Even in a tough economy there is a Korean venture firm, Nurien Software, into which nearly 25 million dollars investment has been made from Silicon Valley and China venture capital investors who saw a great growth potential of 3D socail networking service being converged with various services, contents, and softwares.

“Nurien is a new category of social networking service where we can give our users more powerful ways to express their identities by enabling them to create their own unique avatars, fashions, 3D objects, legacy media (such as photo, video, and text) and share them with the world via their own 3D rooms that are accessible from a web-browser as well as our software clients.” www.Nurien.com

Nurien differentiates itself further from other 3D social networking services by utilizing Unreal Engine 3, a development framework for Xbox 360, PlayStarion 3, etc. to transform 3D social networking in order for users to interact, network, and play games with their personalized 3D avatars. The avatars can move realistically and appear more lifelike, showing each component such as earrings, necklaces, ties, gloves, etc. moves independently.     

Also, Nurien has planned to offer social activity applications to help users interact with each other.

“MStar is an online music dance game similar to game interface such as Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution(DDR). Runway is an innovative fashion show application, players will follow certain rules and various themes to create their own clothing line and compete on a virtual fashion show-where other users within the community will watch and vote online. QuizStar is a casual online game and it is a great way to have fun with friends and meet new people.” www.Nurien.com

I wonder whether Nurien, 3D social networking service, will make inroads into online communities like Cyworld in South Korea by creating a new category of a social networking service. For me it would be an exciting experience to have.

I picked 2008 top 10 news at Korean Technology market as follow.

1. WIPI is gone

As I posted already, KCC released the duty of loading WIPI by next  April. This will affect mobile operator as well as mobile device manufacturer. It seems to be more foreign mobile device like iPhone or Blackberry will be launched in Korea next year due to this releasing.

2. Global companies rush to Korea

Beginning from Youtube’s expansion to Korea last January, Myspace and Facebook also extended their business to Korean market this year. Youtube Korea currently ranked top 10 among Korean video site, as well as ranked top 5 during the candlelight vigil on May. Google Korea initially launched localized service as map service in Korea and merged Korean internet company, TNC. EA, I think, is doing business in Korea pretty well and merged Korean game comapny, J2M recently. However, Myspace and Facebook have suffered in Korean market, while Cyworld, the leading SNS in Korea, is having 20 million unique visitor per month.

3. Touch screen phone makes huge hit

Even though Apple’s iPhone didn’t come to Korea, phone having similar feature like iPhone hit the Korean mobile market. Samsung’s Haptic has been sold more than 1.5 million for 8 months and LG’s touch UI phones also have been sold a lot this year inspite of their high prices.

Touch UI appealed to customer becuase of easy interface to use not only phone itself but mobile internet. And now these trends are continuing to interets for smart phone. While KCC recently announced to release the duty of loading WIPI on the mobile phone by next April, the interests for smart phone such as iPhone or Blacberry is getting bigger than before. I guess that touch screen phone wave in mobile market will continue to smart phone next year.

4. IPTV is rising

From last November, the first commercial IPTV service, KT’s Mega TV has began in Korea. Actually many experts thought that it would be difficult to launch commercial IPTV service this year because broadcasting agreement between broadcasts and IPTV providers was facing rough. However Korean government eager to make IPTV successful as Korean next growth engine, other IPTV operators also will provide commercial service by next January.

5. VoIP is becoming the Defacto

I also posted about VoIP market growth in Korea previously. As number portability for VoIP has began, VoIP for home market has increased and is forecasted to grow more next year. As following chart, PSTN subscribers are decreasing and expected to get decrease more and more while people are moving to VoIP.

VoIP will displace PSTN eventually. This threatens KT, the leading player in PSTN market, but gives an opportunity to other players such as LG Powercom and SK Broadband.

2008 Top 10 news is continued at Part 2. Click this here to read.

A Korean gaming news website published results of a survey among young internet users. The survey has been conducted by two websites www.Puppyred.com and www.ontooniverse.com among 86.000 surfers aged 8-13. Puppyred.com is something like Second Life for children, whereas Ontooniverse.com is a website of a cable TV program comparable to Cartoon Network. Despite a likely bias in the survey population some of the results are fascinating and frightening at the same time.

Approximately 62% of the participants use the internet 1-2 hours a day. This may not sound a lot to you but in Korea even young school children return from school around 6 p.m. or even later. Subtracting time for having dinner and eventual homework these two hours represent probably 80%-90% of their free time during one day. This is underlined by the fact that 92% surf from home. What do the kids do online on their virtual playground? Well the same thing we used to do on real playgrounds, i.e. playing (39% play online games) and meeting friends (27% work on their “Minihompi” or visit their friends’ “Minihompis”). In connection to that it is not surprising that CyWorld is the second most popular website (29%) just after naver (57%).

This trend underlines the appearance of a truly digital youth. However in Korea it gets an almost dangerous dimension which ultimately will further increase problems like internet addiction. On the other hand this early embrace of the internet and its virtual worlds is a good explanation why Koreans usually are regarded as tech savvy, which enhances the development of new services and businesses in the TMT sector.