This article explains the definition, characteristics, different types, main services, advantages, disadvantages, and usage in Korea, and points out that while social media plays an important role in strengthening connections and sharing information, it also comes with the risk of privacy leakage.
A friend and I went to a nice restaurant and ordered food. When the food was served, she took out her cell phone and took a picture of the food. When you asked him why he was taking pictures, he replied, “I’m going to post it on Facebook.” When he finished eating, he went to Facebook on his phone and saw a new friend request. The new friend request was from a long-lost elementary school best friend. She was happy to accept the request and went to the “Find Friends” tab to find her old friends and request them. So, what exactly is SNS that everyone is talking about these days? An SNS, or social network service, is a community-based website designed to help people build online connections. They are also known as one-person media, one-person communities, and one-person networks because they allow you to strengthen your connections with friends, coworkers, and other acquaintances on the web, make new connections, and build a broader social network.
SNSs have three main characteristics. The first is rapidity. Unlike traditional media, information can be transmitted horizontally and spread through networks, and this happens very quickly. The second is personalization, which is centered on sharing personal experiences with others. Third is the openness of information and ease of deployment. There are no restrictions on posting content, it can be freely clipped or linked to, and each person’s social networks are publicly available, indicating transparency.
SNSs with these characteristics can be categorized into eight main types according to the features they offer. The first is the profile-based type, which is open to anyone without any restrictions on specific users or sectors, and is exemplified by the likes of WhatsApp, Facebook, and MySpace. The second is business-based, which are specialized, business-oriented services that are intended for work or business relationships, such as LinkedIn, LinkedIn, and BusinessSpace. The third type is blog-based. This is a service that combines social network functions centered on a blog, which is a personal media, and includes NateTong and Windows LiveSpace. The fourth is the vertical type, which is a service centered on vertical UCC in a specific field such as photos, videos, and reviews. YouTube and Africa are typical examples. The fifth type is collaboration-based, which is based on co-creation or collaboration, such as Wikipedia. The sixth type is communication-centered, which is centered on connected communication between users, such as chat, mail, video, and conferencing, such as Nateon. The seventh type is interest-based. These are specialized network services based on topics of interest in different fields, such as Dogster. Lastly, the eighth type is microblogging, which is a short, short-text service that targets a niche in the market of large social networking services, such as Twitter and WhatsApp. Here’s a little more information about the most popular ones in Korea, namely, Whatsapp, Facebook, and Twitter.
Cyworld is a community site launched by SK Communications in September 1999. Members are given a personal virtual space called a mini-homepage, and they can connect with their friends as “ilchon” to see their connection information and mini-homepage updates. Acorns, a form of cyber money, allowed users to purchase various items to decorate their mini-homes, such as backgrounds and music for their mini-homes.
Facebook was created in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University student, and his friends. Like Twitter, Facebook allows users to create a personal virtual space and friend their friends to see what they post.
Twitter was founded in March 2006 by Evan Williams and Noah Glass of the American venture firm Odeo, inc. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Twitter does not have a special private virtual space, and users can post short messages with a 140-character limit. This is called sending a “tweet”. You can also “follow” someone without their consent to see their latest activity.
As social networks have become more established and influential, they have been used for purposes other than strengthening connections and creating new ones, such as social commerce. Social commerce is a type of e-commerce that utilizes social and online media. It’s similar to collaborative buying, where each social commerce site offers a deep discount on a product if a certain number of buyers gather around it. The name comes from the fact that people who want to buy a product often use social networking services to organize co-buyers to secure a discount. While traditional product sales rely heavily on advertising and marketing, social commerce has the advantage of requiring almost no marketing costs because consumers voluntarily promote products and gather buyers through social networking services. In Korea, Ticketmaster and Coupang are representative social commerce sites.
In addition to these, SNS are used for various purposes, such as government organizations to promote national policies, show complaints and resolutions, introduce their own game systems to play games, and promote products or services of companies, as in the case of Facebook.
But how much are SNSs used in Korea? According to the Internet Usage Survey Summary Report released by KISA (Korea Internet & Security Agency), 68% of men and 64.7% of women use SNS in Korea, and 89.7% of internet users in their 20s use SNS by age. By type of SNS, 84.0% of SNS users use blogs, 18.4% use profile-based SNS, and 12.8% use microblogs. In terms of the purpose and frequency of SNS use, 25.7% of users use SNS at least once a day and 30.7% use SNS at least once a week for personal use, while 15.7% of employees use SNS at least once a day and 27.4% use SNS at least once a week for work. In terms of SNS usage devices, 98.7% of SNS users access SNS via desktop computers and 31.5% via smartphones, with the latter showing a 29.9% year-on-year increase.
With the advent of smartphones, SNSs have gained the advantage of delivering information faster than traditional media. Smartphones have made it easier, faster, and more frequent for people to interact with social media. As a result, people are able to know what their connections are up to in near real time. In real life, conversations often go along the lines of, “Did you see anyone on Facebook yesterday?” However, along with these advantages, there is also a disadvantage: the leakage of personal information through SNS. Due to the nature of SNS, users share their personal information and private posts with each other on SNS, and in this process, users’ carelessness can cause damage such as excessive exposure of personal information to the outside world and criminal use. In fact, according to a November 19, 2010 article in ChosunBiz, a female office worker was victimized when a man saw her cell phone number that she left on her Facebook profile and sent her a message, and when she changed her number, he started stalking her on Twitter and eventually left Facebook, Twitter, and Messenger.
This was a brief overview of social media. SNSs are used by many people today and will be used by many more in the future, and while they have their advantages in terms of networking, they also have their disadvantages in terms of how easily personal information can be leaked. If you have the mindset to value your own and other people’s information, social media can be a great future postman to keep people in touch.
