Egloos () was a South Korean blog host, established in 2003. Its owner,

SK Communications SK Communications (Hangul: SK커뮤니케이션즈 or ''에스케이커뮤니케이션즈'') is a South Korean technology company that owns and operates popular web portal Nate. It offers Internet access and telecommunications services for resi ...

, claimed it to be a professional publishing system. The ISP acquired the service in 2006. The name "Egloo" is derived from the word "

igloo An igloo (Inuit languages: , Inuktitut syllabics (plural: )), also known as a snow house or snow hut, is a type of shelter built of suitable snow. Although igloos are often associated with all Inuit, they were traditionally used only by the ...

" and represented a personal online home for its users' lives. Egloos's service ended on , causing the website to dissolve. Following Egloos's dissolution, the website created a backup period for its users. This allowed them to download their posts, attached images, and files from the website before they were permanently deleted from Egloos's servers. The backup period lasted from to .

Users

The site was reported to have around 1 million users, but lost users to foreign blogging sites in 2009 due to concerns regarding the South Korean government's monitoring of its citizens' web-browsing behavior.

The Korea Times ''The Korea Times'' () is a daily English-language newspaper in South Korea. It is a sister paper of the ''Hankook Ilbo'', a major Korean language, Korean-language daily. It is the oldest active daily English-language newspaper in South Korea. ...

also stated this in their news article: ''"Since April 1 (2009), the government mandated Internet users to make verifiable real-name registrations on all Web sites with more than 100,000 daily visitors, which means they have to submit their resident registration codes, the Korean equivalent of social security numbers."'' Egloos' users were often Koreans with intensive IT-related interests. Korean users with interests in

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

and

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

were also featured throughout the website as well.

Valley system

Egloos used a unique, theme-based system called "valley", whereby

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

gers can choose to adopt and publish their blog postings under pre-existing themes (valleys). Valleys can also be created by user demand. In 2012, Egloos hosted 29 valleys. * Book Valley (

light novel A is a type of Genre fiction, popular literature novel from Japan usually classified as young adult fiction, generally targeting Adolescence, teens to Young adult, twenties or older. The definition is very vague, and wide-ranging. The abbr ...

s) * Animation Valley (

Anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

) * News criticism * Egloos Valley * Movie Valley * History Valley * World Valley * Comic Valley (

manhwa Manhwa () is the general Korean term for comics and print cartoons. Outside Korea, the term usually refers to Korean comics. Modern Manhwa has extended its reach to many other countries. These comics have branched outside of Korea by acce ...

, and American comics)

Censorship

The Blog allowed censorship of the posting

censored Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governmen ...

by the site administrator under certain circumstances. However, Egloos users had complained about the fairness of the censoring process, as site

administrators Administrator or admin may refer to: Job roles Computing and internet * Database administrator, a person who is responsible for the environmental aspects of a database * Forum administrator, one who oversees discussions on an Internet forum * N ...

had been able to censor content based upon a request from anyone reading the blogs.

References

External links

* {{official website, http://web.archive.org/web/20230616131139/https://egloosbackup.egloos.com/ Blog hosting services