South Korea is close to reaching that state and KakaoTalk as a lifestyle platform has played a major role in this development. for fictional literature and films, such as Netflix Original Series Black Mirror, Elan Mastai’s fantasy novel All Our Wrong Todays, True Names by Vernor Vinge etc.) with rather extreme predictions, either dystopian or utopian, there has been no actual preceding example of human life almost entirely managed digitally. Even though it has been a very popular contemporary topic (e.g. KakaoTalk’s emergence and its dominance in Korean society entail numerous important implications to our understanding of the era of New Media.įirstly, KakaoTalk’s evolution to a lifestyle platform shows how a whole society can be digitally-oriented. Kakao’s introductory webpage shows all services available ( Source) Korea is laying upon this giant’s palm and the KakaoTalk has no intentions to stop the rise. The whole banking industry has been shaken up during last few months by this giant making yet another big step. account holders only 1 month after its launch in this August. Through Kakao bank, you can manage your finance in all fully digitalized manner and connected to Kakao Pay, it offers a great deal of convenience that has attracted over 3 mio.

Very recently, they even have launched a bank of their own. All gained huge, immediate success, the Game Center, for example, was used by more than 12 mio. Starting from 2011, as it has announced its vision to evolve into a conclusive lifestyle platform, KakaoTalk has launched countless additions: Kakao Game Center, Kakao Hair salon, Kakao Taxi, Kakao Stock, Kakao Music and Kakao Navigation. In 2017, it has gathered up more than 42 million users in Korea which is 97% of the entire smartphone user population. (OhYujin, 2017)Īs the number of users explosively increased, it expanded its service to a broader range Gifting (mobile gift certificates, in the form of a barcode message for real products (KimSang & KimHeeJin, 2012)), Plus Friend (a B2C communication channel), and Kakao Story (a social network service) were added to the app. In less than a year, KakaoTalk had 10 million users. KakaoTalk was a mere instant messaging application when it made its début in the Apple App Store in March 2010. Although it may sound very sweet, we are not talking about chocolate here, we are talking about a communication empire. You can send an ice cream cake to your friends, get updates about new mobile games, manage a bank account, call a taxi and much, much more. In South Korea, you can do everything with Kakao. Kakao talk is a gateway to the World of Kakao ( Source)

Kakao talk sound