Naver MYPlace Surpasses 10 Million Reviewers and 100 Million Keyword Reviews

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Naver's 'MYPLACE' is growing beyond a means to check evaluations of places into a form of content itself.

Naver announced on the 10th that the number of reviewers active on ‘MYPLACE’ has exceeded 10 million.

Naver MYPLACE is a local information platform where users review places. Users can collect their own reviews, ‘follow’ other reviewers, or save introduced places. First released as a beta version in February 2019 and officially launched in August of the same year, it has established itself as a service with 10 million active users in just three years.

MYPLACE plays a role in transforming reviews on Naver from mere ‘evaluation information’ about places into ‘local content’ that contains users’ visit stories. Users can check reviewers active in their set ‘interest areas’ or gather reviews by industry or theme, providing the joy of discovering places and reviewers with similar tastes, Naver explained.

To foster an ecosystem where reviews are activated as local content, Naver is updating MYPLACE. In March this year, a dedicated ‘profile’ for MYPLACE was added, and in May, an update was made so that users can prioritize viewing reviews from users they follow. This is to give creators’ individuality to reviews and activate rich and original review content. Currently, more than 1 million users have received follow requests, and the monthly issuance of ‘theme lists’?which allow users to classify their reviews by specific themes?grew by 300% year-on-year as of July.

In particular, to minimize fake reviews, Naver introduced the ‘receipt review’ system in November 2019, which verifies that users have visited a place before leaving a review. In July 2021, the ‘keyword review’ system was launched to prevent malicious star ratings and highlight the characteristics of local small business owners. The number of keywords collected through keyword reviews surpassed 100 million in early August.

Lee Yungseong, the team leader of Naver Place Review, said, “We are grateful that the response to the new review environment, created by reflecting the voices of local small business owners and users, is reflected in meaningful figures such as 10 million MYPLACE reviewers and 100 million keyword reviews.” He added, “Naver Place Review will do its best to create an environment where local SMEs and users interact through review content and exchange healthy feedback.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.