Web portal Daum will end its subscription service for business and group members next month. It is interpreted that the valid date for Kakao-Daum 'double post' strategy is expiring after Kakao took overDaum in 2014. It is expected to pick up the pace for reorganizing Daum’s functions under the Kakao brand.
Daum announced on the 14th that it will end the business and group membership service as of August 17th. After the service ends, it is impossible to sign up for a new business or group member inDaum.
Prior to this, in June 2019, Kakao merged Daum’s personal accounts with Kakao accounts. New subscribers must create a Kakao account to create a Daum account. When the business/group membership sign-up service ends next month, the path to create a Daumaccount is not possible without creating a Kakao account.
Kakao explained that this move was due to ‘low in demand.’ A company official said, “Although personal accounts were merged in 2019, Kakao supported Daum’s business/ group membership sign-up function since Kakao did not have an alternative function. “However, the service will be terminated due to lower demand for creating an account compared to input resources for operating the membership system in the name of the business operator and organization.” The feature is being removed because there are not many users.
Web portal business/ group accounts are usually opened for business purposes such as blogging and cafe, a digital community service platform. An Internet industry official said, “The fact that the operation for signing-up for business group account became impossible shows that Daum’s portal community and business functions have weakened significantly. This is likely the result of Kakao’s integration with Daum’s business functions, such as advertisement.”
In fact, while the Kakao Group is growing, Daum's business performance is still showing stagnation. The Kakao Portal Biz sector, which includes Daum earnings, continued to grow negatively since last year. There was no improvement in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year.
An alternative was prepared for the field of PC and mobile advertisements, which are Daum’s major sales, as a Kakao Talk’s banner advertisement, 'Biz Mode.’ Daum's presence within the Kakao group is fading. According to the Mobile Index, Daum's monthly active users (MAU) in June was 9.57 million, which is 25% of Naver's 41 million.
Since the merger with Daum in 2014, Kakao has maintained Daum's business and identity. Even in KakaoTalk, the Daum service was connected through ‘# tap.’ It is known that Daum was once reviewed to give up its name, but did exclude the name completely since the platform has been around for more than 20 years. Daum served as a cash cow while Kakao established itself as a business platform.
However, Daum is losing its existence recently. Webtoon, one of Kakao's next major businesses, will be no longer available from Daum next month. 'Daum Webtoon' will transfer its business to Kakao Entertainment and expand and reorganize its service with 'Kakao Webtoon.’
Kakao is also reorganizing Daum News as a subscription-base. An industry insider predicted that “The reorganization of Daum News will be the actual final step to erase Daum existence.”
By Staff Reporter Si-so Kim
(siso@etnews.com)