Kakao, the developer of mobile messenger app “Kakao Talk,” said Sunday that its now 70 million users spend almost triple the time using the app on average as they did five months ago.

The average weekly use of Kakao Talk reached 302 minutes, nearly triple the 107 minutes of the first week of July. In other words, Kakao Talk users run the app for about 43 minutes every day on average.

The phenomenon indicates that existing Kakao Talk users rely heavily on the app to send mobile messages, Kakao said. 

The mobile communication venture firm added that Kakao Talk now has 27.5 million daily hits on average, showing a huge increase since April 2011, when it had about 8 million daily hits.

The number of mobile messages delivered through Kakao Talk has soared as well, with the app managing about 4.2 billion messages per day. The number has been increasing since March 2012, when it broke the 2.6 billion mark.

Kakao said its users now total about 70 million, which includes domestic users and international users. Upon gaining nationwide popularity, the record-breaking app has been eyeing international users, now offering services in 13 languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Turkish.

The company made Kakao Talk compatible with five operating systems, such as Android, iOS and Windows

“We want to make Kakao Talk a mobile platform that evolves with the customers,” Kakao said.

The company increased its number of employees from 14 in December 2009 to 280 at present.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)