Nate seen top portal; Daum begs to differ

Internet industry players are climbing over one another in a scramble to get on top. Nate.com, a portal site developed by SK Telecom, achieved first place in user page views, surpassing Daum for the first time. Matrix, an online research agency, said yesterday that total page views of Nate.com last week were 3.8 billion, surpassing those of Daum, with 3.7 billion. Page views are basic indices used in determining the popularity of Web sites through numbers of visitors. “Nate.com is currently on the rise,” an industry analyst said. “On a monthly basis, it will probably beat Daum in July as well.” Nate owes its popularity mainly to Cyworld, a community service that currently boasts about 8 million members. Nate.com took over Cyworld last year. Page views of Cyworld made up 69.3 percent of all visits to Nate.com. An official at Daum, however, claimed that a direct comparison was invalid. “Cyworld’s window is very small and requires more clicks than other blogs or Web sites, so it is natural that Nate has a higher page view.” Meanwhile, Naver and Yahoo Korea, competing portals, announced that over a billion users visited each site last week. by Yoon Chang-hee