Korean fear: why US dot-com giants may lose out to the East

The figures from web-metrics company Nielsen/NetRatings are an interesting chance to take stock of the latest developments in the online world. They show that eBay's star is still very much on the rise. Now, the world's number one ecommerce destination, it gets more users than any other e-tailer, and masses more hits.

And that's the reason why eBay CEO Meg Whitman is fast becoming the most celebrated supremo in the whole of Silicon Valley - the only major dot-com boss to add the word profit to the balance sheets. That's also why she was the most influential international dot-com boss in silicon.com's definitive Agenda Setters 2001 list.

While eBay's rise has been stellar, Amazon's star looks to be fading slightly. The number of unique users it can boast has now been eclipsed by eBay and its monthly page impressions are now a pitiful tenth of its rival. Amazon may be predicting profits soon, but eBay's management is already laughing all the way to the bank.

However, despite this tit-for-tat, probably the most fascinating part of today's figures lies not with any of the all-too-familiar galaxy of US dot-coms. Ever heard of Daum.net? Probably not.

That's because you probably don't read Korean text. And you'll also be following a news agenda created in the West and written (mostly) in Roman script.

Daum.net, owned by Daum Communications, is the leading Korean web portal. What's more, it's the second most popular site on the net. It racks up a staggering 5.3bn page impressions per month from 12m individual users - only Yahoo! gets more page impressions.

While its profits are still modest, in a country where 54 per cent of the population enjoy broadband web access, it shouldn't be long before the money starts pouring in.

And while the West may not be ready to hear it, companies like Daum Communications are soon going to make battles between the likes of Amazon and eBay a lot less important.

For some, this shift is going to be hard to stomach, but for anyone really interested in the growth of the web - which means internationalisation - it's got to be a good thing.

eBay your time is limited, Daum Communications, time to step forward and light up the firmament.