"Still KakaoTalk"... 2 Million Users Return After Outage-Induced Departure

View of Kakao Pangyo Ajit in Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Two million users who left KakaoTalk due to a data center fire causing service disruptions returned within a day. Although installations of alternative applications such as Line and Telegram surged sharply, most Kakao services normalized, leading users to return to the familiar Kakao ecosystem.

According to app and retail analysis services WiseApp, Retail, and Goods on the 19th, the number of KakaoTalk users on the 17th reached 40.93 million. This figure nearly recovered to the 41.12 million users recorded on the 14th, before the data center fire on the 15th.

The number of KakaoTalk users dropped sharply to 39.05 million on the early morning of the 16th due to service disruptions, a decrease of 2.07 million users. However, the user count increased again by 1.88 million within a day.

While KakaoTalk users sharply declined on the 16th, the number of users for alternative apps Line and Telegram surged. Line increased from 430,000 users on the 14th to 1.28 million on the 16th, and Telegram rose from 1.06 million on the 14th to 1.28 million on the 16th.

The apps with the largest increase in installations were Line, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger, in that order. Among these, Line’s installations rose by 720,000, from 2.91 million on the 14th to 3.64 million on the 16th.

Although 'digital refugees' quickly sought alternative apps due to KakaoTalk’s outage, they ultimately appear to have decided to return to KakaoTalk. This is because it is difficult for other apps to catch up with KakaoTalk’s universality, which is used by virtually the entire population, in a short period.

Meanwhile, as of 6 a.m. on the same day, major Kakao services such as Kakao Mail, Daum Mail, Talk Channel, and Kakao Pay were fully restored. Although mail services have been restored, some mails are still intermittently difficult to access.

Kakao Pay also completed restoration work, with all functions including remittance confirmation, transaction confirmation, and 1:1 mail for major financial transactions fully recovered.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.