Under Attack

The Me2Day service is closing on June 30 of this year.
The Me2Day service is closing on June 30 of this year.

 

The global IT giants’ offensive is causing a growing number of local IT services to pull out of the market. Owing to offensives to the local market by global IT companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, Cyworld, which once dominated the local social networking service (SNS) market, saw most of its users leave its SNS platform. Daum Communications’ Yozm and SK Communications’ C-Log already ended their service. Naver’s Me2day will also be closed at the end of this month, owing to difficulties in operating and maintaining its service. 

According to industry sources on June 16, Naver’s Me2day will terminate its service in two weeks. Started as a company that provides short-message mobile SNS services in 2007, the mobile SNS platform was sold to Naver in December of 2008. In 2009, it had 3 million visitors, which exceeded the number for Twitter. 

However, the situation was reversed when Facebook entered the local market. In December 2013, monthly page views of Facebook were more than 130 times as high as those of Me2day. The number of people who visited the dominant social networking platform increased by 19.4 percent in May compared to the same period last year, and the figure for page views surged 82.3 percent. 

As a result, Naver made a decision on November 2013 to close Me2day on June 30 2014, since it had no alternative but to discontinue the service in order to survive in the era of limitless competition.

According to the Korea Mobile Internet Business Association, the size of the local mobile content market is estimated at nearly 3.1860 trillion won (US$3.1235 billion) this year. But the weight of the local app market is small. Local companies have to compete with foreign firms such as Google and Apple, which are in an advantageous position in the market due to their smart devices with operating systems (OSs).

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