

A Japanese Social App Contacts New Shores - calbear81
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/technology/a-japanese-social-app-contacts-new-shores.html?pagewanted=all

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worldsayshi
When we have gotten ourselves in an economy that encourage smart people to
dedicate weeks to think about how to get people to buy as many silly virtual
stickers and virtual packages of gold as possible to progress in games
designed to get uncritical people to get hooked, it feels like it's time to
get out, move to some remote place and start hacking on something that is
actually important.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Nobody is stopping you. There is the door. Add to your list commenting on
articles about said technologies on a site for nerds.

~~~
worldsayshi
You are quite right.

~~~
rubinelli
I don't mind if really smart people decide to spend their time building cute
chat apps and games. I think that, if a virtual sticker makes someone smile,
it's earned its 170 yen.

For me, it's the smart people that are building surveillance systems and
killer drones that are wasting their lives.

~~~
worldsayshi
While I mostly agree - that surveillance drone technology could and will
probably be used over again for beneficent purposes as well.

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grose
Living in Japan, I have to deal with Line but I don't like it. My major
complaint is that Line encourages you to spam your friends advertising their
games. For example, Line Pop artifically limits the number of times you can
play the game, but you can easily nag your friends to send you more 'hearts'
so you can continue. Pretty sure Line Play gives you in game currency for
inviting anyone to play it, whether they are your friends or not, so I have
tons of people I don't know send me requests. This stuff was so spammy I had
turn off Line notifications, so I prefer to use normal text messages whenever
possible. I could see other users get sick of it the same way I did.

~~~
shawnps
Interesting, I live in Japan too and use Line often, but have never received
any requests of this sort. Sounds really annoying, but luckily it seems that
no one I know actually plays those games.

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doctorpangloss
East Asian or "Big in Japan" software rarely ports to the United States
because the software flourishes under corporate nepotism. While installed on
72% of Japanese iPhones, Line's Android app is vastly more popular, mostly
because it comes preinstalled on so many devices.

Not that coercive software installs are limited to Android. Baidu, Tencent and
AliBaba live and die by shipping their own stores on iOS[0], where according
to old estimates nearly 1/3 of iOS devices in China are jailbroken by
carriers.

By these standards, Minesweeper is an enormously popular game. But we all
understand its success as a creative product is owed largely to shipping with
Windows.

Software in East Asia would export better if it grew in a more meritocratic
environment. Say what you will about the top charts of iOS and how they got
there, but the teams behind the top charts deliver great stuff in short time
better than their competitors. No corruption.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/business/global/baidu-
deal...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/business/global/baidu-deal-may-
reduce-app-piracy-in-china.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
> Software in East Asia would export better if it grew in a more meritocratic
> environment.

That sounds about as antiquated as "Asians can't innovate, they just copy". I
actually heard that line out of an American kid who had just arrived in Asia.
He was, needless to say, a complete idiot.

The penetration rate of Line in Thailand is _very_ high. My friends and I were
early adopters and saw it grow organically, mostly because of the stickers
included in the app (they're funny).

Having used Line daily for one -- probably closer to two -- years I can say
it's a well made app. You don't need a conspiracy theory or to insult Japanese
culture to account for its success.

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nicoles
I went on a trip to Japan in May, and line came back with me. It's got
excellent group chat support for a mobile chat app, good quality voice
calling, and is a really 'solid' feeling app. If you're going on a vacation
with a bunch of friends I can't think of a better app to keep everyone in
touch while you're on your adventure.

~~~
snogglethorpe
Seriously, for all that some people might dislike the silly/cute
games/stickers/addons/yadayada, the basic LINE app is very good, vastly better
than most of the other free voice/talk apps I've tried: _much_ better voice
quality and far less buggy than skype, much better quality and less buggy than
kakaotalk, etc, and there's no point in even comparing to garbage like vibber
or whatsapp.

Moreover, because it's so popular, as soon as I ran it for the first time, a
bunch of people I knew just popped up automatically in my contact list
(presumably matched with numbers in my phone's address book)...

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unsignedint
I'm fairly new to Line, but with anime/manga lovers bias aside, I find those
stamps feature very useful. It's not necessary the way to augment
conversations but it helps to respond to subject that I don't have insight or
prefer not to respond in details; I think it lowers a bar on burden to prevent
awkward silence.

As for the software, my 91 years old grandfather in Japan just got iPhone as
his first smartphone ever. He also signed up to Line as well so he can
communicate with rest of relatives (including myself) who happened to be three
different all over the US. I am impressed that he is learning it quick. I
think the part of it is the fact it's not as intimidating as other solutions.

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shadylane
Although twitter has been getting more and more closed it'll take them a long
time before they're as closed as Line. The word that best sums up Line and the
company behind them is 'opaque'. My kids both had Line installed on their
phones. When we got a Nexus 7 tablet they naturally wanted to do Line there as
well. Bad idea. Line doesn't allow the same account on two devices. Line's
solution? Instant deletion of the account. They lost a year of accumulated
stickers and chats. The positive thing from my point of view is that they were
completely discouraged and they no longer waste time on it.

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sebilasse
It's super popular all over south-east asia. One of the reasons are the cute
and fun "stickers" that can convey 80% of your daily emotions and situations.
Stuck in overcrowded subway? there's a sticker for that.

~~~
jemeshsu
WeChat is also super popular in SEA. So we have Line from Japan, WeChat from
China, KakaoTalk from Korea as the leading contenders in Asia. You see TV
commercials of the apps endorsed by celebrities. They are evolving from simple
chat app to a full social platform with own apps and games. You can say they
compete with Facebook. I overheard a teen asking his friend why he is still
using Facebook. Social apps to the teens might not be utility, more like
clubs. And they want to be associated with cool clubs of the day.

~~~
ddeck
You can add Whatsapp to that list, in Hong Kong at least. It's the dominant
messaging app here and the company claims 50% penetration, although it's not
clear by what measure.

WeChat and Line are definitely growing though. Not sure about elsewhere, but
they've both been marketing pretty aggressively of late with TV and print
commercials, billboards, store promotions etc.

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chrischen
I'm not sure why the private messaging apps in the US died off (MSN messenger,
AIM, ICQ, etc).

Was it because something like Facebook and Twitter appeared? I know in China,
without facebook, they continue to use private messaging apps like QQ and
WeChat. But it seems the trend might be in all of Asia, even in places where
facebook exists.

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reustle
I'd say it is definitely because of sites like Facebook. Why bother getting
peoples screen names for AIM when they're already on your Facebook contacts
list?

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chrischen
Japan and Korea have Facebook and twitter (though I'm unaware of the
penetration) yet they clearly still use apps like LINE.

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minikomi
Just a data point - line has been dominating the free category in the Japanese
app store for about the past 6 months now they've expanded their base to
include games.

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oftenwrong
> purchasing emoji stickers

> people over-sharing mundane details of their lives

> games with for-pay DLC

> "Don't worry, we won't sell your personal information or share your private
> conversations with the government. We promise." <\- bullshit

Sounds awful. Thank you NYTimes for un-selling me so efficiently.

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officialjunk
Reminds me to play zookeeper! Haven't launched that app in like 6-7 mo... Just
turn off that music; line cannot compose for crap.

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jayfuerstenberg
It seems you cannot install Line without divulging your whole iPhone contact
list.

Skipping this.

