How did the netizens judge and rate the Korean girl group SNSD online? This was the question posed by www.wisenut.com's online Internet poll system (www.buzzinsight.net), and SNSD's Yoona came out top for her looks while fellow member and leader Taeyeon received high praise for her talents. SNSD's maknae Seohyun won over netizens with her overall pure and clean image. Seohyun won the highest marks in an online Korean portal that aggregates netizens' goodwill and sentiments towards SNSD, with Yuri and Yoona placed after her. Although there were negative comments and remarks every now and then such as "Her face is too big" and "She's too tall", the majority of the netizens' opinions towards Seohyun's image was generally positive and glowing. Comments and remarks such as "Oh she's so beautiful", "She's so cute" and "She's so slender" made up 96.9% of the replies left behind by netizens on Seohyun. Besides judging the girls on their image, netizens also debated on the individual talents they had such as singing, dancing and acting. The majority of the first impressions left by SNSD on netizens was that the girls were "pure and innocent" while being "cute and interesting" at the same time. As such, it was little wonder that SNSD won approval ratings of as high as 84 marks when the netizens were polled. Meanwhile, SNSD's "Gee" had received overwhelming support and response online ever since the song's release in early January. Investigations had shown that ever since the release of the "Gee" MV on January 7th, SNSD achieved their highest level of fame and recognition online in close to a year. The amount of attention they had received was twice as much as what they got in the wake of the "Dream Concert silence incident" in June 2008. This round of investigations canvassed homepages and blogs related to SNSD, the results returned from major search engines on the keyword '소녀시대 (SNSD)' as well as relevant materials on the girls found on all kinds of interactive media mediums such as television and radio message bulletin boards. The raw data was then processed and generated into statistics for comparison and analysis. www.wisenut.com's online Internet poll system (www.buzzinsight.net) collected 12,830 pieces of relevant information before selecting 1,454 articles for closer analysis. Out of these 1,454 articles, the system extracted 2,150 suitable candidates for polling before examining the results to determine the level of support SNSD had on these media platforms. Credits: newsen.com Translation: zjh319@yoonachina and bubzooka@soshified.com
