KakaoTalk Sees Daily Traffic Hit 1 Billion

With its free messaging service and ubiquitous appeal to owners of Korean smartphones, KakaoTalk is now witnessing daily text-message traffic of 1 billion, it said Monday.

"The number of text messages exchanged each day has reached one billion within a year and nine months of the service being launched in March of 2010," said a spokesman for the company, adding that this translates as 10,000 messages per second or 690,000 every minute.

KakaoTalk now has over 30 million subscribers, having first hit the 10 million mark in April of last year. Around 80 percent use the service every day, and each user has an average of 65 friends. The number of overseas users stands at 6 million.