Cyworld Dreaming of Revival Next Year, Aiming to Evolve with 'My Own Space' and 'Interaction'

Ham Young-chul, CEO of Psy Communications, is making a presentation at a press conference held at Ferrum Tower in Jung-gu, Seoul on the 11th. Photo by Lee Jung-yoon

Cyworld is putting great effort into developing its service for a launch next year. It plans to transform into a mobile application and web service that allows chat interactions within a personal space for managing posts and photos.

Ham Young-cheol, CEO of Cycommunications (Cycoms), explained the direction of the Cyworld service currently under development for an official launch in the second half of next year at a press conference held on the 11th at Ferrum Tower in Jung-gu, Seoul.

He introduced the 'MyHome' feature, where users can manage their own photos, posts, and characters, and the 'Club' feature, which will operate mainly around chat. MyHome serves as the app’s main screen and personal space, allowing users to easily create and manage posts. Club will function as a community centered on chat rather than posts. MyHome and Club will be organically connected, enabling personal interactions within groups.

CEO Ham said, "MyHome is like a space where you store photos as you did in college, and the Club where you can hang out is like an alumni meeting. I dream of organically connecting the college version of myself with my alumni."

Additionally, Cyworld’s iconic avatar, MiniMe, will be produced in 3D graphics instead of the existing dot design. Features will be added to allow users to customize their MiniMe according to their preferences.

Although global social networking services (SNS) like Instagram and YouTube dominate the market, Cyworld aims to secure competitiveness through its unique sensibility. The possibility of expanding into the gaming business based on Cyworld was also mentioned.

CEO Ham noted that despite a history of service termination and delays in resumption causing a decline in trust, public interest remains high. Long-term operational disruptions and service suspensions since 2017, as well as ventures into coin businesses, had previously lowered user trust. Considering that the number of identity verification attempts on the day of relaunch approached 9.5 million, he emphasized that Cyworld still holds strong brand power. He also stated that the company will not engage in virtual asset or coin businesses without an established institutional framework.

Cycoms also shared its stance on restoring existing Cyworld data. The company explained, "We are working on restoring vast amounts of data, but it is difficult to say at this point that 100% restoration is possible. However, we are making every effort to recover as much material as possible, including photos, videos, and Ilchon-pyeong (friendship comments) that existing members want to find."

They are also working on recovering previously used IDs and passwords, but it is difficult to guarantee results. Regarding ‘Dotori,’ the online currency used on Cyworld, restoring this data is not currently a priority.

Currently, Cycoms is analyzing and structuring data from the existing Cyworld service. They plan to complete data restoration in the first quarter of next year and finish all file conversions by the second quarter. Cycoms acquired data of 32 million members and 17 billion photos from the previous corporation. The number of Minihome pages currently stored is estimated at 31.6 million.

CEO Ham said, "With the determination that 'if not me or my team, then no one else can do it,' this is the last chance, and we want to launch properly and provide the service for a long time." He added, "With the support of this aspiration, we will develop a high-quality service with experienced personnel in the IT field and present it next year."