The United States Social Networking Market: An Analysis of Cyworld’s Failure to Succeed Abroad

Scientific Essay from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Company formation, Business Plans, grade: 1,0, University of St Andrews (School of Management), language: English, abstract: Only those networks, which are most innovative, and the most convenient for usage are likely to attract a critical mass of users and become successful. Such is the situation with Facebook at the moment and MySpace in the past. These social networks are the leaders in the US market, and Facebook currently leads in the competition with its unique open platform strategy - a valuable, rare and rather hard-to-imitate resource. Some unique features and capabilities of Cyworld included the security of customers’ information, the guarantee of protection from fraud, and the experience of tremendous success in Korea. Cyworld was predominantly used to manage already existing relationships its members were freer in their interactions, including commercial ones, and their privacy and identity was protected by the KBA system. The unprecedented popularity of Cyworld in South Korea where almost all young population is registered in this social network allowed stating that Cyworld is likely to perform successfully at the global level. Cyworld’s unique features and capabilities, however, turned out to be tied to its domestic market and inappropriate to compete with networks such as Facebook in the US. A variety of factors such as lack of technological innovations (closed platform), the mentality of other countries’ population, psychosocial issues, market saturation, and cultural barriers contributed to the failure of Cyworld in the United States social networking market.