Korean Blog Business Association – Proof that Koreans Take Blogging Seriously

About the KBBA

The KBBA (Korea Blog Business Association; KBBA) was established for consolidation of members of Korean blogosphere. As an affiliate of the MCST (Ministry of Culture, Sport & Tourism Republic of Korea), KBBA was founded on a consortium of 12 Korean blog companies; and the first elected chairman is from Tatter & Company Inc., the company that developed Tattertools, the predecessor of Textcube (acquired by Google), which is a blogging software platform widely used in Korea.

Membership admission of KBBA is regulated by member companies – annual fee and consensus from all members is required for a new member to join. Recent new members include Miclub (community portal site for women) and Tongyang Online (company behind Game Hama, a popular gaming portal) and Senior Partners (portal site for senior citizens).  Currently, KBBA is 20 members strong and in their monthly meetings, topics including contemporary business trends and potential opportunities are discussed.

Role of the KBBA

KBBA’s primary activity involves supporting blog-related events in Korea.  There are estimated 20 million blogs in Korea.  Most blogs are built on existing blog platforms including Naver, Tistory, Daum, Egloos, and Textcube.  Most bloggers often ‘scrap’ useful content from another blog or website into their own blogs a way of spreading information, as opposed to creating their own original content.

Because of scrapping, or the automatic copy-pasting of identical information from one blog to another, is so commonplace, the KBBA encourages publishing of original content by giving out blog awards that recognize creative content providers.  It is also the KBBA’s role to host conferences and meetings to share information on various industries and business practices including media communication and marketing that involve blogs.

The KBBA Main Activities

The KBBA hosts 3 main events to facilitate blog-centric businesses in Korea every year.

First, the KBBA hosts Korean Blog Awards.  Over 20 million blogs are all eligible for this award, and it encourages publishing of original content.  The blog award is co-hosted by KBBA and Korean Media Foundation.

Second, the KBBA hosts the Business Blog Summit.  The summit was actually in operation prior to official establishment of KBBA in 2007.  The main topic discussed includes successful cases of corporations leveraging blogs for their business practices.  Samsung Electronics, Cheil Worldwide, Daum, Yahoo, Google, Kaist, and Microsoft participate in the summit.

Third, the KBBA publishes a Blog Guidebook that deals with the topic entitled, “Individual Media Academy”.  The second edition was published in 2009, and it includes 138 pages of the A to Z of Korean blogging and related business strategies that companies employ.

So to sum it up: Koreans take blogging seriously, and corporations utilize blogs and online communities as a major channel for marketing.  Korean corporations saw the need to form a consortium to share information, strategies and case studies of successful implementation of blogs to aid their business practices.