Daum ( ko, 다음) is a South Korean

web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayin ...

. It offers many Internet services to web users, including a popular free web-based

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

messaging A message is a discrete unit of communication intended by the source for consumption by some recipient or group of recipients. A message may be delivered by various means, including courier, telegraphy, carrier pigeon and electronic bus. ...

service,

forum Forum or The Forum (plural forums or fora) may refer to: Common uses * Forum (legal), designated space for public expression in the United States *Forum (Roman), open public space within a Roman city **Roman Forum, most famous example *Internet ...

shopping Shopping is an activity in which a customer browses the available goods or services presented by one or more retailers with the potential intent to purchase a suitable selection of them. A typology of shopper types has been developed by scho ...

news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. N ...

and webtoon service. The word "daum" means "next" and also "diverse voices".

Background

The popularity of Daum stems from the range of services it offers, but also from the fact that it was the first Korean web portal of significant size. Its popularity started when it merged with the then most popular e-mail service, daum.net or hanmail.net. After the merging, Daum started the forum service Daum Cafe which brought its firm status in the market. Daum received the eighth highest trust rating in a 2020

Reuters Institute The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) is a UK-based research centre and think tank founded in 2006, which operates Thomson Reuters Journalism Fellowship Programme, also known as the Reuters Fellowship. History The institute ...

survey of selected South Korean media outlets.

History

The former Daum Communications Corporation (Korean: ㈜다음커뮤니케이션) was founded in 1994 by and , and the company launched the namesake portal in May 1997 making it the first South Korean web portal, four months earlier than

yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

Korea. From 2003, Daum started on-line direct

automobile insurance Vehicle insurance (also known as car insurance, motor insurance, or auto insurance) is insurance for cars, trucks, motorcycles, and other road vehicles. Its primary use is to provide financial protection against physical damage or bodily injur ...

by launching the subsidiary 'Daum Direct Auto Insurance' and from 2008, it became a partnership company with

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. On August 2, 2004, Daum announced the purchase of

Lycos Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Walth ...

for $95.4 million, and closed the transaction on October 6. As part of a corporate restructuring to focus on mobile, social networks and location-based services, Daum sold Lycos for $36 million in August 2010 to

Ybrant Digital The Brightcom Group is a digital marketing company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Hyderabad, India with offices in US, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Ukraine, Serbia, Israel, China, India, and Aus ...

, an

internet marketing The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

company based in

Hyderabad, India Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the '' de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern In ...

. In 2006, they started a

blogging A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...

service

Tistory Tistory is a South Korean blog- publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs. It was first started by 'Tatter and Company', a blogging platform developing company that developed the software 'Tattertools', with Daum Communication ...

with 'Tatter and Company',In 2008, Google Korea acquired 'Tatter and Company': a blogging platform developing company and in July 2007 Daum took over all rights to manage the services. The company also develops and distributes the freeware media player

PotPlayer PotPlayer is a multimedia software player developed for the Microsoft Windows operating system by South Korean Internet company Kakao (formerly Daum Communications). It competes with other popular Windows media players such as VLC media player, ...

. In addition to its freeware media player (Daum tvPot), Daum Communications Corp. provides variety of services such as clouding service (Daum Cloud), Daum Dictionary (applicable on mobile devices), Daum Comics, and map service (Daum Maps). Daum has about 874 employees as of March, 2009 and is the 2nd largest web portal service provider in South Korea in terms of daily visits. In 2014, Daum merged with Kakao Corp. (at that time known as Kakao Inc.), known as the maker of KakaoTalk, to form

Daum Kakao Kakao ( ko, 카카오) is a South Korean internet company that was established in 2010. It formed as a result of a merger between Daum Communications and the original Kakao Inc. In 2014, the company was renamed Daum Kakao. The company rebranded ...

Security warning

The e-mail address ceos1 aum et; is currently (Jun 2019) being used by the London Blue group of cybercriminals in a business email compromise scam.

Notes

References

External links