Futurize Korea

Korea.Net reports on a press conference from Google Korea on their plans for 2008:

...Google Korea CEO Lee Won-jin told reporters during a press conference on its 2008 business plans.

"Google’s basic business strategy is to invest 70 percent of its efforts into search engines, 20 percent into related projects and 10 percent into unrelated but experimental areas such as mobile businesses," Lee said.

"Especially, Google Korea plans to increase investment in the mobile sector given that Korea boasts an unparalleled mobile business environment," He said. "We are currently considering launching mobile content and mobile advertisement businesses."

The Korea Times has more details on actual interface changes to Google's Korean site:

The company also said it is considering adopting the multi-column, contents-tailored look in other countries, its International Project Manager Jung Ki-hyun said.

``This is not a Korea-only project. All of Google has been involved in this project, and we are thinking of adopting the same system to other language versions,'' said Jung, who is based in the Google global headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

The interface is similar to the US Google site's Universal Search with news stories appearing with search results. But on Google Korea, the news stories and blog post results appear in a column on the right side of the page below where Sponsored Links appear on the US Google site.

Coincidently, Naver recently opened their new Naver Lab site and as mentioned in the article one of the new services is called "Simple Experience" with a simplified version of Naver. You can try it out at: http://se.naver.com/

Maeil Business News has a story on some new companies developing Second Life spaces:

According to industry insiders on January 28, Amorepacific is to open “Amorepacific Land” starting from February 1, to carry out image marketing as Asian beauty creator and to publicize Amorepacific to the users of Second Life around the world.

You can find a demo in this Second Life Korea News video:

Just to clarify one thing in the article, the Amorepacific, LG CNS and Samsung SDS Second Life spaces are all being developed by the Korean Second Life marketing company Acid Crebiz. The above video is also from Acid Crebiz.

The New York Times recently had an article on Electronic Arts's plans to market the new Battlefield Heroes online game for free. They're experience in Korea with the FIFA Online soccer game is prominently mentioned in this new venture:

E.A.’s most recent experiment with free online games began two years ago in South Korea, the world’s most fervent gaming culture. In 2006, the company introduced a free version of its FIFA soccer game there, and Gerhard Florin, E.A.’s executive vice president for publishing in the Americas and Europe, said it has signed up more than five million Korean users and generates more than $1 million in monthly in-game sales.

EA will rely on in-game advertising and microtransactions for generating revenue.