Kakao emoticons celebrate their 13th anniversary. Kakao announced on the 27th that approximately 700,000 individual emoticons have been released over the past 13 years, with a cumulative transmission volume exceeding 280 billion.
The “Mini Emoticon,” launched this March, has been experienced by 17 million people, indicating that 1 in 3 South Koreans have used it. The Mini Emoticon is a small-sized emoticon that can be used freely alongside text in KakaoTalk conversations. It allows the expression of various objects within the chat bubble along with text, and different types of mini emoticons can be combined into one bubble.
The number of subscribers to Kakao Emoticon Plus has increased by 500,000 from the previous year, surpassing 2.5 million. The subscription service allows unlimited use of individual emoticons according to emotions or situations and enables easy usage and enriched conversations through automatic recommendations based on keywords, earning much love from users.
In 2024, the most popular emoticons included characters with fandoms such as “Due.. Ganadi,” “Manggeureojin Bear,” “Zanmang Loopy,” “Damgom,” and “Chunsik.” This year, they also introduced emoticons in collaboration with Hanwha Eagles and KBO League teams, receiving great responses from sports fans.
Since July, the Emoticon Store has been offering various information. New features have been added to make the store more useful, such as “Most Gifted Emoticons,” “Currently Searched Emoticons,” and “Trending Keywords.”
A “Kakao Emoticon Creator Page,” where you can view emoticons released by creators at a glance, was also established this month. On the creator page, all of a creator’s emoticons can be sorted by latest and popularity, and by clicking on a character in the creator’s emoticon area, only that character’s emoticons can be viewed.
Kim Ji-hyun, leader of Kakao Emoticons, said, “Thanks to users’ consistent interest in Kakao Emoticons, we have been able to continue sustained growth with creators over the past 13 years,” and added, “We will continue to make efforts to enhance the service to provide enjoyment in using emoticons to users and offer new opportunities to creators.”