For Koreans, Kakao Story is way to keep in touch

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For Koreans, Kakao Story is way to keep in touch

The most popular social networking service in Korea last year was Kakao Story, a service affiliated with the nation’s top mobile messenger, KakaoTalk, according to a report from Hankook Research, a private polling agency, released Tuesday.

A survey of 9,381 Koreans aged between 20 and 70 residing in urban areas nationwide showed 70.5 percent said they used some type of social networking service (SNS) at least once within the previous month.

Of those 6,700 SNS users, 51.8 percent said they used Kakao Story. Facebook followed with 28.5 percent and top portal site Naver’s Band service ranked third with 23.6 percent.

Blogs on various platforms accounted for 10.9 percent, whereas Twitter made up a mere 8.1 percent.

Korea is one of the few countries in the world in which Twitter is so unpopular, largely because of its early reputation as being popular with younger, leftist users.

By age group, teens and 20-somethings preferred Facebook and Twitter, which are more open to the public, whereas people in their 30s and 40s tended to use Kakao Story and Band, which rely on more personalized networks.

Kakao Story is known to be hugely popular with mothers with kids. In contrast, more than half of the users of Facebook, Band, blogs and Twitter were men. Female users accounted for 56.9 percent of total Kakao Story users.

Profile photo updates made up 70.5 percent of all postings made in the latest one month, whereas introduction to music or videos made up 11.9 percent, introduction to a venue visited 10.9 percent, links to news articles was 7.4 percent and opinions about current affairs registered at 6.5 percent.

SNS usage in Korea has risen consistently in recent years.

The percentage of respondents who used at least one service stood at 39.8 percent in 2011 but rose to 51.2 percent in 2012 and to 63 percent in 2013.

BY SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun@joongang.co.kr]
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