Last week, Kakao took a step back from the ‘freemium’ models with the launch of Kakao Page. This week, armed with the monetized content platform for mobile devices that allows its users to market their original content (whether it be a video, audio, image or text) that is registered and reviewed before being sold.

Kakao Page is the world’s first mobile distribution platform for the production and marketing of various digital content.

Brian Kim, the CEO of Kakao and the speaker for beLAUNCH 2013, said that:

“People upload content to places like the App Store and Google Play but the content doesn’t get any exposure. Kakao Page is a content distribution platform. Anyone can make content and Kakao Page puts it out there for everyone to see.”

However, marketable digital content is an area that is new (read: challenging). Due to the lack of free content, Kakao Page has found some skepticism from users.

But keep in mind that Game Center of Kakao also received similar feedback when it was first launched until Anipang took off. Kakao could turn a profit with a free instant messaging app and still has a strong footing in the domestic market even with NHN’s Line growing exponentially. You can read a related article here.

It seems feasible that Kakao announced a goal of making one million “profit-earning” partners within three years along with the launch. Kakao continues to add new features such as “Chatting Plus” (you can read a related article here) – and with them creating business models for 70 million+ users, and in a country such as Korea that loves trends, it will be interesting to see how Kakao will expand further.

We will be writing further on how 1) Google and Apple’s IAP policy might limit the services and 2) intellectual property rights breaches through KakaoTalk and KakaoPage collaboration – watch this space!

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