How to secretly read your Kakao message

KakaoTalk is now officially the national application. More than 70% of smartphone users in Korea use KakaoTalk, and some people buy smartphones just to access KakaoTalk.

Of course not all users are satisfied. KakaoTalk does require users to provide personal information, and the stability of its servers have been questioned various times.

Other large corporations, including Naver and Daum, offer their own  messenger applications, but people's first choice still remains to be KakaoTalk.

To keep its position as the most downloaded application in Korea, KakaoTalk has continuously upgraded its systems, one of which includes "receipt of notification" for sent messages. While this function is useful at times, it does create awkward situations.

Recently, there was a news article about a couple that separated because the guy would not reply to the his girl friend''s KakaoTalk message despite the fact that he read the message.

How did she know that her boyfriend read the message? Through the "receipt of notification" function.

So how does the "receipt of notification" function work?

After a message is sent on KakaoTalk, a number appears next to the message. This number shows how many people have not yet read the message. So if you sent the message to one person, 1 will appear. After that person has read the message, the number will disappear.

When you are messaging between close friends, this functionality can be useful. However, at times, it is the "receipt of notification"' function that forces people to reply to messages that they do not feel the need to. Similarly, the person who has sent the message can feel ignored when he or she does not receive a response even after the number disappears.

Recognizing this inconvenience, an application called "톡 몰래모와" has been developed, and it can be downloaded in the Android market.

How to download and install 톡 몰래모와

First, look for 톡 몰래모와 in the Android market. It has a yellow talk bubble as its icon. Then, download the application on to your phone.

After download is complete, load the application. You will see the logo and a brief description of the application.

 After you click on '확인' (Okay), you will be taken to the setting screen.

Here, you need to choose for which messenger application the "receipt of notification" function should be disabled (or enabled).

Once you've completed the setting for '톡 몰래모와' application, you need to adjust the setting within the messaging application as well. As for KakaoTalk, go to "'setting (설정)" and turn on the "message arrival (메세지 도착 알람)" and "view message (미리보기)" options.

Go back to "톡 몰래모와" and choose the people that you want to use this application on.

You are now ready to use "톡 몰래모와" on KakaoTalk!

For more detailed information, please refer to "설명보기 (how to)"  under "help".

"톡 몰래모와" is a great application to avoid awkward situations (e.g., why didn't you respond to me after seeing my message). Of course you may not be the only one using it. Someone may be using this application on you :).

-

Have you ever wished others will not find out whether or not you read their messages? How useful will "톡 몰래모와" be to you? Let us know through commenting below!

4 reasons why people quit playing Anipang

Since KakaoTalk introduced its game platform, Anipang has become a national game within weeks of time. 20 million people downloaded the game, and people are now refocusing on the potentials behind KakaoTalk.

The basic structure behind Anipang is nothing new, and Anipang is actually very similar to Bejewled only with a few tweaks. The game has been converted to fit into KakaoTalk's platform and added in a ranking system where you compete with your friends on KakaoTalk. Through encouraging competition with people that you really know, Anipang emerged deeply into the lives of smartphone users in Korea.

The competition has gotten so intense that various auto programs that automatically plays the game have been developed. Sundaytoz, the developer of Anipang, responded to this by forcing users to delete certain programs, but auto programs are still being widely used which discourages users from wanting to participate in the ranking competition.

Anipang also started the trend of people sending 'hearts' to friends through KakaoTalk. You need 1 heart to play 1 game (1 minute long), and one heart is created every 7 minutes. For those who can't wait that long, you can first send your friends these hearts with the hope that your friends will reciprocate by sending you a heart in return.

Another social feature of Anipang is that the ranks are reset every week. So, even if you scored low the previous week, you are encouraged to try out for a high ranking this week as all scores are deleted. If you are lucky and the few of the first ones to play soon after the reset, you may even rank 1 for a short while.

My friends and I have spent hours playing Anipang, but I have noticed that about half of them have not only quit playing the game but are also deleting it entirely from their phones. What's going on? Why are people refusing to even keep the game installed on their phones?

Below are 4 reasons why people are deleting Anipang.

Reason 1. Spam messages flood KakaoTalk

You need 1 heart to play 1 game. You are first given 5 hearts and get another heart ever 7 minutes. However, 5 hearts are not enough (you will understand if you've actually played Anipang), and most will just quit playing the game entirely if they were to wait 7 minutes to get one heart.

To get hearts, you can either buy them with real money or wait for your friend to send you a heart. Most people first send hearts to friends hoping that the friends will send a heart back.

Another way of getting hearts is to invite friends who haven't downloaded the game yet. Although this method kept Anipang the most downloaded application in Korea, to a person who is absolutely uninterested in playing Anipang, the invite message will be spam. When you receive several of these invites from different people throughout days or weeks, you may even end up deleting KakaoTalk.

KakaoTalk did add a function that allows you to turn off the 'receive hearts' button, but through blocking heart messages you can only play the game 5 minutes at a time so people end up deleting the game all together.

Reason 2. Your level in the game is revealed to all other players

Ranking between friends is what drives people to keep playing Anipang. When you rank lower than your friend or learn that your friend just scored higher than you did, you play until you score better and send an automated message saying 'I beat your score by scoring xxx' through KakaoTalk.

You level up after playing 50 games or more, and you receive bonus points at the end of the game according to your level. These bonus points end up significantly boosting your score, and by the time you reach level 50, your bonus points will be an additional 23% of your actual score.

So why is it bad if your level is revealed?

First, you will be announcing to your friends how frequently you play Anipang through your level.

For those who score high, a high level may only reveal that you play Anipang all day, but the problem gets worse for those who score low. If you score low at a high level, the high level will reveal that you play Anipang all the time without improving.

Reason 3. Too many errors

Not only does Anipang have a record number of downloads, but it also has a full list of errors--scores don't get saved in the server, 'play' button doesn't show, animal faces overlap, network gets disconnected, etc. These errors add up to become a great source of annoyance especially since every game costs a heart to play.

People continue playing Anipang despite these issues to stay in the top ranking and stay entertained. Furthermore, people trust that Anipang will soon get around the problems since it is the most popular game in Korea.

However, as more KakaoTalk games are coming out with better stability, people may soon lose their patience, and Anipang may have to step down from being the national game of Korea.

Reason 4. Simple rules and monotonous scoring system

To score above 100,000 points, you need to take advantage of combos and blow the bomb when the combo number is at its peak. Also, rather than popping many animals, it is important to pop many different rows to score combos. There are no additional items or characters so after awhile, the game does get boring.

Even a simple card game like Go-Stop requires various tricks and methods. We've seen other games like Anipang, and it seems like Anipang just applied different graphics and KakaoTalk ranking to existing games. Furthermore, there are so many errors that make a game this simple difficult to play. With the addition of auto programs that allow users to cheat, the 'fun' factor of Anipang seems to be diminishing quickly.

Suggestion to Anipang

Despite all the factors that make Anipang monotonous and disruptive to play, people keep Anipang in their phones because it is a game that they can play with their friends. However, aside from giving and receiving hearts, the game lacks the social factor (especially compared to the more recent KakaoTalk games), and now that there are other games that can be played on the Kakao platform, people are starting to delete Anipang.

For Anipang to stay as Korea's leading social games, Sundaytoz will need to update more functions that can add more variations to the scoring system.

Anipang can also become more 'social' through having the players compete not only with scores, but also with visual graphics (e.g., add a crown on the pictures of the top 3 players). Or, if players can raise a character with special features such as a character that gets extra 5 seconds to the game, the users will be encouraged to continue playing.

Through these methods, not only will the users be more entertained, but Sundaytoz can generated additional revenue from selling items and characters.

-

Have you ever played Anipang or other KakaoTalk games? Do you think the KakaoTalk games now are more engaging than Anipang? Let us know through commenting below!

Rise in taxi fare in Korea

Photo courtesy of http://news1.kr/articles/917837

Taxi fares are likely to face an increase in 2013.

The Ministry of Land, Transportation, and Maritime Affairs stated on December 3rd that "We review whether to raise taxi fares every 3 years, and it is the 3rd year now. Also, LPG gas prices have significantly increased so any increase in the taxi fare seems reasonable."

So far, 13 local governments, out of 16, have turned in a fare increase proposal.

On January 1st, 2013, Busan may increase its cab fare from 2,200 won to 2,800 won, and Daegu is considering the same.

Currently, the base fare in Seoul is 2,400 won, but the city is likely to consider to raise the fare.

There will be 116 red days in 2013 in Korea!

There will be 116 red days in 2013 in Korea!

January 1st will be a holiday, and March 1st (Independence Movement Day) is a Friday so it will be a 3 day weekend.

Some unfortunate holidays are still there. Lunar New Years will be on February 9th to 11th which will include a Saturday and a Sunday. Children's Day on May 5th will also be on Sunday.

Still, don't be disappointed as there are many more holidays coming up!

Buddha's Birthday is on a Friday (May 17th) so you will get to enjoy another 3 day weekend. Chuseok lies on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (September 18th to 20th) so if you include Saturday and Sunday, you will be on vacation for 5 days straight! If you decide to take 2 days off before or after Chuseok, you will get to enjoy 9 days of vacation.

Last but not least, Hangeul Day (October 9th) will be a red day for the first time in Korean history.

How to find a bf or gf on Christmas Eve

Christmas is a holiday to spend with your boyfriend or girlfriend in Korea. 

However this year, the singles will be having their own event. 

On Christmas Eve, singles in Korea will be gathering at Yeouido Park in Seoul to have the largest "meeting" in history.

The news is all over Twitter, Facebook, and other popular forums.

This entire idea has been started by a Facebook event page by "님이 연애를 시작하셨습니다 (you have started dating)".

More than 4,000 people have their status as "attending".

To attend, gather at Yeouido Park at 3 PM on December 24th. Men will be in white, women will be in red, and couples will be in green. Men and women will have their own gathering areas.

When signaled, you are to run towards the other side and grab the hand of anyone that interests you. If the other person holds your hand back, you are now a couple!

After becoming a couple, take a picture and post on Facebook to receive a very special gift sponsored by major corporations in Korea which volunteered to help out after seeing so much interest in the event.

Can Kakao Page be the Korean iTunes?

<Image from Hankyung under certain conditions>

On November 20th, 2012, Kakao Company announced to soon release the following services:

• Kakao Page: Contents platform on mobile
• Story Plus: Business account for Kakao Story
• Chatting Plus: Function that allows users to connect to various applications on the KakaoTalk chatting screen

Kakao Page is the world's first mobile contents platform that allows anyone to upload various digital content and market their brand. Through using Kakao Page web editor, one can easily create content, which can be quickly spread through among friends on Kakao Talk. Another unique quality of Kakao Page is the pricing structure. The creator of content is able to charge viewers any price. As Kakao Page becomes a channel for profit, Kakao hopes to see high quality content consistently being created and viewed on Kakao Page.

Story Plus will allow business owners to use Kakao Story without any limitation on the maximum number of friends. Kakao Story is now a representative mobile application in Korea along with Kakao Talk. Through Kakao Story's Story Plus, businesses in Korea will be able to maximize its marketing and promotion efforts with their Kakao friends.

Chatting Plus will allow Kakao Talk users to directly connect to other applications while chatting. What this means is that you can share a variety of content (e.g., maps, games, music, etc.) provided by applications registered on Chatting Plus through your chatting screen. Chatting Plus will enrich both the mobile communication experience by Kakao users as well as application developers.

Of all these three new developments, what draws the most attention is Kakao Page, which is the world's first mobile contents sharing platform. Whether Kakao Page will become the Korean version of the iTunes is a reasonable question to ask.

Status of iTunes in the market

According to a research by NPD Group, Apple's iTunes dominates 64% of the digital music market in the US (2Q, 2012) and 29% of the entire music industry (2Q, 2012). iTunes is also growing influence in the eBook market. iTunes now has more than 30% of market share in the eBook industry and is quickly catching up with Amazon. In the online video market, iTunes has 65% of market share. The dominance of iTunes is only expected to grow as Apple continues to release more iPods, iPads, and iPhones. By the end of 2011, iTunes contributed to 6.3 billion USD or 6% of Apple's total revenue.

Will Kakao Page take over the Korean content market?

So, will Kakao Page become the leader of the contents distribution industry in Korea? For now, the answer seems to be "yes".

1. 62 million Kakao Talk users

Kakao has a lively society in Korea similar to that of iTunes. The difference is that while iTunes primarily markets to about 400 million iOS devices, Kakao will be basing its services towards the 62 million Kakao Talk users.

Kakao Talk's market power has already been proven through Kakao Talk games. Kakao Talk games have recorded significant revenue over the months. On August, the first month of Kakao game's launch, 470 million won of revenue was earned, following 1.4 billion won in September and 4 billion won in October. There are currently 31 games registered on Kakao Talk, and 3 of them (Anipang, Candy Pang, and Dragon Flight) each have more than 10 million users. It only took Anipang 39 days, Candy Pang 28 days, and Dragon Flight 26 days to reach this many users, and their success proved Kakao Talk's competitive strength in the mobile content industry.

No other contents distribution platform in Korea has as many users as Kakao Talk. Just with its high number of users, we can easily predict that Kakao will be a dominant player in Korea's contents distribution industry. 

2. Mobile emerging as the major distribution channel for content

Until recently, most content was shared on personal computers. However with the increasing usage of smart phones, we can say that content will now be created, viewed, and shared on mobile. According to IDC, worldwide production of personal computers decreased by 8% compared to 2011. Furthermore, usage of web search decreased by 4% since 2011. From these results, we can conclude that the mobile era has now begun, and personal computers' dominance as a content distribution channel is to end. 

Kakao Talk's simplicity and practicality led to its success in the mobile world, and based on Kakao's expertise in mobile optimization, Kakao Page is likely to become a successful mobile platform with global competitiveness.

3. Strength as an open platform

Kakao Page is an open platform that will allow anyone to create, market, and sell digital content. As people continuously create high quality content to market their brand and make profit, Kakao will benefit from having such an active group of users. Such a way of operating the open platform system is similar to the way Google Android was able to quickly catch up to the iOS. 

Being an open platform is also consistent to how Kakao has always run its business. Unlike previous Internet portals that created content all on their own, Kakao cooperated with other IT ventures to diversify its services. 

It will be exciting to see Kakao Page grow with creative and extensive content developed by various users.

4. Easy to share 

Because Kakao Page will be connected to Kakao Talk, sharing content with friends will be easier than ever. Giving and receiving content as gifts is more personal on a mobile environment than on personal computers.

The gift giving platform on Kakao Talk grew by 93 times over the last two years from having 90 gift options to 9,000. How the content platform will grow on Kakao Page will be exciting to watch.

Kakao Page's limitations

However there are some obvious limitations to Kakao Page's growth as a content distribution platform.

Kakao's database is composed of names and the phone numbers of its users. Since its database is not based on users' IDs, there may be certain issues with viewing the purchased content on a non-phone device such as a tablet PC. Users may have to watch lengthy videos or read eBooks on their phones simply because the content is not transferable to other devices. This is a weakness Kakao has compared to Apple's iTunes and Google's Google Play.

Another challenge Kakao Page will face is Apple and Google's In App Purchase (IAP) policy. Apple announced in 2011 that any digital content to be distributed on an iOS application will be paid through Apple's own payment gateway, and the creator of the application will need to pay 30% of the price to Apple as a fee. More recently, Google has also announced a similar IAP policy.

When a content creator uses Kakao Page to upload content, he/she will need to pay a fee to both Kakao and iTunes or Google Play (depending on where you downloaded your Kakao Page from). This may discourage content creators from using Kakao Page especially if they don't find the fees to be "woth it". Kakao therefore is under a heavy pressure to show its users that Kakao Page's services will be worth the cost.

-

Would you use Kakao Page or its other two projects? Why or why not? Let us know through commenting below!

3 reasons why you WON'T pay online in Korea

A Korean American friend recently came over to ask me to buy a round trip bus ticket for her online. The process was simple--you  pick your destination, time, and insert your credit card number. The entire process took me less than 5 minutes, but it took my Korean American friend at least 10 minutes to just find her destination on the website. I have had many instances of my foreigner friends coming by with their credit cards, asking me to help them buy something on the Internet. These people usually knew what they were looking for but simply did not know how to find the products, services, and tickets. Even when they knew the exact url of the product, they failed  in completing payment online. As a result, my non-native friends either had to bank transfer or not make a purchase at all. Before diving into the specifics of why foreigners will not or cannot pay online, here is a brief example of how Gmarket handles its foreign shoppers.

1. Gmarket features its website in English: Gmarket has its own English website. However, compared to the Korean Gmarket, the number of products are significantly limited, and types of product rarely get updated.

2. Gmarket processes payment using Paypal: To pass the local online payment barriers, Gmarket uses Paypal to process payment for foreigners. However, Paypal has two critical flaws that discourage users from completing their transaction. First, Paypal does not accept the Korean won. Foreigners in Korea have local accounts and receive their pay in the Korean won. However, since Paypal only accepts payment in dollars, foreign shoppers will be subjected to the volatile currency rate between the won and US dollars. Second, not everyone has a Paypal account. Shoppers will not want to set up another  account just to buy an item on Gmarket. Because of the reasons above,  foreign shoppers do not spend enough money, and this is why Gmarket does not invest much time on expanding its English site.

So why is Gmarket using Paypal which deters sales? Why doesn't it use another payment solution that actually accepts the Korean won?

Below, you will find top 3 reasons for what's stopping foreign shoppers from making an online payment as well as why Gmarket uses Paypal.

1. Foreigners do not want to install security and anti fraud applications

In Korea, 75% of online sales come from payments made using local Korean bank cards, and most foreign residents prefer to pay using these cards as well. Now, local Korean banks require the users to install various security and anti fraud applications, which are the first barriers to foreign shoppers completing their transaction. In most Korean e-commerce websites, after clicking on the 'Pay Now' button, a yellow tab will show on top of your page. The tab says in Korean that you need to install some secure pay application. For Gmarket, after that application is downloaded, you are forwarded back to the main page, and all the information you typed for delivery will be erased. Let's say that you patiently retype all of the information and click "Pay Now" again. Then, a pop up page will appear with a choice of banks. Usually, you will need to install another keyboard security application before you can further process payment. DealKo's payment gateway provider, Paygate, has successfully negotiated with most banks to skip the application installation process. However, KB, Korea's largest consumer bank, still requires security applications even through Paygate.

2. Most local cards do not have their payment solution in English

After installing the various security applications, you will realize that the payment gateway runs completely in Korean. There are times when the "choose your card's bank" page is conveniently in English. However, all pages after, including the pages where you need to type in your card number, cvc number, and a temporary password, are all in Korean. Furthermore,  each local card has its own unique payment processing system, making online credit card payment even more difficult for non Korean speakers.

3. Digital certificate required for online payment is not easy to get

Certificate for online payment is required for all local banks' transaction. For credit card and debit cards, a digital certificate is only required for values over 300,000 won. However for real time bank transfers (currently the most preferred method of payment by foreign residents), a digital certificate is required every time. Even Paygate is still in its preliminary process of negotiating with banks to not require digital certificates. Simply put, requirement for digital certificates  is not going to go away any time soon.

So what kind of payment gateway will encourage spending from foreigners?

Any foreigner targeting to start an e-commerce website based in Korea will need to look for a gateway that provides the following:

1. Local offerings: The solution needs to easily connect to all the important payment options in South Korea.

2. Strong local presence: All local authentication processes need to be supported

3. Customization: Payment Page needs to be fully customizable. There are already several payment solution companies that fulfill the 3 requirements mentioned above. However, the pitfall is that locally registered companies are still required by the Korean law to follow the authentication process laid out by Korean banks. In other words, these payment solution companies' services can only be enjoyed by companies based outside of Korea.

-

Before being concerned about online payment, you'll first need to provide products and services that people would want to buy. What I've realized through my time in DealKo, consumers will walk to the bank to transfer money if they want the product or service badly enough.