features of BBS can help the social network users to exchange their ideas efficiently. On the other hand, SNS is a people-centric networking platform but BBS is a topic-centric platform.”

“SNS is to map the social relationship in real life into the cyber space, which in my opinion is one of the reasons people love Facebook. But BBS is there for users to follow the hottest topics and expand your social experience virtually. In BBS, people goes there because they are interests in the topics, and whom they communicate with are not really matter.”

One interesting point of the article is that BBS have been successful at building communities through encouraging offline activities: “64.5% users have been attended some offline events organized by BBS administrators or users.”

The Chinese experience reminds me of the Daum Café phenomenon in Korea. Daum Cafés were a hybrid of BBS and SNS. Over time, these cafés incorporated more SNS-functions and tools but they began as BBS cyber-cafés where members would meet online to discuss issues and share information.

Soon though, Daum café members organized “baungae” or “lightening” offline meet and greets. What first drew in the members were engaging and informative topics and issues, but it was the social glue created by both the online and offline conversations that cemented member-loyalty.

It goes to show that building community online is dependent on providing not only good content, but also that less-easily definable social-glue element.

A colleague in Korea wrote an informative posting about global social networking service providers (SNS) trying to muscle into an already very competitive market in Korea.

Google and Microsoft have entered the search engine market in Korea but home-grown portal sites such as Naver and Daum have fought them off quite successfully.

Now the fight has moved to SNS, video-sharing and UGC arenas.

Global SNS/UGC-sites such as MySpace, Youtube, Second Life and Entropia Universe have decided Korea is an ideal market.

Friends in Korea wonder if these SNS providers aren’t just cruising for a bruising. Korea has a very competitive market with very dominant domestic portal sites (Naver, Daum) that have already launched huge UGC-campaigns in the past couple of years.

A few reasons for the Korean entries are:

1. Test bed for innovative practices and platforms

• Korea has the highest broadband penetration in the world
• It has a highly sophisticated user-base that can easily and cheaply access various mobility networks (various WiMAX services are available)

2. “Colonize” new markets

• Murdoch’s MySpace is being edged out of the North American market by Facebook
• As a result, MySpace is developing a “global” strategy to leverage its global brand into a big market share of the global SNS market
• Korea is seen as a good “entry point” or “stepping stone” into Mainland China’s “promised land”

3. Room for all?

• There are cracks in Naver and Cyworld’s domination of the market
• Korean consumers and media experts complain of lack of innovation by the industry leaders and a desire for the next big thing

In return, the global SNS providers promise that their global networks will give Korean users access to global cultural and lifestyle trends.

They also intend to tailor their products and services to the Korean market.

For instance, Second Life will provide Korean-style avatars and user-interface for its Korean edition. It also intends to expand and tailor content and services for Korean online gaming, music, celebrity culture and entertainment. It also plans to expand services and content onto mobile and cell phone networks using open-source applications.

What’s exciting about these various moves by global SNS providers is that they are experimenting in new markets and new media services and products. Google is developing a cross-platform application system called OpenSocial that hope to free social network sites from their particular applications. OpenSocial has experienced many hiccups since its launch, but the dream is still well and alive.

Korea provides a sophisticated user base, great infrastructure in both broadband and mobility networks and businesses ready to turn these factors into…well, the “next big thing.” That’s what these global networks are gunning for.

We’ll see how they fare.

Facebook alerted me that I’ve finally become facebook buddies with a certain Mr. Hwang who is the head of the online division at the Chosun (the most-read Korean daily, and apparently the only one in the black). We lunched many, many months ago when I was working for OhmyNews in Korea last year.

I followed up our off-line introduction with an online network invite: a friendly facebook poke or two or three, followed by a stronger friend-request.

Months of virtual silence were the response. Until today, that is.

The whole drawn-out episode made me ponder on the difficulties of cross-cultural networking in the virtual world.

1. Language barriers

• The issue isn’t whether Mr. Hwang understands English or not. Even a native English speaker may have trouble understanding online communication.
• Online lingo is more complex, fluid and often it’s a mash-up of tech-speak and slang.
• Case-in-point: “w00t” was chosen word of 2007 by Merriam-Webster. It’s an expression that online gamers use. Being a non-gamer, this article was the first time I heard of it.

2. Cultural differences

• Some cultures may be particularly averse to the idea of a social network that reveals so much personal information about yourself, your friends, your dog et etc…
• For instance, many Japanese are averse to revealing personal information online. Unlike other Wiki-communities, Japanese Wikipedians want to participate with complete anonymity. And the top Japanese SNS is Mixi, a strictly by-invitation-only network.
• China for instance was late to the Youtube craze, because many Chinese media experts believed that the Chinese public was uncomfortable with sharing personal videos. A top UGC site, 56.com, began with flickr-style photo slideshows as a result. Things have changed though, as there’s now a fierce competition between UGC-video sites in China.

3. Home-grown vs. Global networks

• Each country has their own online networks that understand the cultural and social norms and aesthetics valued by their public.
• The failure of Google Korea showed how these factors are important when online networks branch into new markets.
• Another example is Cyworld. Cyworld in Korea links a quarter of its population, but Cyworld America hasn’t experienced much success against Myspace and Facebook.
• Again, Google’s Orkut has done well in some markets like Brazil and perhaps India, but it’s a disappointment everywhere else.

Next post will look at how Secondlife and other global networks are taking these and other issues head-on as they move into Asian markets.