Twitter Inc., the U.S. provider of the highly popular microblogging service of the same name, plans to introduce a Korean language version of Twitter.com before December, a senior company
official said Friday.
Twitter allows users around the world to send texts less than 140 characters long, known as "tweets." Subscribers who choose to receive feeds
by "following" them can receive messages via mobile phones or personal computers.
Sean Garrett, the company's vice president of communications, said the Korean language is one of the company's "priority languages" for introducing a translated version as the number of Twitter users and traffic have spiked here.
"It's growing very fast. I won't be surprised if there is several times as many Twitter users as the end of this year than in the beginning,"
Garrett told Yonhap News Agency during his visit to Seoul.
The number of the tweets surged 14 times in South Korea over the first half of this year on the heels of Apple Inc.'s local debut of the iPhone in November 2009. The iPhone sales hit 800,000 units as of June, helping start smartphone boom and the era of Internet on-the-go.
In terms of the number of accounts and Tweets, users in South Korea seem to send more tweets on average than other places, Garrett said, although
Twitter does not the release official number of Twitter accounts by country.
The microblogging site entered the limelight in South Korea following the June local elections, which resulted in an upset defeat to the ruling Grand National Party. South Korean media reported that Twitter played a significant role in encouraging young voters to cast their ballots.
In the wake of election results, those who used to stay a step aside from Twitter's wave finally joined the tide. South Korea's presidential office (@BluehouseKorea) and President Lee Myung-bak's big inhouse rival Park
Geun-hye (@GH_Park), also a strong presidential candidate, opened Twitter accounts, saying they would like to enhance communication with the public.
Such a shift in Twitter's status in the country, from being a not so-talked-about subject to the center of public attention and debates,
happened in less than a year.
Despite the lack of a local bureau or direct service from the official Twitter team, Garrett said the service gained ground in South Korea thanks to local developers and companies who created services based on the platform provided by Twitter, allowing Korean users to enjoy expanded services from Twitter, such as Korean language support.
"We don't have to have a control over it. It could grow on its own without a lot of involvement. That's best thing about Twitter," he said.
The company will offer more support for Korean users, such as providing a verified account mark to block imposter accounts and improving search
services in the local language, he added.
Twitter is also looking into opportunities with Korean telecom operators for services like receiving tweets via mobile phones as text messages, which has become available in some 200 countries.