Korean SNS Legend
Kakao CEO Lee Seok-woo delivered a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014, which kicked off on February 24 (local time) in Barcelona, Spain, and said that his company dreams of an innovation-oriented mobile ecosystem based on collaboration, cooperation, and value creation.
He is the first Korean venture CEO to deliver a keynote address at an MWC event. He was the fifth speaker of the session that started at 11:30am, and his topic was Disruption or Innovation. He participated in the following panel discussion, too.
“KakaoTalk has solidified its position as an indispensable app in Korea with more than 93% of the nation’s population communicating through the service. We achieved this by providing more than just messaging. The addition of features like emoticons, multimedia sharing, group chat, and free voice call built richer mobile lives for our users,” said Lee, and continued, “Due to the high usage of the messenger, KakaoTalk gained a powerful social graph, through which we were able to evolve into the world’s first mobile social platform that has generated a meaningful level of profit.”
He stressed that the growth of Kakao Talk is based on cooperation. “New value has to be created through the cooperation of users and partners, and this type of collaborative business model will begin to receive more focus in the future,” he said, and added “Let’s all join hands to create new shared value.”