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me2DAY vs. Twitter Part I: Developer Ecosystem

There has been a lot of coverage about me2DAY and Twitter on KMixx these days and it certainly makes sense as microblogging is a huge current trend. I’ve been an active user of both services for over a year and have noticed stark differences between the two. There is a lot to go over so coverage will be divided into a three part series. The first part will cover the developer ecosystem around both services while future parts will cover differences in the user bases as well as take a look at the future of microblogging service in Korea.

Twitter Developer Ecosystem

Both me2DAY and Twitter offer open API’s for third party developers. Twitter’s may be well known as a number of popular services have been created around Twitter and many sites now display Twitter logins. A couple of popular “pick and shovel” Twitter services include Twitpic, WeFollow and TwitVid. Disqus takes advantage of Twitter’s login service to improve blog comments. Users with smartphones utilize applications such as Tweetie or echofon to access Twitter on the go while desktop applications such as Seesmic are highly popular. In addition to these, there have been many local services created specifically for the Korean market. Here is a look at a couple.

KoreanTweeters


Those of you who can’t read Korean might notice KoreanTweeters has a familiar layout to it. It’s basically a clone of WeFollow, a user created Twitter directory. KoreanTweeters makes this concept relevant to the Korean market by limiting its user base to Korean users of the service. KoreanTweeters ranks Yuna Kim, winner of figure skating gold at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, as the most popular Korean Twitter user with over 119,000 followers. Number two on the list is Oisoo Lee, a Korean novelist.

TwtMT

TwtMT is another Twitter service created specifically for the Korean market. TwtMT is a Twitter based event site which allows users to create events and makes RSVPing quick and easy. This service has become extremely popular due to its viral capabilities. When a person RSVPs to an event on TwtMT, a post is submitted to their Twitter account stating they have RSVP’ed to the event.

me2DAY Developer Ecosystem

me2DAY also has an open API and while a number of services have been created around me2DAY, the number is obviously much smaller. In addition, most of the applications built around Twitter seem to add functionality to the service while most of the applications built around me2DAY add entertainment benefits to the site.

nOne

The most popular service created for me2DAY is nOne (pronounced no-neh). Roughly translated, nOne means “having fun” in Korean. To login, all users have to do is enter their me2DAY user ID and the service automatically connects. There are several features on the site but the most popular is the 지지자, or supporters feature. The supporters feature keeps track of who posts the most comments on your me2DAY, ranks them and creates a badge you can post to your me2DAY with your supporters avatars.

me2DAY has more buit-in functionality and part of this may be attributed to the fact that their developer ecosystem is smaller. While users post photos to Twitter using third party services, me2DAY has this functionality built-in. Third party me2DAY iPhone apps exist but development of these apps have all but come to a halt since me2DAY released the official me2DAY iPhone app.

Post to Twitter but not me2DAY?

Many popular services currently tie into Twitter for obvious reasons. For example, if you are a user of Foursquare, you can post your check-in’s to your Twitter account. Korean Foursquare users who want to post their check-in locations to me2DAY have no choice.

This is a post on me2DAY calling users to contact Foursquare to request “Post to me2DAY” functionality. KMixx utilizes Disqus for blog comments and users are able to login using their Twitter but not me2DAY.

While Twitter and me2DAY both offer open API’s, it’s clear to see the developer ecosystems that have surfaced around these services are quite different. me2DAY recently passed a million registered users and as the service grows larger, developers may feel more reason to create services around the site. While many are available today, I hope the range of available services expands from entertainment to adding functionality.

Posted on March 26, 2010 at 12:07 pm

Categories: Business

Written by

A web media veteran and guru who has developed and marketed numerous, successful Web sites for both the Korean and Western markets. We’d tell you which ones, but then we’d have to kill you… and that’s that’s not the type of startup we’re supporting here. We can tell you, along with managing the Seoul Space web site and technical needs, Victor is currently preparing to launch a site called PUMPL in the Korean market. He is an avid Mac user and enjoys long walks on the golf course during his spare time.

  • http://infonetdigital.com/ richardmin

    You know, someone on the Twitter app developer side (eng) of the fence should really be keeping tabs on new me2day services. In much the same way, Korea portals and internet services were mined for ideas, there just well be some great ideas that could be ported back to Twitter instead of the cloning that happens from Twitter to me2day/Korean Twitter services. Regardless, even among the limited number of services, there will be something cool to come down the pipes. That nOone service is actually pretty cool and I haven't seen any 3rd party Twitter services that do that (let us know). I'd say perhaps up until recently, Korean search engines and portals were (or should have been) a rich source of new idea for “western” search engines and portals and web services and sites to draw from (those who could read Korea or had access to the market). For example, YahooAnswers is a near direct port of Naver's KnowledgeSearch (지식iN), Google's Universal Search is way too coincidentally similar is scope and nature to Korean portals long standing default 통합검색 or “Combined search” results page layout, and of course, Social network sites like Cyworld and Iloveschool predate Facebook by years, etc etc ecetera… The flow of services seems to reversed significantly in recent years (more internet services ideas seem to be coming into Korea rather than out). That is probably a function of the difficulty most outside of Korea have breaking through the “Korean walled-garden”, as well as, well a shortage of original cool, killer Korea internet / IT services, but that notwithstanding, perhaps me2day 3rd party services may be one (relatively) small corner of the digital market worth that foreign-based, twitter 3rd party wannabe companies should be scouting. Its early enough that you'll basically have first dibs. Heck, even down-the-road… if history is any indication, there just aren't many people willing to even try so, they will have defacto exclusivity to anything coming down the me2day developer pipeline.. ^^

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