Naver facts for kids
Naver (Hangul: 네이버; styled as NAVER) is a popular online platform from South Korea. It is run by the Naver Corporation. Naver started in 1999. It was the first website in South Korea to create and use its own search engine. Naver was also the first in the world to offer a "comprehensive search." This means it shows search results from many different types of content all on one page.
Logo used from 2018
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Trade name
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NAVER |
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Native name
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네이버주식회사
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Internet |
| Founded | 1999 |
| Headquarters |
Seongnam-si
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| Parent | Naver Corporation |
| Subsidiaries | NAVER Mail
NAVER Map NAVER News |
Since then, Naver has added many new services. These include basic things like email and news. It also created the world's first online question-and-answer (Q&A) platform called Knowledge iN. In 2017, Naver's search engine handled about 75% of all web searches in South Korea. It had 42 million registered users. Over 25 million Koreans use Naver as their main homepage. Its mobile app gets 28 million visitors every day. People sometimes call Naver 'the Google of South Korea'.
Contents
History
Naver began in June 1999. It was the first South Korean website to have its own search engine. In August 2000, Naver launched its "comprehensive search" service. This allowed users to see many different types of results for one search. These results were organized by type, like blogs, websites, and images. The name "Naver" comes from "navigate" and the ending "-er." It means someone who helps you navigate the internet.
In its early days, there were not many web pages in the Korean language. To help with this, Naver started a new idea called user-generated content. This means content made by users. In 2002, Naver created the 'Knowledge iN (Hangul: 네이버 지식인)' service. On Knowledge iN, users can ask questions about anything. Other users can then provide answers. The person who asked the question can choose the best answer. Knowledge iN started three years before Yahoo! launched its similar 'Yahoo! Answers' service. Today, Knowledge iN has over 200 million answers.
Over the years, Naver has kept adding more services. It launched its web comic service 'Webtoon' in 2004. Its personal Blog service started in 2005. From 2005 to 2007, Naver added more multimedia search services. These included searching for music and videos, as well as mobile search.
In 2019, Naver changed the look of its main mobile screen. It removed search windows and some menus. Many users did not like this change.
In March 2020, Naver added new rules for comments. This was to protect famous people from mean comments online. This change happened after a famous singer and actress, Sulli, passed away in 2019. She had faced many mean comments. Naver also changed the comment box to use facial emojis. This was to help with concerns about how comments affected famous people's mental health.
As of January 2020, Naver now owns Wattpad. Wattpad is an online service for reading books.
In October 2020, Naver was fined by South Korea's Fair Trade Commission (FTC). They were fined for changing their search rules between 2012 and 2015. Naver made its own services, like Smart Store and Naver TV, show up higher in search results than services from other companies. Because of this, Naver's share in the online market grew a lot.
Naver is also becoming very popular in Japan. It is now competing with Kakao to be the top company for web novels and webcomics in Japan.
Services
Junior Naver (Hangul: 쥬니어 네이버), also called Juniver (Hangul: 쥬니버), is a special website for children. It is similar to Yahooligans. Junior Naver offers fun things like avatars, learning content, quizzes, videos, and help with homework. A group of experts and teachers helps Junior Naver. They make sure that all the content is safe for kids. Junior Naver is now the only children's website like this in Korea.
Naver Webtoon (Hangul: 네이버 웹툰), now known simply as WEBTOON, is a platform for webcomics. Users can read many webtoons for free. These are created by professional artists. Users can also pay to read comic books and other stories online. Naver has a 'Challenge' section. This allows new artists to share and promote their own works. Some k-dramas have even been made from these webtoons.
Naver Cafe (Hangul: 네이버 카페) is a service where Naver users can create their own online communities. These are like online clubs or groups. As of May 2017, there were 10.5 million cafes running. One person can create up to 300 cafes.
Naver Blog (Hangul: 네이버 블로그) started in June 2003. It was first called 'paper' and then changed to 'blog' in October 2003. In April 2016, it had 23 million users. In 2023, 1.26 million new users joined.
In May 2021, Naver held an event where people could earn money for posting on their blog every day. This event ended early because some people used many different accounts. Naver later brought the event back for those who had already started it.
On May 13, 2021, Naver announced that it would show profile pictures when people posted comments on Naver news articles. Before, it was hard to know who was commenting because only part of their ID was shown. Naver hoped this would make it easier to recognize users. They also hoped it would help with the problem of mean comments.
Naver NOW (which used to be called Naver TV) is a platform for watching and sharing videos. It mostly shows web dramas from Naver. Naver NOW took the place of the Naver TV mobile app. Naver TV now works as a website portal.
Naver Pay (네이버페이) is a payment service. It is part of Naver Financial, a company owned by Naver. It started on June 25, 2021. At first, it was only for paying on Naver Shopping. Now, you can use it in over 97,000 online and offline stores. It also supported Zero Pay, a government payment service. In May 2019, Naver started letting users pay in Japan using Line Pay. This meant users could pay in Japanese stores without changing money. This service ended on August 31, 2023.
Knowledge IN
Knowledge iN (Hangul: 지식iN), used to be called Knowledge Search (Korean: 지식검색). It is an online Q&A platform that started in October 2002. Users can ask any question and get answers from other users. Knowledge iN was one of the first services to use user-generated content. This helped to add a lot of information to the web, especially in the Korean language. Bradley Horowitz, who worked at Yahoo!, said that Knowledge iN gave him the idea for Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo! Answers started three years after Naver's service.
Sometimes, the quality of content on Knowledge iN is not perfect. This is because old answers are not always updated. Naver also controls comments and can change information that might go against its views.
Naver Encyclopedia (Hangul: 네이버 사전) has a large collection of information. It has over 3 million entries from many different encyclopedias. More than 1000 experts in areas like physics, food, and film create content for it. The Naver Knowledge Encyclopedia also works with over 100 public groups.
Naver Mail (Hangul: 네이버 메일) is an email service. Any Naver user can use it. Each person gets up to 5GB of storage space.
Naver Shopping Live (Hangul: 네이버 쇼핑 라이브) is a platform for live shopping. Businesses can broadcast live videos to sell products. These broadcasts can be done using a mobile phone or a camcorder. The videos are vertical, like YouTube shorts. It is currently the most popular live shopping platform in Korea.
PRISM Live Studio
PRISM Live Studio (Hangul: 프리즘 라이브 스튜디오) is an app for live streaming on phones and computers. People who stream can broadcast to many platforms at the same time. This is called simulcasting. They can stream in high definition (1080p HD) without using more internet data. It supports platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and Naver TV. The app can also be used to edit videos.
Search engine features and restrictions
Naver's platform is often called "closed." This means that other search engines cannot easily search Naver's content, like its Knowledge iN or blogs. This gives Naver a lot of control over its own content. In April 2011, other Korean search sites, Daum and Nate, agreed to share their search results for services like cafes and blogs. Naver chose not to join this agreement.
Naver was criticized for how it used "Real-time Search Terms" (Korean: 급상승 검색어). People thought it could be used to create public opinion. So, Naver removed Real-time Search Terms on February 25, 2021.
"Person-related Search Terms" (Korean: 인물 연관 검색어) on Naver were also criticized. They sometimes included mean searches about people. Naver removed Person-related Search Terms in March 2021.
In October 2023, Naver announced a test version of its AI chatbot service. It is called 'CLOVA X' (Korean: 클로바X).
See also
In Spanish: Naver para niños
- List of search engines
- Search engine
- Comparison of search engines
- Naver Corporation
- Band
- Line
