Foreign Web Services
The number of Koreans using foreign Internet services increased significantly last year. According to Nielsen Korea, Facebook Messenger and Instagram were the two fastest-growing mobile applications in Korea in 2014. The numbers of their users skyrocketed 274.3 percent and 226.9 percent, respectively.
Specifically, that of the former jumped from 1.26 million to 4,726,066 between January and November, while that of the latter soared from 868,000 to 2,839,590 during the same period. The number of unique visitors to Microsoft Bing, in the meantime, rose from approximately 540,000 to 4,982,123 and that of Tumblr visitors increased from 1.25 million to over 2 million, too.
The rapid increase in the number of Facebook Messenger users is partly because Facebook has allowed conversation only between the users downloading its messenger application since July last year. The number of its global monthly users rose from 1.2 billion to 1.3 billion in 2014. Instagram broke the 200 million user mark in March 2014 and the 300 million mark in just eight months.
Under the circumstances, Korean web service providers are facing a serious challenge. Facebook Messenger is chasing Kakao Talk, which has over 27 million users, while competing with the runner-up Naver Line. Microsoft and Google are getting ready to catch up with Daum in the web search market.