Why the Future is in South Korea

Why the Future is in South Korea: "By tim Business 2.0 has an interesting article arguing that the future is in South Korea. There's so much food for thought in this article that I had trouble deciding whether to make one long entry about it or a half dozen separate ones. (I've chosen the former.) Here's the premise of the article: South Korea has become the world's best laboratory for broadband services - and a place to look to for answers on how the Internet business may evolve....Cyworld, for example, is a social network owned by a subsidiary of SK Telecom, the country's largest wireless provider. To an American eye, the Cyworld service looks like a mixture of some of the hottest US properties: it's MySpace meets Flickr and Blogger and AIM and Second Life. Users have avatars that visit and can link to each other's 'minihompy' - a miniature homepage that's actually a 3-D room containing a users' blog, photos, and virtual items for sale. Cyworld's digital garage sales include music, ringtones, clothes for your avatar and furnishings for your own minihompy. Cyworld has penetration rates tha"