April 26, 2024

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The global photo- and video-sharing platform Instagram aims to help South Korean culture, noticeably K-pop and esports, expand globally, the company’s new chief said on March 12.

“K-pop is much more than just music,” CEO Adam Mosseri told reporters in Seoul, emphasizing the significance of the local market as an innovation powerhouse that leads trends around the world.

The company said K-pop has been one of the most popular and most buzzed-about musical genres on Instagram in the past four years. Indonesia, United States and Brazil were among the top countries that interacted with K-pop content on the platform.

“K-pop is not just a local phenomenon but a world phenomenon,” he stressed, adding that the company is trying to support connections between K-pop artists and global fans.

The former vice president of Facebook, Instagram’ parent company, also highlighted the rise of casual sharing as a notable global trend in the way people express themselves.

“Our mission is to connect with people and things we love. To do any of that, you need to fundamentally express yourself,” he said.

Instagram Stories -- a Snapchat-like feature that creates photo and video sequences that disappear within 24 hours -- is a trend with over 500 million daily active accounts globally.

Daily Stories users in Korea increased over 50 percent on-year in December 2018, the company said, mentioning the popularity of Stories among young Korean Instagrammers.

“High school- and college-aged made up 40 percent of daily Stories users (in South Korea),” the company said.

Instagram also recently joined hands with South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics that features a built-in Instagram mode in the company’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S10.

By Ram Garikipati and newswires (ram@heraldcorp.com)