In a survey on the overhaul that in Sep. switched KakaoTalk's list-style "Friends" tab to a feed similar to Instagram, 8 out of 10 users who updated said they would revert to the previous version if they could.
The Korea Press Foundation (KPF) said on the 11th that a survey on perceptions, experiences, and evaluations of changes to the "national messenger's" functions produced these results. The survey covered a total of 1,000 people: 689 who, through an app update, used the feed-style Friends tab, and 219 who did not update and continued using the transfer version of KakaoTalk.
According to the results, 90.9% of those who experienced the revamped Kakao Friends tab said they felt burdened because "my activity could be exposed to people I'm not close to." And 90.1% of respondents said they "feel fatigued because I end up seeing news I don't really want to know."
Seventy-five percent of respondents said that if they could remove the "short-form" content feature added to the existing "Open Chat" tab and revert to the transfer version, they would.
As for KakaoTalk seeking a full-fledged shift to a social networking service (SNS) and expanding artificial intelligence (AI) features, such as implementing ChatGPT in the app, 86.1% said "it packs in too many functions, making it complex and confusing." In comparison, 61.2% said it is "a natural phenomenon given the media environment." Those who said "it is more convenient" came to 38.1%.
Only about 20% agreed with the two positive items. Those who responded that "it's convenient because I can interact with friends' updates with hearts or comments" came to 20.9%, and those who said "it's convenient because I can see friends' recent updates at a glance" came to 20.5%, indicating relatively fewer positive reactions.
Regarding the extension of the time window to delete messages in KakaoTalk chats from 5 minutes to 24 hours, 84.3% said "I feel at ease because there's more room to correct mistakes." And 80.6% responded that "it's a natural trend to strengthen a messenger's delete function." To the item "I feel more at ease because privacy protection features are strengthened," 75.5% said they agree. However, there were also concerns about side effects, such as that the longer delete window "could be abused to evade responsibility" (67.5%) and that "trust in the conversation partner may decline because the conversation content could change or disappear" (50.6%).
Among the 219 people who did not update to reflect the overhauls to the "Friends" and "Now" tabs and continued using the transfer version of KakaoTalk, 74.4% answered "yes" when asked whether it was due to dissatisfaction with the overhaul.