The Liquid Society

I remember that Luke mentioned about ‘Liquid Modernity’ during the lecture and how the continuing developments of modernity is portrayed using liquid in TV commercials, creating emotional association with liquidity and mobility. However, the term ‘ Liquid Society’ is also being used to convey the idea of social mobility, the way in which people are hooked into networks. This phenomenon leads to the blending of business categorizations and it works for the online industry. Cyworld has become the biggest web community in South Korea, and through servicing ‘mini-hompy’ (mini-homepage) other than just blogs (it is a bit similar to MySpace and Facebook but more functions) and selling various items for ‘mini-hompy’, Cyworld made a daily revenue of approximately $300000(USD) during 2003~2005. But the sales started to decrease from 2005 and the major cause was believed to be the online game called “Cart Rider”. Many internet users who would have spent most of their time on managing their ‘mini-hompy’ started to spend more time to play “Cart Rider” (since “Cart Rider” was such a big hit with its easy interface with cute graphics and loved by all ages) and therefore less sales on Cyworld’s sales. Leaving the ‘market share’ behind, the advent of ‘time share’ has already shown off in online market.