Naver knocks Daum from top in portal wars

The competition at the top of Korea’s Internet portal industry is getting fiercer.
Daum.net, operated by Daum Communications Corp., which for years was Korea’s most frequently visited Internet portal, lost the lead to NHN Corp.’s naver.com last week, according to rankey.com, which ranks portal sites by sales and number of visitors.
Rankey.com said Naver had the most visitors per hour between Feb. 29 and March 6, accounting for 8.57 percent of all Internet users. The figure for Daum was 8.52 percent.
In the first week of January, about 8.44 percent of Internet users visited Daum, while the figure for Naver was 8.11 percent.
The change at the top is attributed to aggressive marketing by NHN, including a television commercial featuring starlet Jeon Ji-hyun. Daum, which has had the largest slice of the Internet portal market since it first started offering free e-mail and online communities years ago, is apparently losing market clout due to its failure to offer other types of online services.
An official at rankey.com said it was too early to decide whether Naver had consolidated its position as the top portal site, since over the past 12 weeks, Daum’s visitors outnumbered Naver’s.
Nate.com, a portal operated by SK Communications, has gotten a boost from its merger with Cyworld, an online community site. The huge popularity of mini-home pages, which Nate members can create through Cyworld, has helped Nate surpass Yahoo Korea, which had been the third most visited portal, according to online portal researchers.
NHN and Daum have been competing fiercely for members of online communities. NHN’s television commercial features Jeon Ji-hyun telling viewers she is leaving her “cafe,” Daum’s term for an online community, for a community operated by NHN.
Daum, meanwhile, has a prime-time television campaign featuring 10 celebrities, including the popular actors Sul Kyung-gu, Ahn Sung-ki, Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae and Jang Jin-yeung.

by Yoon Chang-hee