KakaoTalk (

Hangul The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The let ...

: 카카오톡), commonly referred to as KaTalk (

: 카톡) in South Korea, is a mobile

messaging app Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

for

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s operated by

Kakao Kakao ( ko, 카카오) is a South Korean internet company that was established in 2010. It formed as a result of a merger between Daum (web portal), Daum Communications and the original Kakao Inc. In 2014, the company was renamed Daum Kakao. Th ...

Corporation. It was launched on March 18, 2010, and it is available on mobile and desktop platforms. , KakaoTalk had 53 million

monthly active users Active users is a measurement metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from visitors within a relevant range of time (daily, weekly and m ...

, 47 million inside Korea. It is available in 15 languages. The app is also used by 93% of smartphone owners in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

, where it is the most widely used

for

smart phones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...

and

personal computers A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or techn ...

. After the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, it has further grown in prominence after becoming widely used as a tool to combat COVID-19, in cooperation with the South Korean government.

Service

KakaoTalk provides free calling and messaging services. Like most of its type, the user is able to share photos, videos, voice messages, locations, webpage links, and contact information. Users are able to create one-on-one conversations, as well as group chats with no limit on users. It allows the user to synchronize contact lists to connect to friends who also use the service, among other options that provide this service. The app automatically synchronizes the user's contact list on their smartphones with the contact list on the app to find friends who are on the service. Users can also search for friends by KakaoTalk ID without having to know their phone numbers. The KakaoTalk service also allows its users to export their messages and save them. KakaoTalk began as a messenger service but has become a platform for the distribution of various third-party content and apps, including hundreds of games, which users can download and play with their friends through the messaging platform. Through the "Plus Friend" feature, users can follow brands, media and celebrities to receive exclusive messages, coupons and other real-time information through KakaoTalk chatrooms. Users can also purchase real-life goods through the messenger's "Gifting" platform. On January 13, 2021, KakaoTalk released an emoticon monthly fixed-rate service. "Emoticon Plus" is a service that allows unlimited use of Kakao's selected collection of emoticons for ₩3,900 per month. After subscribing to 'KakaoTalk Wallet', users purchase Emoticon Plus through the wallet platform rather than through in-app payment.

Company business model

KakaoTalk, a free mobile messenger application for smartphones, revealed its first profits of $42 million in 2012 and $200 million in revenue for 2013. With 93% of South Korea's population using KakaoTalk on their smartphones, Kakao Corp. has provided users a large range of services including games and retail commerce.

History

Government surveillance

Following criticism of the South Korean government's response to the

Sewol Ferry Disaster The ferry MV ''Sewol'' sank on the morning of April 16, 2014, en route from Incheon towards Jeju in South Korea. The 6,825-ton vessel sent a distress signal from about north of Byeongpungdo at 08:58 KST (23:58 UTC, April 15, 2014). Out of 47 ...

, Korean authorities announced a "zero-tolerance policy" which involved investigation and detention of individuals deemed to be spreading

libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...

through Internet media. Some KakaoTalk users have received notices that their messaging accounts were searched by South Korean authorities.

Coronavirus vaccine passports and contact tracing

Until early-2022, when the South Korean government relaxed

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

laws, KakaoTalk effectively functioned as one of South Korea's digital vaccine passport platforms (along with several other platforms). It was used as a storage for mandatory

COVID vaccine A COVID19 vaccine is a vaccine intended to provide acquired immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 ( COVID19). Prior to the COVID19 pandemic, an e ...

data, and individuals entering public venues were required to have their vaccination information scanned via

QR codes A QR code (an initialism for quick response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) invented in 1994 by the Japanese company Denso Wave. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that can contain information about the ...

by the venue. Since the identitiy of individuals at a venue were available as contact tracing data, KakaoTalk also served as a tool for contract tracing by the Korean government until its vaccine passport functionality was discontinued.

2022 fire and outage

After a fire in its Seoul data center on 15 October 2022, KakaoTalk services were disrupted globally, its "worst-ever malfunction". President Yoon called for a quick resumption of services, which over 90% of Koreans use on a frequent basis. Services were partially restored within about 10 hours, but it took four days to repair servers and finally normalise operations. Messaging, as well as payments, banking, ride-hailing, maps, and games were disrupted. Kakao's co-CEO, Nam-koong Whon, resigned on 17 October 2022 because of the situation.

KakaoTalk API

KakaoTalk made its platform API available for developers. The development stack currently supports iOS, Android,

REST Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and entert ...

, and Javascript. A user administration-based API and a push-based API are currently available, and an analytic API is planned for release.

Influence

Korean

A solitary chat room is a kind of open chat room, where many anonymous people gather to talk about specific topics, communicating only with images, without using text or emoticons. In other words, it is making a story out of images only. Similar chat rooms have sprung up as an open chat room that exchanges food pictures without a word became popular. As the popularity of the celebrity themed "solitary chat rooms" grew, celebrities went into the chat room themselves.

International

KakaoTalk is available in 15 languages and used in over 130 countries. On July 26, 2011, Kakao Corp. established Japanese Corp., Kakao Japan and appointed Cha-Jin Park as a representative. According to company officials, the app appears to be very actively used in Japan. When a massive earthquake hit Japan on March 11, 2011, KakaoTalk's messaging traffic in Japan surged as millions of people sought to confirm the safety of friends and family. KakaoTalk played an important role as a data network-based communication method; it successfully replaced disabled wired and wireless networks and helped connect the disaster-stricken. KakaoTalk has targeted countries in

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

where no dominant mobile messenger service stands. KakaoTalk is forming strategic partnerships in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, as well. In 2013, KakaoTalk began airing TV commercials in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam featuring

Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...

. In the ads, local celebrities and Big Bang appear together to promote KakaoTalk. In late 2013, Indonesia became the country with the second-most users of KakaoTalk, after South Korea, with 13 million users and the potential to become KakaoTalk's largest market worldwide. The former co-CEO of KakaoTalk, Sirgoo Lee, stated "We grew our user base by more than 25 times in one year, so hopefully, we will continue at that rate." KakaoTalk has tailored their service to the local environment by collaborating with local designers and companies to generate "Indonesian-specific content". In February 2014, KakaoTalk launched for Nokia Asha 500,

501 __NOTOC__ Year 501 ( DI) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Avienus and Pompeius (or, less frequently, year 1254 '' Ab u ...

, 502, and 503 devices, expanding its reach to users of a wider audience.

References

External links

*
''KakaoTalk Case Study''
{{Instant messaging Android (operating system) software BlackBerry software IOS software Windows Phone software Instant messaging clients Cross-platform software Communication software South Korean brands Kakao 2010 software