KakaoTalk going from messenger utility to full-fledged community

Kakao hopes to turn KakaoTalk, now basically a humble messenger, into a full social media offering in order to improve the stickiness of the app. The plan for the transformation to KakaoTalk 2.0 was announced earlier this year and was set in motion..

Characters Ryan and Choonsik of Kakao Friends [KAKAO FRIENDS YOUTUBE]

Kakao hopes to turn KakaoTalk, now basically a humble messenger, into a full social media offering in order to improve the stickiness of the app.

The plan for the transformation to KakaoTalk 2.0 was announced earlier this year and was set in motion with the first upgrade on Dec. 7.

From that date, 48 stickers were made available allowing the user to express a wide range of states, from sad to ecstatic, by placing a sticker on their profile. Others can press the emoji in a Facebook "like" sort of way to empathize or offer support.

The number of "likes" is visible on the personal profile but only the profile owner can see who pressed the emoji.

KakaoTalk forecasts more changes to come in the future so the product becomes more interactive.

The company wants to take the messenger from being a goal-oriented service and give users a reason to stay within the app even after they're done sending messages to each other.

It wants to take KakaoTalk from a utility communications service to something more akin to what Facebook and Instagram offer.

According to a report released last March by Opensurvey, users turned on the KakaoTalk app 8.6 times every day on average. Naver was used 5.5 times on average and YouTube 4.8 times.

YouTube topped for the number of minutes per access, at 50.3. For Naver it was 32.8 minutes, TikTok 25.4 minutes and Instagram 18.2 minutes.

For KakaoTalk, it was 13 minutes.

Kakao lets users place stickers on their profiles that other people can press "like" on as if they would on Facebook or Instagram posts starting from earlier this month. [KAKAOTALK]

Former Kakao co-CEO Namkoong Whon said the average KakaoTalk users are “white collar workers commuting to work.”

“Users access KakaoTalk countless times to message their acquaintances, but once their purpose of dialogue is fulfilled, they exit the app quickly,” Namkoong said last May during the company's first-quarter earnings conference call.

“They are similar to workers who get off at the Samsung Station during the morning rush hour and climb the stairs in a hurry so they won’t be late. In order to overcome this limit, we need to fundamentally change how users can enjoy KakoTalk more lightly, similar to the user’s relaxed state of mind when they go to meet up their friends after work at the Gangnam Station.”

Kakao aims to attract more younger users, since teens prefer image and video-based social media, such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, but KakaoTalk is based on text due to its primary function as a messenger.

Another possible move for KakaoTalk is to add a short-form video section within the messenger as Line did last year.

“Although teens still use KakaoTalk, the sense is that the messenger app is somewhat old-fashioned,” according to an IT source. “Kakao may feel threatened because users may leave the app anytime they wish to communicate via direct messages on Instagram.”

The problem is the psychological resistance users are bound to have on the messenger app transitioning into a social media service.

While social media users are aware that the content they upload could always spread online, messenger users are not.

Some people actually like the simplicity of KakaoTalk.

When the news of the application of new functions such as empathy stickers hit, negative responses circulated in online communities, with users complaining that the app should “stick to its original service as a messenger.”

“We are aware that users instantly respond to new changes, which is why we are carefully approaching the matter,” a Kakao spokesperson said. “We know that there has been some negative responses in regards to empathy stickers."

The spokesperson added that the company is also getting positive responses to the upgrade.

Other changes include "growing" your own profile pet or "liking" someone's profile status messages and sending them gifts to cheer them up — all intended to get people to use KakaoTalk longer so as to boost advertising and e-commerce volume.

“As changes of KakaoTalk’s profile function lead more users to actively engage in social interactions, KakaoTalk Gifts, which is currently only actively used on people’s birthdays, will be used for a wider range of personal events,” CEO Hong Eun-taek said at a conference call last month. “It’s possible that Kakao may sustain its growth by focusing on the strengths of KakaoTalk.”

Encouraging users to view the profiles of others more often will lead to an increase of traffic in the "Friends" tab and trickle down to other sections, according to Lee Sun-hwa, an analyst at KB Securities.

"There are 42 million KakaoTalk users that use the 'Chat' tab on KakaoTalk every day, but only 22 million that use the 'Friends' tab," Lee said. "With the KakaoTalk profile makeover, users will use the 'Friends' tab more often and stay within the app longer."

The big makeover aside, Kakao still has to make up for a server-farm outage that took most of its major offerings offline for a few days in October. The company will triple its budget for service stabilization over the next five years to get its systems up to industry standard, the company said earlier this month.

BY KIM IN-KYOUNG [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]