Naver
Naver is a South Korean online platform operated by Naver Corporation. It debuted in 1999 as the first web portal in Korea to develop and uses its own search engine. It was also the world's first operator to introduce the comprehensive search feature, which compiles search results from various categories and presents them in a single page. Naver has since added a multitude of new services ranging from basic features such as e-mail and news to the world's first online Q&A platform Knowledge iN.
As of September 2017, the search engine handled 74.7% of all web searches in South Korea and had 42 million enrolled users. More than 25 million Koreans have Naver as the start page on their default browser and the mobile application has 28 million daily visitors. Naver is also frequently referred to as 'the Google of South Korea'.
History
Naver was created in June 1999 as the first South Korean portal website with a self-developed search engine. In August 2000, Naver began the 'comprehensive search' service, which allows users to get a variety of results from a search query on a single page, organized by type, including blogs, websites, images, cafes, etc. This was five years before Google launched a similar offer with its 'universal search' function.In the early days of Naver's operation, there was a relative dearth of webpages available in the Korean language. To fill this void, Naver became an early pioneer in user-generated content through the creation of the 'Knowledge iN ' service in 2002. In Knowledge iN, users can pose questions on any subject and select among answers provided by other users, awarding points to the users who gives the best answers. Knowledge iN was launched three years before Yahoo! launched its similar 'Yahoo! Answers' service, and now possesses a database of over 200 million answers.
Over the years, Naver has continued to expand its services. It launched its Web comic service 'Webtoon' in 2004 and its personal Blog service in 2005. From 2005 to 2007, Naver expanded its multimedia search services, including music and video search as well as mobile search.
Junior Naver
Junior Naver, also known as Juniver, is a portal website for children considered similar to Yahooligans. Junior Naver offers services such as avatars, educational content, quizzes, videos, Q&A, and a homework helper. Junior Naver utilizes a panel of experts and educators to filter out harmful content in order to ensure a safe internet environment for children. Ever since its competitors Daum Kids and Yahoo Kids have closed down, Junior Naver is the only children's portal site operating in Korea.Naver Webtoon
Naver Webtoon, later simply WEBTOON, is a webcomic platform where users have free access to a variety of webtoons created by professional artists. Users can also pay publishers to view comic books and genre fiction contents online. Naver has incorporated a 'Challenge' section which allows amateurs to post and promote their own works. These days, there are a number of k-dramas that are motivated by these webtoons.Naver Cafe
Naver Cafe is a service that allows Naver users to create their own internet communities. There were 10.5 million cafes running as of May 2017.Naver Blog
Naver Blog started with the name 'paper' in June 2003, and evolved to 'blog' in October 2003. It had 23 million users as of April 2016. 'Bloggers' appeared as a newly introduced career with the creation of the Naver blog. They are working as an influencers by writing their own reviews about the products or places.Naver TV
is a web broadcast network which mainly provides web dramas distributed by Naver.Knowledge IN
Knowledge iN, formerly Knowledge Search, is an online Q&A platform launched in October 2002. The tool allows users to ask any question and to receive answers from other users. Knowledge iN was an early example of harnessing user-generated content to expand the amount of information available on the web, particularly in the Korean language. Bradley Horowitz, former Vice President of Product Strategy at Yahoo!, has cited Knowledge iN as the inspiration for Yahoo! Answers, which was launched three years after Naver introduced the original service.Naver Encyclopedia
Naver Encyclopedia consists of a professional database with over 3 million entries from many different encyclopedias. More than 1000 experts in physics, food, film, and other fields are producing 45 kinds of specialized content in the encyclopedia of Naver knowledge, and 50,000 headwords are accumulated. The Naver Knowledge Encyclopedia also deals with more than 100 public institutions and has received over 900 kinds of DBs.PRISM Live Studio
is a live streaming application for both mobile and PC. Streamers can simultaneously broadcast to multiple platforms, also known as simulcasting, while using up to 1080p HD all without increasing the network usage. Platforms supported includes YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Periscope, V Live, Naver TV, afreecaTV, kakaoTV and RTMP channels. The application can also be used for video editing purposes.Criticism
Naver's closed platform is frequently mentioned. Their knowledge and blogs are not to be searched on other search sites, which is to operate the site to maximize. In April 2011, the second and third portal sites in Korea, Daum and Nate, signed a memorandum of understanding to open their search for services such as cafe and blogs. Naver did not choose to participate in this MOU.There is also a criticism that blogs in Naver are limited from being searched by other search engines, and that Naver helps with unauthorized publishing in order to attract users to the KnowledgeIN service. In other words, the quality of the KnowledgeIN service is a poor factor, as previous answers to a question are left unaltered, or a previous question is only allowed to be slightly altered by other netizens. Criticism is also growing as Naver unilaterally controls comments or edits information that may be against its political positions.
Popularity
In the first half of 2020 the website naver.com was one of the most popular and reliable sources in Korean and Indonesian Wikipedia.According to Alexa, the website naver.com is the 2nd most popular website in South Korea.