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Kakao tops Naver in brand value

February 24, 2014

By Kim Rahn

Kakao Talk topped Naver in brand value, a survey showed, Sunday.

Brandstock, a research firm specializing in the ranking of brands, said Kakao Talk ranked first in its survey in the Internet category in February, with 912.74 points out of 1,000.

Naver came next with 906.37 points. This is the first time in 10 years for the portal site to lose the top place since it overtook Daum in 2004.

Naver’s value fell last year along with a string of controversies over its alleged unfair business practices by taking advantage of its market dominance.

On the contrary, Kakao Talk, which started as a mobile messenger in 2010, has grown fast on the back of the smartphone boom, becoming a global mobile social networking platform with 135 million memberships across the world.

“We’ll keep providing services that fulfill the desire for communication, creating a new mobile ecosystem,” an official of Kakao said.

Naver was followed by Facebook, which gained 891 points; Twitter, 886.78 points; Daum, 807.21 points; mobile messenger Line, 802.95 points; and social networking service Band, 802.9 points.

“There were five mobile services in the top 10 list. With the use of mobile platforms growing, the competition between portal sites and mobile services for brand value will become keen,” a staffer at Brandstock said.

According to a separate survey by Nielsen KoreanClick in January, the personal computer-version of Kakao Talk also topped the ranking of PC messengers in terms of the number of users. The PC-version has recorded more than 17 million downloads since its launch last June.