Kakao Talk is a free mobile messaging application for smartphones. It used to provide text messaging service only but its parent corporation, Kakao Inc, added a free call service last July. Kakao Talk allows users to send and receive photos, videos, voice messages, and other types of contents on a on-to-one basis and also in groups.
Kakao Inc. has been expanded from a mere mobile messaging service into online games, advertising and other forms of electronic commerce. At a recent conference, it also introduced its three new platforms, which were ‘Kakao Page’, ‘Story Plus’, and ‘Chatting Plus’.
‘Kakao Page’ is a mobile contents platform where anyone can makes their own contents and sell. They can take advantage of their Kakao Talk friends. ‘Chatting Plus’ introduces applications and offers multimedia contents, including directions, games, and music to its users to share with other users while chatting.
Kakao Inc. has been losing money until 2 months ago when it had its first period of surplus since foundation. What has made me wonder is that although Kakao Talk has a large user base, the company used to be a mere messaging app and nothing seemed possible to be monetized from this service, then why did the employees stay at the company for such long time given the continuos periods of negative profit? Now I begin to understand why. The corporation understood the value of users and how to integrate that user base with mobile contents markets. Since it launched ‘Plus Friend’, which is one of Kakao Talk features that suggests brands, artists, and publications to its users and allows them to receive unique contents from them, it saw the monetization potential.
And now, the corporation is trying to change rules of the game. By charing for contents on its 3 new mobile platforms, Kakao Inc. attempts to change the consumer’s ‘contents-are-free’ perception and help contents be acknowledged for their values.
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