Blogs, short for Web logs, were the talk of the Net in 2004, so much so tha Merriam-Webster Online named “blog” 2004’s word of the year, based on the number of times it was looked up on the company’s online dictionary.

In Europe and the United States, the market for blogging software is splintered, and no company has a dominant position. But in South Korea, SK Communications’ Cyworld unit has turned a kind of souped-up, community-oriented blogging software into a runaway hit called Cyworld.

Eleven million South Koreans now have a Cyworld “mini-hompy,” or mini home page. This is nearly a quarter of the overall population and a third of the country’s online population. SK Comunications says that about 79 percent of Cyworld users are in their 20s or 30s. In November, the Cyworld Web site attracted 16.8 million unique visits, according to KoreanClick, a research concern, which also estimated that 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s were members of Cyworld.

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Hat tips: Smart Mobs