Cyworld US sucks because it’s coded to nurture to American needs. Cyworld KR is obviously better because it has more features, it’s been around longer, and it’s “cuter” because it associates with South Korean culture more. Let’s face it, many American men will not make little “mini-homes” about themselves and post cute little avatars…while Korean men have no homophobic problem doing so.

It’s all about preferences.

Fortunately – users in the US have many options, and CyWorlds – take-it-or-leave-it from their collection of graphics and mini items is not likely to appeal to many myspace users.

MySpace may be terrible tecnnically – and not appeal to the geek “technorati” in elegance – but it is King with users – and it’s easy to see why:

FREEDOM

The fundamental problem is diversity with the CyWorld Approach – MySpace has created a huge ecosystem of companies like http://www.skem9.com http://www.blemeshack.com http://www.glitter-graphics.com http://www.dolliecrave.com http://www.myonda.com http://www.createblog.com

the list and diveristy of sites serving different interests – with different layouts, graphics, video, music etc. to customize your profile – or ANY OTHER profile on another social network is astounding. There are litterally millions upon millions of items from thousands of sites. CyWorld only offers their items – yes for cute acorns, but C’mon?? Who would pay? All the sites offer Free Code – that you can put on any blog, website, profile, wherever…and they are not going away.

http://www.blemeshack.com has even launched a meta search engine to search all the other sites to find these free items and the free code…

You Tube is another Major market force – in distributing their video codes free – they have grown to be the market leader – and the dozens of video offerings that have followed – have all had to offer their video codes for distrbution – to MySpace profiles, blogs, and anywhere else…

Other social networks will grow – and in time – one may top myspace – but it will be based on leveraging all the FREE decoration and enhancement codes ALREADY out there… not by building a closed walled community – and trying to trick users with cutesy garbage into paying for a poorer choice of items.

Look at Tag World – which has tried to push and push it’s own “widgets” (technically elegant and loved by techies) to enhance your profile – after tons of money spent – it’s numbers still suck. Lost Cherry is a good example of an SN that is embracing all of the MySpace content sites – and enhancing some messaging features – and growing like a rocket. They have another revenue idea which is getting users to review advertisers offerings more closely – in exchage for points – but they are doing nothing to try to lock users in, and fully support HTML grabbed from any where – and stored in users bleme Shacks.

In the end – the equation is simple:

Free Code + Leveraging Existing Content + Demographic focus => Social Networking success.

joe