In 1994, Lee Hae Jin, a South Korean who was a founder of Naver, was bothered with the result of all the search engines in the world. As a result of all the search engines provided a lot of English data but less Korea data, he found out that it is hardly to find the information he were looking for. So he decided to build a Korea content database for Korea internet users.
At that moment, Yahoo Korea, Daum, Lycos Korea was three major portal sites in Korea. How can Naver compete with them? Lee Hae Jin's strategy was to build a platform which provided question-and-answer service. He thought that the wisdom of crowds may help Naver rapidly to collect a huge amount of data for it search engine and also accumulate enough Korea content to improve their database. For this strategy, Naver launched the service which called 「Knowledge iN」 in 2005.
As their expectation, Knowledge iN gained a great success. Knowledge search service was supported by many web users. On the other hand, by the information which users provided, Naver also became an excellent search engine service provider. Nowadays, the market share of Naver is over than 70%. Even Google Korea or Yahoo Korea roused themself to catch up Naver, this situation is still harsh. To rely on Knowledge iN rose abruptly, Naver defeated other famous search engine and won the market.
After Knowledge iN success, Yahoo Korea imitated Knowledge iN and launched Yahoo Korea Answers. Then, Yahoo Taiwan followed Korea version and launched their Answer platform in 2004. After one year later, because of Yahoo Taiwan Answer made a high grade in Taiwan, Yahoo head office sent their project team to Taiwan to gain more experience and launched American version in 2005. Knowledge search services already become another important and new style search engines to compete with traditional search engines. Nowadays, various types of Q & A platform have been creative.
Knowledge search service is a great sample to show the power of collective intelligence in this case. In moreover, I also observed that lot of enterprises just provide a platform for user, and design some interesting systems such as virtual point, rank and achievement to encourage users to contribute their intelligence. Enterprises uses these systems attract users to create and join in more internet activities in their platform. They borrow the enthusiasm of their user and reward with some titles or medals to satisfy user's vanity. To encourage their users contribute their intelligence become a new challenge for these platform.
References:
Questions in, Knowledge iN? A Study of Naver's Question Answering Community
Greet, I agree with your view point
ReplyDeleteThat Q&A system has already became an essential part for a portal-site. People could catch information or some knowledge from this function.
However, can we believe that the answer from other users? Because, how can we know that answer is comes from a expert or someones joke???
This is a good question. Indeed, this also is an issue that a site operator will worry about. I think if the website can design a virtual honour system. For example a title of master of the group, it may reduce this situation happening. An incentive system will encourage users to respond positively and make the answer valuable.
ReplyDeleteExcellent! It sounds like convenient system and save people's time and money.
ReplyDeleteI am a researcher and access website looking for information every day.Q&A system can provide some information that I never know. I like it. However, if this system no any censor system how can we know this information is correct or not.
I just know Naver is the most powerful information web-site in Korea. Really wondering when know more information about the web site is more powerful than Yahoo and Google.
ReplyDeleteGreat example. Yahoo Taiwan Answer is familiar to me, but I had no idea that this kind of platform was from Korean until I read your article.
ReplyDeleteTo:Erin I think this is the risk that knowledge search need to take.
ReplyDeleteGreat example of portal sites in korea,this is a website which very useful and helpful so it can save people's time and money.
ReplyDelete