Rundown of Korean SNSD fansites and kpop idol fancafe numbers
Here's a rundown of Korean SNSD sites. I guess it's not much of use to most international Sones but if you are Korean or know Korean, it'd be nice if you take part in these Korean sites and become couriers of SNSD news to international fans. Especially because there are so many misleading/false news popping up on kpop sites these days as you know.
Note: Skip to the second cut and scroll if you don't want to read tl;dr summations of the korean SNSD fansites and want to know the fan cafe member counts instead.
The biggies
Hwasu - Daum's snsd fancafe. 292,000 members
Cistus - Naver's snsd fancafe 286,000 members
These two Daum and Naver cafes have the biggest number of members and are the most general SNSD sites. They are not official sites and in fact there are many other snsd fancafes on Daum and Naver but these two have the dominating numbers so they are seen as representing the majority of Sones.
DCinside - This is a big commnunity that has many different forums(called galleries) for many subject. The SNSD galleries are a big part of Sone's history it's where everything really got started. It is quick with updates and has lot of information. The problem is it has too much information with very low signal to noise ratio so it will takes months before you can learn how to use this site. Number of Sones on this site cannot be determined because it is an open site, it has a LOT of lurkers. I would roughly estimate the presence of Sones on this site to be almost similar to the Daum Naver cafes above.
Next three are smaller than the ones above but in terms of influence they are just as big
Bestiz - Huge general kpop site, it has sizable numbers of Sones, especially lot of unnie fans. Bestiz is important because kpop artists, industry people, reporters monitor this site. A lot of antis of every artists are here too. Most of those male idol troubles broke out of here last year. So when some misleading snsd news breaks out this is one of the first place Sones congregate to defend the girls and we do a good job now Sones have become a significant force here.
Sosiz - You all know this one. Sosiz is the main source of reliable SNSD news and pics.
Sosidang - This is like the headquarter of samchon fans, actually it's more like oppas, unnies, samchons site. These older fans are very respected by younger fans in Korea because they have shown what a good fan should be like.
Others
There's hundreds of midsize and smaller snsd sites and fancafes around so it's impossible to list them all. For beginners it's ok to ignore them since all significant snsd information is available in the major sites above. But there are individual sites that specialize in pictures and fancams so those are good to know. Well I'm sure you all know about sites like sosimallow, kwonyuri125, thsutleo, etc.
Not only fansites but in general the presence of SNSD is huge on Korean internet. You can go to a big regular community sites like say a computer site, sports site, movie site and there will certainly be quite a few SNSD posts there. In fact Sosidang originally was people on a DVD review site who started to fall for SNSD one by one and started making so many SNSD posts. The owner of the site had to make a separate board for them and thus Sosidang was born.
Size of S♥NE
No one knows the exact number of fans for any kpop fanclub. How can you measure that? You can't.
So what did Korean fans do? They took the Daum fancafe numbers and started using that as the number of fans for each fanclub. The reason is that Daum's cafe section is the biggest place for cafes and most Koreans think Daum cafe when it comes to cafes. So fans simply look for their fancafe there and register there, most of them at least. Naver is now much bigger than Daum but Daum used to be bigger and the Daum cafe tradition continues to this day. Therefore for fancafes, you make them on Daum cafe and if yours becomes the biggest one, then it will be considered as the "official cafe". This is why when a new kpop group debuts people go to Daum cafe and make a fancafe and try to get as many members as possible quickly so that it can be established as the "official cafe". One trick is to buy another cafe with enough number of members then just change the name of the cafe and you can get a head start, which is why people sell and buy these cafes. I'm digressing here haha. Also some artists like 2PM, Big Bang actually do have Official Fancafes on Daum run by YG and JYP. So in short Daum fancafes are perceived as "offcial fancafes" more or less in general.
So here's a recent chart of Daum fancafe ranking based on member counts. Note SuJu has 2 major Daum fancafes so you have to add them together.
So if you see someone saying SuJu has more than 400K fans Daum is where that number is coming from.
You can see overall the size of fancafes on Naver is smaller than Daum. But still the formidable presence of Sones on Naver is notable, some SNSD members having bigger cafes than other whole groups. And Naver cafe section last year became greater in total traffic than Daum's so Naver cafes are starting to become more significant.
Also of note is that SNSD sites are very active compared to others. You can see in the Naver chart the post count of SNSD cafe is unusually huge. It's the same for Daum the Hwasu cafe is always #2 only behind DBSK's in terms of activeness.
In conclusion we can usually use the Daum numbers as the fanclub numbers as it is the standard practice in Korea. But as you can see with Naver data, the number of Korean Sones is probably higher than the the ranking suggested by the Daum ranking. I've seen girl group fanclubs since Finkl days and I don't know how to explain it 300K+ for a girl group in Korea is just ... mind boggling. All in all the girls would be proud that they are being loved by so many people but they have earned it. When the girls were doing their fan signing during summer 2007 you would find 60 people coming and Hwasu was a 5000 member cafe...
source: silis7noy2 at soompi
Note: Skip to the second cut and scroll if you don't want to read tl;dr summations of the korean SNSD fansites and want to know the fan cafe member counts instead.
The biggies
Hwasu - Daum's snsd fancafe. 292,000 members
Cistus - Naver's snsd fancafe 286,000 members
These two Daum and Naver cafes have the biggest number of members and are the most general SNSD sites. They are not official sites and in fact there are many other snsd fancafes on Daum and Naver but these two have the dominating numbers so they are seen as representing the majority of Sones.
DCinside - This is a big commnunity that has many different forums(called galleries) for many subject. The SNSD galleries are a big part of Sone's history it's where everything really got started. It is quick with updates and has lot of information. The problem is it has too much information with very low signal to noise ratio so it will takes months before you can learn how to use this site. Number of Sones on this site cannot be determined because it is an open site, it has a LOT of lurkers. I would roughly estimate the presence of Sones on this site to be almost similar to the Daum Naver cafes above.
Next three are smaller than the ones above but in terms of influence they are just as big
Bestiz - Huge general kpop site, it has sizable numbers of Sones, especially lot of unnie fans. Bestiz is important because kpop artists, industry people, reporters monitor this site. A lot of antis of every artists are here too. Most of those male idol troubles broke out of here last year. So when some misleading snsd news breaks out this is one of the first place Sones congregate to defend the girls and we do a good job now Sones have become a significant force here.
Sosiz - You all know this one. Sosiz is the main source of reliable SNSD news and pics.
Sosidang - This is like the headquarter of samchon fans, actually it's more like oppas, unnies, samchons site. These older fans are very respected by younger fans in Korea because they have shown what a good fan should be like.
Others
There's hundreds of midsize and smaller snsd sites and fancafes around so it's impossible to list them all. For beginners it's ok to ignore them since all significant snsd information is available in the major sites above. But there are individual sites that specialize in pictures and fancams so those are good to know. Well I'm sure you all know about sites like sosimallow, kwonyuri125, thsutleo, etc.
Not only fansites but in general the presence of SNSD is huge on Korean internet. You can go to a big regular community sites like say a computer site, sports site, movie site and there will certainly be quite a few SNSD posts there. In fact Sosidang originally was people on a DVD review site who started to fall for SNSD one by one and started making so many SNSD posts. The owner of the site had to make a separate board for them and thus Sosidang was born.
Size of S♥NE
No one knows the exact number of fans for any kpop fanclub. How can you measure that? You can't.
So what did Korean fans do? They took the Daum fancafe numbers and started using that as the number of fans for each fanclub. The reason is that Daum's cafe section is the biggest place for cafes and most Koreans think Daum cafe when it comes to cafes. So fans simply look for their fancafe there and register there, most of them at least. Naver is now much bigger than Daum but Daum used to be bigger and the Daum cafe tradition continues to this day. Therefore for fancafes, you make them on Daum cafe and if yours becomes the biggest one, then it will be considered as the "official cafe". This is why when a new kpop group debuts people go to Daum cafe and make a fancafe and try to get as many members as possible quickly so that it can be established as the "official cafe". One trick is to buy another cafe with enough number of members then just change the name of the cafe and you can get a head start, which is why people sell and buy these cafes. I'm digressing here haha. Also some artists like 2PM, Big Bang actually do have Official Fancafes on Daum run by YG and JYP. So in short Daum fancafes are perceived as "offcial fancafes" more or less in general.
So here's a recent chart of Daum fancafe ranking based on member counts. Note SuJu has 2 major Daum fancafes so you have to add them together.
So if you see someone saying SuJu has more than 400K fans Daum is where that number is coming from.
You can see overall the size of fancafes on Naver is smaller than Daum. But still the formidable presence of Sones on Naver is notable, some SNSD members having bigger cafes than other whole groups. And Naver cafe section last year became greater in total traffic than Daum's so Naver cafes are starting to become more significant.
Also of note is that SNSD sites are very active compared to others. You can see in the Naver chart the post count of SNSD cafe is unusually huge. It's the same for Daum the Hwasu cafe is always #2 only behind DBSK's in terms of activeness.
In conclusion we can usually use the Daum numbers as the fanclub numbers as it is the standard practice in Korea. But as you can see with Naver data, the number of Korean Sones is probably higher than the the ranking suggested by the Daum ranking. I've seen girl group fanclubs since Finkl days and I don't know how to explain it 300K+ for a girl group in Korea is just ... mind boggling. All in all the girls would be proud that they are being loved by so many people but they have earned it. When the girls were doing their fan signing during summer 2007 you would find 60 people coming and Hwasu was a 5000 member cafe...
source: silis7noy2 at soompi