'Minimes' in mini rooms at Cyworld

Cyworld is South Korea's MySpace, and now it's here in the US. MySpace and Cyworld (which has reached the saturation point of its user base at 90% of Korean 20-somethings) "reach a similar proportion of their respective homelands. In South Korea, Cyworld captures about one-third of the country's population of 48 million. MySpace has 98 million registered users, roughly a third of the US population," the San Jose Mercury News reports. So now the question is, "Is it too late for a newcomer to crash the online social networking party" on this side of the Pacific? Tough to tell, but there is a lot of competition besides MySpace, of course, in Xanga, Facebook, LiveJournal, Bebo, Tagged, Friendster, Hi5 (very popular in India), MyYearbook, and dozens of others (see Wikipedia's linked list). What's different about Cyworld is it aims to be not just your virtual or online self and social life, as with MySpace, but your virtual home or room, in which your avatar or online self lives and which you decorate – a little like a MySpace profile, but with a more spatial feel. At Cyworld that "self" is "minime." The Mercury News says the site targets 17-to-24-year-olds, but its Terms of Use say the minimum age is 13, a year younger than MySpace's. The avatars and room decorating will probably appeal to younger users, and "people will see Cyworld as more intimate, more slumber party than stadium concert scene." But US teens don't seem to mind MySpace's comparative edginess. For more on Cyworld, see my 3/24 issue.