Daum Communication and Empas, two major portal sites in South Korea, announced that they forged a strategic cooperation that will enable users to access video contents of 'TV pot', Daum's UCC service, through Empas' Open Search.

This is the first time that animation contents belonging to a particular portal site will be shared with another portal site. This act of cooperation, whereby the two sites have come to share their video contents, came about as a result of the high participatory culture of Daum's UCC Platform users and Empas's efforts to develop its Open Search project.

Both parties stand to gain from this cooperation: Daum can gain access to more users through the Empas search platform, while Empas can vitalize its Open Search by using Daum's high-quality video contents. This combination of video and search capabilities is expected to generate synergistic effects.

According to Korean Click, an internet survey company, the UV number of the users of Daum 'TV pot', a moving picture UCC service, passed 3.5 millions in the third week of July, its highest point since the launching of the service. Its market share also reached 55%.

Daum will link its DB that contains two million videos, currently offered through 'TV pot', to Empas' video search. Daum also plans to expand the scale of its video services and the influence of its 'TV pot' through strategic cooperation with other major portal sites in South Korea.

Meanwhile, Empass will provide its users a three-dimensional search based on a combination of its excellent search capacity available through Open Search and video DB from Daum's 'TV pot'.

According to Sohn Young-Hee, the chief of the planning department at Empas Search DB, "this cooperation will enable users to more easily search for the UCC video of Daum's 'TV pot' and 'Know-how pot' through Open Search. We plan to strengthen the capabilities of our multimedia search in order to highten customer satisfaction. We will also continue to secure high-quality video DB".

Meanwhile, according to Choi So-Young, the chief of Daum's moving picture platform, "this cooperation offers the possibility for the UCC video service to become more user-friendly as the industry achieves rapid growth. Daum will continue to promote various acts of strategic cooperation so as to contribute to the overall development of the moving picture service industry."