Millions of people are connected to one huge world-wide network - the Internet. We are living in a world where the internet has became our daily life: e-mails, researching, private homepage, and etc.

Would you be able to live without it?
People have started to depend on the Internet so much, that it will be impossible for us to live without one or everything will fall apart and create great discomfort.
As you can imagine, the Internet became this important!

In Korea, we make our own homepages through 'Cyworld,' 'Naver Blog,' and, we use MSN and NateOn to chat with the others.

Now, How do foreigners travel through the internet?
Have you ever thought about their internet life?
The Chung-Ang Herald(CAH) conducted e-mail interviews with foreigners from China, the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Brazil, England, and Switzerland. Then, the CAH analyzed the web lives of foreigners.

Let's take a look at their world!

One of the most frequently uses for the internet is communication.
There are lots of programs to chat with friends. But here are the three most popular chatting systems. 

 MSN Messenger is known as the most popular communication source in the world. Almost everyone uses MSN Messenger everywhere in anytime with their listed friends. If you add your friends' e-mail address on your messenger list, it's a piece of a cake to chat with them. 
AOL is parallel with MSN.

It is also called, AIM (AOL Instant Messenger, but people just call it AOL). This communication system is used among people whose friends are also involved. The difference between the MSN Messenger and AOL is that AOL is not as highly updated like MSN. 

 ICQ stands for "I Seek You." It was deployed over the Internet in November 1996. The Difference to other programs is that ICQ has interesting functions. It's similar to the 'Cyworld' friends search engine. However, it is more similar to MSN in terms of its ability to chat with other people according to age, gender, nick name, and so on. You can easily find any type of people to chat with over the ICQ.

These communication systems provide services through Personal Computes, PDAs, and Cellular Phones (SMS Service). Mark Mendonca, American, commented that "To chat with the others, American uses AOL the most. And smaller American population does use MSN. It's because AOL started its service when the Internet began to be well-known in 1995."

On the contrary, every other interviewer said they were using MSN messenger. There were several reasons to use this certain program, but the most important reason was that many of their friends joined in MSN. AOL and ICQ are similar to MSN, they all include the mobile service, voice chatting, and so on.

It seems that, people having the messenger program, is not much for the reason of functions but reason for their friends. For this reason, many of young Koreans are using several messengers at one time.
(Using MSN, NateOn, and Buddy-Buddy in turn)
What about the personal homepages of private foreigners?

To make private homepages outside of Korea, you can use Xanga, Blogger, Movable Type, Live Journal, and etc. There are lots! Many people start to introduce themselves to the world, profiling their life, providing comments and opinions, working out emotional issues, and promoting conversation and community.

They are similar to Cyworld, Naver, Daum, and Yahoo. Now, let's take a look at several homepage sites.

Xanga is a community journal space for the owners. You can upload pictures and music. Plus, you can decorate them with variety colors of wallpapers. Many teenagers in the U.S. use it.
Blogger started its service in August of 1999, Google bought Blogger in 2002. Many young intellectuals use this as a place where they share ideas and opinions. You can also upload pictures!

Hi5 allows to upload photos, write journals, find a school-mates, find people by nationality.
Besides people having their homepages in 'Xanga', 'Blogger', and so on, many other foreigners still don't have a personal homepage.

Richard Kellberg, Swedish, said "I don't have my own homepage. Because I don't know how to make it and I don't think it's useful." Another opinion by K.Hedlund, Japanese, said "I don't think I have time to manage my private web-page."

It is possible considering the difference of life patterns and network service in each country.
To be clear, there are not many communication systems available in other nations. It will be great if there are more messengers or private homepages, which enables everyone all over the world to communicate easily with the others.

In addition, Cyworld has expanded their business to Japan and China to topple the international web-based community. This would be a big step of linking the internet between cultures. Another example of progress being made electronically.