Cyworld has launched global services in seven languages on Monday amid the soaring popularity of Facebook in Korea.

This is the second try for the homegrown social networking service with 23 million registered local members to go global following its failed attempt in 2005.

“We failed because we tried to localize our services. But this time we aim to introduce a unique Cyworld platform for foreign users,” said Joo Hyung-chul, president and CEO of SK Communications, the operator.

The CEO stressed that Cyworld is clearly different from Twitter or Facebook, even though he admitted that “we have interacted to upgrade our services.”

Cyworld, established in 1999, recently started a “News Feed” service similar to Facebook, while the California-based company may have been inspired by the Korean service’s status assignment of acquaintances, Joo said.

Thanks to the website’s fancy design and tools such as selective website skins and BGMs, the company said youngsters in their teens and 20s, as well as women, will be more attracted to its service. In a separate survey, the average age of Cyworld users was 25, while that of Facebook was 35.

Focusing more on these groups, the company also hoped the growing popularity of K-Pop in Asia would attract more users from the region. During the recent one-week trial period, people from about 80 countries became registered members on the website, with one-third of them coming from Southeast Asia.

The global services are offered in English, Japanese, Chinese, German and Spanish and the cyber money “dotori,” that is used to purchase items to decorate individual users’ homepage, will be called “acorn” in English.

The company, however, decided to maintain the Korean word “cy” ― meaning “relationship” in English ― for the common term for friends on the website.

“Even though we can communicate at a faster speed, it’s still hard to manage our personal data efficiently and search quickly. Cyworld has offered that unique service for 10 years,” Joo said.

Along with the mobile app for global users coming soon, the company plans to launch other services such as Cyamera, a photography service, and Cymoment, a social life management service.

In August, the number of visitors to Facebook exceeded that of Cyworld for the first time in Korea. But over the following two months it’s been a close game, with the Korean service slightly outdoing the U.S. rival.

Over the past 10 years, the website has stored 9 billion photographs and 1.5 billion diary posts.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)