TNC, a Korea-based software company also known as Tatter and Company, has been Googled, according to Chang Won-Kim, TNC’s cochief executive.
Chang announced Google’s acquisition of TNC, which occurred Friday, in his personal blog.
Chang, who shares the CEO title with TNC’s founder, Chester Roh, said he believes the reason for the acquisition is because Google has very little market presence in Korea and Asia.
“We will commit ourselves to increasing Google’s market share in Korea,” Chang wrote.
South Korea is one of the top 10 countries in the world with the highest number of Internet users, according to a June 30 update by Internet World Stats. About 70 percent of Korea’s population is online, and Korea has the highest percentage (88 percent) of computer ownership in the world, according to The Nielsen Company.
Complementary Vision
TNC, launched just two years ago, provides blogging software and services to 400,000-plus users, including Korea’s top 100 bloggers, according to Chang. TNC, which works with the open-source community, had recently launched its new blog service Textcube, and some are speculating that Google wants to use that service to gain market share in Korea.
Google’s latest acquisition should not come as a surprise to users, because employees have been talking for some time about Google’s move toward making its products more social.
“We are just now starting to navigate all the intersections between sociology and engineering on the Web,” Joe Kraus, Google’s director of product development, wrote in a blog post. “We — meaning Google and many others in the Web community — are in the midst of a burst of energy around all things social that is teaching us more every day about what people want to do with their friends and where.”
Kraus said the company is working toward this goal on many fronts, listening to users…