Everyone has an individual persona within each specific social environment: home, school, work, and with friends. It helps people easily adjust with their groups in the name of socialization: as a husband, a manager, and member of a tennis club. However, currently, online applications do not offer user-specific characteristics. KakaoTalk focuses on this. They released a new beta service in January, called a multi-profile service. After KaKaoTalk announced the release of this service, it attracted controversy.

What is KakaoTalk?

KakaoTalk, launched by KaKao Company in 2010, is the most popular chatting application in Korea. It allows users to send messages using internet data without charging for text messages. This drastically changed the mobile chatting system and accelerated nationwide supply of smartphones. Nowadays, almost every person who uses a smartphone in Korea uses this application. One study in 2018 reported that 94.4 percent of Koreans use it. It is the Korean version of WhatsApp.

Why did Kakao release a multi-profile service?

As mentioned above, people have a social persona specific to the relevant environment. However, although the demand for this kind of service has been rising, only one profile would be shown to every person connected on KakaoTalk. Profiles are personal. People upload their personal pictures, thoughts, music, etc. Users prefer not to communicate with their bosses and friends through the same account. Thus, some people even set up a second phone, separating professional and personal lives. Nowadays, people do not want to be interrupted in their privacy.

This tendency is closely related to cultural changes. Koreans share their traditional concept called Jeong (attachment, in English), which is inherent in Korea’s history. This concept unknowingly affects people in many ways. Aside from the many advantages of Jeong, it is one of the main things that blurred the boundaries between the public and private. Owing to this, people became wary of interruptions by other people both offline and online. With the development of technology and human rights and the influence of Western individualistic culture on Korea, personalization has intensified, and demand for private rooms in both real life and online has been increasing among young people. The “No KakaoTalk After Work Law” proposal echoes this mindset. In Kakao Chief Privacy Officer (CPO)’s own words, “What you want to show someone can be what you don’t want to or can’t show someone else at the same time.” KaKaoTalk seems to focus on this, and has prepared measures to deal with this effect, namely “Multi-profile.”

As the name suggests, it provides a maximum of four profiles per person who joins the KakaoTalk Wallet. To join this, authentication is required to prevent impersonation-related phishing. After authentication is completed, a new profile can be added, and one can choose the friends one wants the profile to be visible to. This is similar to Instagram’s "Close Friends” function.

University students’ reaction to the service

People have different opinions on this issue. Some are concerned since it could be used negatively like, for example, swindling or having an affair. However, some say it helps people to be more expressive without having to think about other unfamiliar people. To analyze the service from university students’ perspective, The UOS Times asked four university students, under different conditions, a few questions about KakaoTalk’s multi-profile service.

1. Do you know that KakaoTalk launched a new beta service called “Multi-profile”?

Student A (A): Yes.

Editor-in-chief (Editor): Yes.

Start-up CEO (CEO): Yes.

Soldier (S): No.

2. Do you use it?

A: No.

Editor: Yes.

CEO: No.

S: No.

2-1. If not, will you use it?

A: No.

Editor: Yes (already using it).

CEO: No, not yet.

S: Yes.

3. What do you think about the service?

A: I was amazed that the profile could appear differently to each person as per my requirement.

Editor: As a user, I felt that it lacked the function that enables us to set the music profile on the second and third profiles. It made me wonder whether the other friends who did not have a music profile showed me a different profile. Honestly, I think it is not very useful for ordinary university students, except for lovers.

CEO: I think some people constantly want this kind of service. So far, only one profile has been shown to everybody, such as a business partner, family, or lover. However, the new service will draw more users because it enables multiple online identities for each situation.

S: Originally, one could check other people’s KakaoTalk profile immediately if they have one’s phone number. It is good that the new service prevents unnecessary intrusion into privacy.

4. Let us assume that you are using this service. As a normal student, an editor, CEO of a start-up, a soldier, what would be the pros and cons of using this service?

A: The advantage would be that it protects my privacy from part-time job bosses and colleagues. However, I am concerned about someone impersonating me and abusing this.

Editor: I was glad to hear that they would provide a new service. As I engage in external activities and work as an editor in the press, I expected the new service to be different from the existing service. However, I felt that just making an additional profile does not fully separate personal and professional lives. For me, I did not use this service much because I did not set up a profile that would embarrass people with who I share a formal relationship. If it develops and divides the work and personal profiles, and if the work profile helps to correct spellings, then the pros of this service would be more prominent.

CEO: There were other chatting applications for lovers only and for businesses only to make their private profiles and hold conversations. However, those functions have moved on to KakaoTalk, and therefore, I guess that various chatting application users will move on to KakaoTalk, too. This will increase users’ freedom online, booming the advertising business on KakaoTalk. However, we must be concerned about how this service may be used in negative ways.

S: As a soldier, the biggest issue is security leaks. However, no security personnel sets up such profiles, and therefore multi-profile services are not particularly useful for soldiers.

KakaoTalk’s “multi-profile” service has been functional for only a month post-launch. Thus, it is still too early to judge its utility for university students. However, having such services that meet people’s demands is desirable. As the interviewees said, the multi-profile service has distinct pros and cons. It is a meaningful service in modern society where various identities are respected and privacy protection is valued. However, as this service is a beta version, people will have to wait and see what kind of turn this service will take in the future.