Almost all fan cafés are run through Daum Café. However, not all companies have their own fan café. The Big three entertainment agencies in South Korea, SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment no longer run official fan cafés for their talents and artists, instead, they release information through their own official websites. In this article, Channel-Korea will provide you with everything you need to know about the K-Idol internet fan café, Daum Café: a place for fans to interact with their favorite artists. Let’s find out more about your favorite fan café. So, stay tuned and keep scrolling down this article!
About Daum Café
Daum is a South Korean web portal. The web offers many Internet services to web users, including a popular free web-based e-mail, messaging service, forums, shopping, news, and Webtoon service. The word “Daum” means “next,” but the word also has a meaning as “many sounds.” Daum’s popularity has a variety of services it offers, but also from the fact that it was the first Korean web portal with significant size. The Vision of Daum is “다른 메뉴보기 펼치기” or “Connect Everything,” innovating the way we connect for a better tomorrow. The popularity of Daum started when the web portal merged with the most popular e-mail service, daum.net or hanmail.net. After the merging, Daum started the forum service Daum Café which brought its firm status in the market. The term café and even internet café (different from what it is supposed to refer to in Western usage) is now used as the synonym for “Internet forum” in Korean. Daum has around 874 employees as of March 2009 and it is the 2nd largest web portal service provider in South Korea in terms of daily visits. In 2014, Daum merged with Kakao Corp. to form Daum Kakao. In 2003, Daum started on-line direct automobile insurance by launching the subsidiary Daum Direct Auto Insurance and from 2008, it became a partnership company with ERGO Insurance Group. On August 2nd, 2004, Daum announced the purchase of Lycos for $95.4 million and closed the transaction on October 6th. 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, an internet marketing company based in Hyderabad, India. In 2006, they started a blogging service Tistory with 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. In addition to its freeware media player (Daum tvPot), Daum Communications Corp. provides a variety of services such as clouding service (Daum Cloud), Daum Dictionary (applicable on mobile devices), Daum Comics, and map service (Daum Maps).
How To Make An Account
K-Pop fans who are familiar with the fan café will also be familiar with DAUM. Daum is one of the top 3 Korean websites in Korea. The web portal is similar to Yahoo, where people can have mail, groups, news, and others. However, language use in DAUM is completely in Korean. All the people from around the world can create an account on DAUM. They do not need to be a Korean citizen to register to Daum. Here are the 10 explained steps on how to make an account on Daum.net:
STEP 1:
First, open daum.net on the web and at the right side, click the word in bold 회원가입 (the one that has been circled in the red line in the picture below)
STEP 2:
Second, you will be redirected to this page, asking you to type in your email for your registration (e.g your Hotmail/Gmail email address). Do not forget to check the boxes for terms and conditions.
STEP 3:
Third, fill in your personal information details for your Daum account. Please remember that the Daum ID you choose here will be your login ID. If the bottom text under your ID says ’사용하실 수 없는 아이디입니다.’, it means that your ID is not available.
STEP 4:
Fourth, you will next be redirected to the page where you have to check your email in the next 12 hours to confirm your account. Click on the blue button to finish your registration.
STEP 5:
Fifth, You will get a notification from Daum which looks like the one below through your email. Click on the link provided and it will redirect you to Daum.
STEP 6:
And finally, your account is ready to use and you are free to log in and out of DAUM. While your DAUM account is ready to use, you can join any fan café and increase your fan café rank.
Fan Café Features
After joining a fan café, fans will have a basic level of membership where fans will be able to browse news releases and the application board for weekly music shows. Fans need to level up their rank if they want to get access to other boards where fans can chat with other fans, leave messages to their idols, and read idol messages. The level up process is different for every group, but most of the groups require fans to answer several questions and they have to apply to level up. Some groups or specific idols also have an unofficial fan café which they sometimes post in, and sometimes do not update anything. In general, it is easier just to stick to joining the official fan café. Here are several service features of Daum Café:
Daum community service
Since 1999, tens and millions of people have met up at Daum Café. People who have similar interests especially in K-Pop, gather at Daum Café to exchange information, share hobbies, relax and socialize with other people.
Superb, quality cafés
The most active and well operated Daum Cafés are selected annually and classified by themes. Daum supports the selected Quality Cafés by providing official emblems, holding general meetings, and offering PR.
Real-time hot postings
The hottest issues in Daum Café are gathered and shown in real-time. Daum Cafés also allow people to see what is trending on the internet, just by looking at the hottest posts.
Daum’s official fan café
Daum’s official fan cafés are premium cafés that are most frequented by celebrities from various arenas and their fans. Root for a fan café to send support to your favorite celebrity and visit the fan café to see your celebrity’s latest posts.
