What kind of smart phone messenger do you use?

You might have experienced that many of your Korean friends do not use What’s app and normally they don’t even have its account. Do you know why?

Many Korean people from primary school kids to elderly people use an app called ‘Kakaotalk’ instead of what’s app. Kakaotalk is a free smartphone messenger (similar to What’s app) which enables users to make group/individual calls, group chats in the common/ individual chat rooms.

When the free messenger has newly developed and released in ios/android markets, only Korean people used it. The company ‘kakao’ CEO and developers had been through huge pressures from the tele-communications companies who were upset by the fact that users did not use their texts and calls anymore because of Kakao’s free texts and call features. Furthermore, Kakao company nearly bankrupted due to the massive loans. But they did not change it to paid app which resulted in them surviving and achieving huge success to gather 90 million users worldwide now.

Kakaotalk is one of the most powerful messenger apps now and the company makes a lot of profit by kakaotalk-based games (such as anipang and cookie run)’ success and marketing campaigns liaised with major telecommunication companies in Korea.

If you are looking for something cute and convenient smartphone messengers, try Kakaotalk. Its’ creative, cute and funny animated emoticons and custom themes, smart features in multimedia sharing will make you a big fan of the app in no time.

By the way, I do not work for Kakao. I am just one of the Kakao power users. 🙂

 

Ashley (Korean teacher)