Singer Lee Young-ji offered a candid assessment of the update to the mobile messenger KakaoTalk that Kakao rolled out on 23rd.
On 25th, through her fan communication platform Bubble, Lee said, "I was holding out so I wouldn't update KakaoTalk, but is it okay for this to be updated like this without the person's consent?" and added, "No, please. It's ugly."
Sharing a screenshot of her KakaoTalk profile screen, she said, "Even the fact that I had Mr. Jay Park as my profile picture back in high school is spread out widely. On my KakaoTalk profile," and added, "I'm going to delete everything now."
In the photo, you can see everything from Lee Young-ji's high school pictures to cases where she had used a photo of a person who appears to be singer Park Jae-beom as her profile picture.
With the first major overhaul in 15 years, KakaoTalk's existing friends list, which had been sorted like a traditional phone book, now appears after the update in a social networking service (SNS) style, with profile photos, background photos, and posts displayed in a grid feed. Users are reacting by saying, "Images are excessively exposed even to people we're not close to," and "The ads are big."
Chung Shina, CEO of Kakao, said, "There may be some inconvenience for certain users after the update, but this overhaul is to provide a comfortable environment for users."