Response to Post on Mobile SNSs Usage

Fastest Internet Service? South Korea

 

This post is in response to Sachi’s “My Use of Social Media”.

 

Sachi’s blog post regarding her use of social media gave me insights into how someone growing up in Japan first encounters social media. What’s also special is the medium it uses – mobile phone. I have learned from previous classes that some countries in Asia have the fastest internet connection service in comparison to the rest of the world. South Korea is found to have the world’s fastest internet service. I found a pretty interesting infographic from Mashable regarding internet connections, and it is said that South Korea has a faster download speed than Great Britain, Turkey, Spain & Australia combined. South Korea also has a high penetration rate of mobile phone users - 105% penetration rate mark in 2011.

 [https://wiki.smu.edu.sg/w/digitalmediaasia/images/thumb/b/bf/SouthKorea-Infographics.png/800px-SouthKorea-Infographics.png]

Not to mention the booming mobile phone innovations happening in South Korea. It made social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook quickly open their Korean language sites in order to seize the great momentum in Korea.  Although Facebook and Twitter usage are growing in popularity in Korea, Cyworld (equivalent to Facebook) is still the most popular social networking site in South Korea. Like Sachi mentioned how she used mixi instead of Facebook when she goes back to Japan, South Koreans mainly use Cyworld as their main platform to connect with friends.

Sachi uses mixi to connect with old friends in Japan, like Nicole Ellison said we started using Facebook to stay connected with our high school friends once we got to college. We venture onto social networking sites with goals to stay in touch with people that we know or just met. I have mentioned in my first blog post that I was glad that Facebook is gaining popularity in Taiwan because I was able to reconnect with my old friends in Taiwan. I know if I have a smartphone, Korean’s activeness on social networking sites and the broad internet has director correlation to how accessible internet is for them. I would be able to participate more in depth on social networking sites that I am on.

 

Jessica Y.
@jayckah