The super popular South-Korean web portal “Cyworld” notified their American users that they will shortly discontinue services here. Cyworld is known as one of the worlds first interactive social networks and public profile sites. In 2006 they tried recreate their South Korean success and expand their services overseas to the US, Germany and China.
However, Cyworld could not recreate the hype that they had in South-Korea. From the start the services Cyworld USA provided were lost in translation. Usage based by nation-only stand-alones made it impossible for members to link overseas Cyworld accounts. The lack of members being able to globally network seemed to handicap users who are usually used to sites that will allow anyone to join, such as ike Myspace, Facebook and Friendster.
There is also the debate that Cyworld USA lost membership do to offensive graphics. Many users who were familiar with their South-Korean portal noticed that the avatars available to the US had very noticable differences. Avatars were described as too bulky and having funny facial features. Some even said that they were just uglier than their Korean counterparts. Cyworld avatars and avatar rooms were upgradable with dotoris points, which were available for purchase. Americans were lost on why should they buy avatar skins and upgrades when already existing sites were free of charge.
Cyworld USA’s announcement said they will shut down their USA site on February 19th. They apologized to allow the users who are left to gather any data they may have used to design their Cyworld profiles. They are offering refunds for any unused dotoris points. These are the “acorns” that users purchase to upgrade and design their avatar rooms. However refunds and data backups stop on February 19th 2010.
So if you are a Cyworld US user make sure you get your data back and your acorns refunded!
No comments:
Post a Comment