NAVER Careers

I joined NAVER in the summer of 2017, and have been with the Blog team ever since. I took part in product development for different projects like Moment, and am currently in charge of product planning and operation for SmartEditor.

It was my dream to work at a tech company. I was that kid who was interested in tech and computer programs, and using website builders to create websites has been my hobby since I was in elementary school. I came to Seoul when I was in college to try out many new things, and started my career as a web product developer at a gaming company. I think that’s when I was able to experience a wider range of different services more in-depth.
But my ultimate goal has always been product development for the NAVER Blog service - creating an online space where users could record and share their day-to-day life. I’ve been a fan of the NAVER Blog service for such a long time, and I always wanted to be in charge of the service I loved for a long time. I remember telling everyone around me that I love NAVER Blog, and that I was going to work for the NAVER Blog team one day. And here I am doing what I’ve always wanted to do, so you could really say that this is my dream come true.

I started in 2009, and have been blogging ever since. It really didn’t start off as anything fancy. I was trying to apply to some extracurricular activities when I was in college, and with no exception, each application required my blog address. Those were the days when students with the highest number of visitors or views would be selected, so I started my own NAVER Blog with a friend. But it turned out that I loved it so much once I started. I loved making online friends by adding neighbors, and it was fun to attract more and more visitors. At first, my blog was not all that popular. Then one day, I posted my review on a new TV show called Superstar K on my blog, which started getting explosive hits. That was the moment when I experienced firsthand how the general public’s interests can have an impact on blogs.
Now that I think about it, my blog holds 13 years’ worth of my thoughts and records. You can say it holds every story of my entire life. The same goes for all of my experiences and emotions over those years. I formed so many new connections through my blog that continue even to this day. It was a life-changing service for me, which is why I naturally thought about joining the NAVER Blog team.

The “NAVER Blog Report” project. It started with the hope that more people would get to know this service that I like so much and just how great this service is.
I mentioned earlier that my blog holds 13 years’ worth of thoughts and memories. Services that continue to be loved by people for such a long time are a rarity. It’s amazing how the posts I wrote since my college days are still there on the same service and how I continue to use that service even to this day. Moreover, the neighbors I’ve connected with since long ago online still stay connected. We’ve never met in person, but we continue to leave comments on each other’s blogs. One of my neighbors used to be a college student and has now become a teacher, and I myself have become a product developer after many years - and throughout those years, we cheer each other on and share bits of our daily lives. I put a lot of thought into how I can make more people see just how attractive NAVER Blog is - where you can meet neighbors that truly click with you even in online spaces. I wanted to make it fun as well, so I thought long and hard about how I should do it.

“There is just so much interesting data on NAVER Blog.
We dug up data that would pique users’ interests and found ways to deliver them intuitively.”

Our initial approach was to illustrate the scale and growth of the NAVER Blog service in a fun and easy way, leveraging the service’s big data accumulated so far. For this, we used comparisons that are rather straightforward to make the data easily understandable, such as “Half of the Korean population owns a NAVER Blog” and “If you put all of the new posts uploaded on NAVER Blog this year on paper, it would be 3.6 times taller than Mount Everest!” And there is just so much interesting data on NAVER Blog, like what the very first post on NAVER Blog was and the keyword that garnered the most interest each month - these are what users would gravitate towards out of curiosity. It was also a way for us to show intuitively how big the blog service is, how many people are using it, and the scale of our service.

We wanted to create an event that users would voluntarily participate in out of genuine curiosity about what they were like on NAVER Blog. At the same time, the goal was to show just how fascinating our blog service could be. That’s why we provided a summary of “My Blog Report” for each user so that the event could be more meaningful for each and every one of them on NAVER Blog. Users could see what their year was like, what kinds of neighbors they interacted with, which neighbors commented the most on their blog, and what kinds of posts were popular.
We received an enthusiastic response from our users. Some users would even access the 2020 page in 2021 because they were curious about the data from a year ago. I believe it was successful because we offered users data that they hadn’t noticed until then and provided them with entertaining information, and the event went well with the blog service as well.

I think I feel the change even more with my skin because I’ve been such a longtime user of the blog service. The nature of the posts that are uploaded on NAVER Blog is changing. I definitely see more posts from users in their teens and 20s, with shorter posts resembling journal entries.
There used to be many blog reviews targeted at providing information in the past, as evidenced by the fact that a “power blogger” was the first thing that came to people’s minds when they thought of a “blogger.” Those were the days when you saw bloggers taking professional photos with DSLR cameras and writing long posts that started with “Let us visit so-and-so today.” and “Today, I’d like to show you so-and-so.”
These days, we see not just blog posts aimed at providing specific information, but also records of people’s everyday life. Adorable posts that remind you of journal entries, such as “Today was a good day.” and “What I had for lunch today was FIRE.” Pictures they upload would also be nothing too fancy, with no edits done. Blog posts are definitely changing.

I believe times are always changing fast. Striking the right balance between incorporating trends into our service and being perseverant enough to maintain the existing service is always hard. In particular, our blog service needs to be reviewed often before any change is made because it is a classic service with a sturdy foundation. In that regard, the Moment project was the turning point in my career.
In short, Moment is a “short-form video service.” Users can easily edit and upload photos and videos from “this moment, here and now.” Videos can be taken in portrait mode, and users can add a lot of information like place and shopping on top of the video. The Moment project was integrating an entirely new service into NAVER Blog. We were introducing videos, a new format for blogs, and bringing a new change to the existing service - that’s why we were all a little bit scared but very excited at the same time.

What concerned me the most was the usability. Many bloggers are very much used to writing and reading long posts, but I wasn’t sure whether they would adapt to creating short-form content as they would have to write posts and consume them quickly. Instead of sitting at their desk to go through the pictures they’ve already taken and choosing some of them to write their posts, users would have to take photos and videos instantly and upload them - to them, that could come off as awkward and unfamiliar.
I addressed this by providing a new type of usability for our blog service. I thought there should be demands from users who wanted to use photos and videos more in their posts. So we created a monthly Moment challenge to show users how short videos could act as informative content, differently from traditional text-based blog posts. We made the viewer/editor features more lightweight to offer short editing and viewing so that users could use the features more easily. Together with Moment designers and developers, we analyzed the usability of the feature and continued to optimize the Moment editor and viewer - and that’s how we could incorporate the new “short-form” format into NAVER Blog. Contrary to our initial concerns, many bloggers are finding Moment attractive, and are creating great Moments on NAVER Blog.

“Even when times change and trends come and go, the act of recording still prevails.”

It is interesting to see that there are always people who record everything. Even when times change and trends come and go, the act of recording continues to be there. Many users would still gravitate towards blogs, and bloggers would keep posting, even when they might write about different things in a different manner over time.
I was also once obsessed with keeping up with the trend. But when I saw users focusing on recording a piece of their everyday life even when everything around them changed, I began to think about the essence of our service again. In my opinion, the heart of the NAVER Blog service lies in “providing the optimized environment for users to write well.” Helping bloggers to record better wherever they are and whenever it might be. Our Moment project offered new features for users, but the ultimate goal was to provide a better environment for users to record their day-to-day life in a more expressive way. As I’m currently in charge of planning for new tools and operating the editor feature, this is something that is constantly on my mind.

Whenever I start a new project, the first thing I do is create a broad roadmap, and create tasks for each detailed assignment within the project on Bug Tracking System (BTS), our collaborative work tool. I would create the overall frame first, followed by the main assignment and then supplementary assignments. I also put all files, deadlines, and assignments in a single workspace so that all members who are part of this collaboration could check all of them anytime. Exchanging everything via email can often be confusing and a waste of time when you try to look something up later on. It’s something very basic, but finding an efficient way to frequently share everything amid hundreds of emails that come and go each day is crucial to any work.
I’ve also been keeping a physical diary for 10 years as a habit. I write down what I have to do for the upcoming week and make a note of the BTS number right next to each task. Whenever someone asks me how assignment A is coming along, I look it up in my diary and find the BTS number next to it to share the progress. Writing everything down with a pen makes me recall again what I need to do, and helps me with keeping deadlines and schedules. As such, I utilize both analog and digital ways to help me with my work.

Staying focused and steering everything in that direction. Often in a meeting, each attendee would only talk about what matters the most to them. Anchoring the meeting to keep everyone focused amid such commotion, bringing all different opinions into one, and providing the guardrails for the project to continue in the right direction are what it means to be good at my job.

“I want this service to continue to be there for years to come, and I hope this service could continue to grow with me. That in itself is the drive that keeps me going.”

I had one goal when I first joined the NAVER Blog team. Rather than wanting to give this service a completely new look as a product developer, my goal was set more from the user’s perspective: I wanted this service to continue to be part of people’s lives for years to come. The biggest reason is that I want my own snippets of my life, which I have recorded for more than 10 years, to continue to be there. Sometimes I imagine giving my NAVER account to my child when I have kids of my own later. It would be just like showing your most beloved, cherished journal to your kid.
Being part of a team that creates a service I genuinely love, creating a service that can truly take into account what users want, and wanting the NAVER Blog service to continue to grow with me - that in itself is the drive that keeps me going.