Story & photo by Mia Rosienna P. Mallari / Correspondent
DAUM Kakao Corp. (DKC), the firm behind South Korea messaging application KakaoTalk, aims to strengthen the number of Filipino users through “Open Chat,” its newest feature that allows users to join a conversation with a click of a link.
With safety and privacy of the users being the main concern, the company devised the feature for communicating without having to disclose personal information, like phone numbers or profiles, before engaging in a conversation with another party.
“We’ve been noticing that sellers on online commerce sites need to reveal their number to communicate with their buyers. With this service, they can paste the Open Chat link on their posts and buyers can talk [to them] without adding [the profile] or seeing the numbers of their phones,” KakaoTalk Philippines Inc. CEO Paolo Pineda said.
Aside from promoting its use for the online marketplace, KakaoTalk encouraged the use of Open Chat for interactive activities, like client support, gaming, school work and fan communities.
The Open Chat button allows the user to create a chat room with a maximum of 500 members simply by clicking the floating plus sign button on the menu. Creators can generate up to 10 links, which can be posted on social media and other web sites, and have the privilege to ban inappropriate users.
Despite being the first profitable messaging app, which is on its second year in the Philippine market, KakaoTalk is still trailing behind Viber, WeChat and Line.
Pineda claims that 97 percent of South Korea’s population of 50.4 million uses KakaoTalk to connect with each other, making up most of the brands’ 190 million audience, while the rest comes from other Asian countries like Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines.
“We focused on key countries rather than launching worldwide for our app,” Product and Marketing Manager Noah Hwang explained.
“In Korea, most of our users are young females in their teens and 20s. I’m sure this is also the same ratio that we have here in the Philippines,” Hwang said.
The Philippines is the second country to experience the new feature. DKC made the feature available to Filipino users starting October 11 for phones running on iOS and Android.
Image credits: Mia Rosienna P. Mallari