
How Japan's Line app became a culture-changing, revenue-generating phenomenon - technologizer
http://www.fastcompany.com/3041578/most-innovative-companies-2015/how-japans-line-app-became-a-culture-changing-revenue-generat
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bsder
Shrug. Social networks come and go, rise and fall depending upon where the
single 20-year-old girls hang. Then those girls age, get married, and have
children, and another service takes its place.

How many "culture changing" social networks have we had since computers got
networked? I have to use more fingers than on both hands.

~~~
kleer001
> I have to use more fingers than on both hands.

If you're counting in decimal... Counting in binary should get us close to the
limit case.

~~~
unwind
That's not due to counting "in decimal", it's because of counting in unary:
using the number of fingers to represent a number (possible to count from 0 to
10, inclusive), rather than having each finger represent a digit in a number
(possible to count from 0 to 1,023 inclusive, in binary).

This was hilarious to write if you're into puns, since the collision between
"digit" as in "part of hand" and "part of number" hit me in the face.

~~~
kleer001
oh man, totally out-nerded on HN whoda thunk?

;)

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moyix
Note also that LINE routinely censors the communications of its users in
China:

[https://citizenlab.org/2013/11/asia-chats-investigating-
regi...](https://citizenlab.org/2013/11/asia-chats-investigating-regionally-
based-keyword-censorship-line/)

(And it's still going on: [https://citizenlab.org/2014/10/asia-chats-line-
keyword-filte...](https://citizenlab.org/2014/10/asia-chats-line-keyword-
filtering-upgraded-include-regular-expressions/) )

Perhaps it's just the cost of doing business in China (Skype used to do the
same thing, though I believe they've stopped since being bought by Microsoft),
but it seems pretty scummy.

~~~
wodenokoto
It IS the cost of doing business in China, and the main reason why Google is
left out. Facebook is left out of China in a mix between censorship and
protectionism.

Skype serves a completely different executable in China in order to circumvent
their own encryption.

~~~
moyix
Does Skype still do this? I know they used to -- the Chinese version was TOM-
Skype -- but last I checked TOM no longer distributes a version of Skype.
[http://skype.tom.com/](http://skype.tom.com/) redirects you to get something
called Zoom messenger instead.

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Hortinstein
wow I moved to Japan in April 2011 and cannot believe that line was introduced
in June 2011. It was nearly ubiquitous among people my age roughly 20-30 and I
can't even remember not having it. I have never been into emoticons or emoji,
but I am not ashamed to say I probably spent a few thousand Yen on stickers
and would probably do it again.

Stickers were a great way to converse with friends whose English was not
strong. Things like sarcasm and a lot of American humor does not translate
well and stickers were a great medium.

I have moved on from Japan but I still use it all the time to keep up with
friends back there. I think the user experience is stronger than whatsapp and
facebook messenger.

~~~
Nux
+1 better experience than Whatsapp, whether we like it or not, emoji do make
sense, even though they'll probably never be as hugely used as in Japan.

~~~
daveid
This might not be the right place but I'd like to mention that for me, Line
works less reliably than Whatsapp on Android. Line fails to deliver any
messages unless I explicitly open the app. Plus as an aside, do we have any
information on how secure Line is?

~~~
ffn
It might be unencrypted http for all the target audience cares about. 20-30s
youngsters using it to bat emoticons back and forth and discussing the merits
of frills versus lace is probably a lot more concerned with how cute the
stickers are versus how likely an adversarial party would high-jack a session
cookie. On the other hand, if the girls and boys using Line are using it to
negotiate drug deals, secret assassination plans, or naked selfies, security
might be more important.

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sho_hn
The hold Line has over Japan, and KakaoTalk over Korea, is pretty concerning
to me. Entire countries are now off-limits to open platforms again -- a system
that doesn't woo the host companies into writing a client for it is
legitimately not useful for anyone there who has a social life (or
increasingly even social responsibilities, like getting notifications from
their school).

~~~
mistermann
Then again, it's perhaps nice to have even a little bit of diversity between
countries.

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chunkiestbacon
I'm visiting Japan quite often and made some Japanese friends. Line is quite
popular, partly because you can exchange IDs instead of phonenumbers and the
stickers. You can see that Japanese people value privacy if you log in to
their PC client => all data on your phone is wiped, which is a bit
unconvienent for me.

I think it's funny how every other app now copies the line stickers. Facebook
does it too, but I'm not sure if it's really catching on here. Japan really
likes cute stuff and since the language is a lot more polite and indirect it's
probably easier to communicate with stickers.

Line is much better than WeChat tough, which has bad layout, low quality
emoticons and doesn't feel native.

WeChat's feature for finding users closeby who opt-in is great. Please check
that out, if you are an app developer!

I like Viber more, because their client works everywhere, actual voice calling
is included, the software is fast and nice and they have great support, no
battery drain like skype.

~~~
hackerboos
Line is huge in Thailand. So much so that the junta in power spent a lot of
money giving away Line sticker as propaganda.

[http://www.khaosodenglish.com/detail.php?newsid=1419235215](http://www.khaosodenglish.com/detail.php?newsid=1419235215)

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edwinnathaniel
LINE is probably one of the big IM players in Indonesia as well aside from BBM
(decreasing as users moving towards Android based phones) and WhatsApp.

That's a country with lots of users as well.

I rarely use Line except whenever I need to chat with my family/friends
overseas but when it comes to IM, culture seems to dictate the user-
experience. I use Google Hangout, Facebook Messenger, and Line.

Google Hangout and Facebook Messenger are alike and focus on one thing:
conversation (sounds heavy eh?). Line focuses on expression/emotion
(especially 'cuteness').

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tagrun
When I moved to another country from Japan, I couldn't carry over my account
(which is associated with my e-mail).

Their customer support simply doesn't exist (yes, seriously), so I had to kiss
goodbye to that account.

It looks cute (although I'm not sure it matches the taste of people from non-
Asian cultures, and I don't think western people will be eager to buy or even
use the stickers etc.), and everyone in Japan is using it. Given all these,
it's going to be a tough for them to get into the market.

(and oh, the name is terrible in google search)

~~~
wodenokoto
Yeah, account management in Line is crazy.

Log in on a different phone and EVERYTHING on the other phone gets deleted.
For most people I know in Japan, loosing your phone means getting a new Line
account.

People at softbank/docomo/AU should be able to help you migrate, though they
might only help you migrate if your new phone is on contract with them.

~~~
unsignedint
Actually, if an user has assigned themselves an user name as oppposed to
relying solely on phone number, they should be able to port over account. But
despite number of articles (and some official docs) urging users to do so it
sounds like a lot of people simply don't care. Though, it could be more
straight forward, though.

~~~
capsule_toy
I wouldn't rely on this. My LINE was set to a prepaid number that I had let
expire on purpose. I thought I would be fine because I also had a username
set. When someone else registered my number, I lost about 90% of my contacts.
The only contacts I had left were ones that I was actively in conversation
with. I believe this was actually a bug, but there isn't much recourse if it
happens to you.

~~~
unsignedint
Ah, I see... I know when they've started expanding outside of Japan, they've
actually dropped requirements to have a phone number associated with the
account, and allowed Facebook account and E-mail address in lieu. Although,
the requirement has been in place for Japanese users for a while -- I think
it's now universally the same.

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thomasfl
If Telegram finds a way to open source their backend, then that could be a way
for new chat apps to compete against Line, WeChat, KakaoTalk, WhatsApp,
Facebook Messenger, Viber and so on. The security issues of Telegram would
need to be sorted out first off course. Both Telegram and WhatsApp uses phone
numbers to identify users, so they could probably let users talk to each
other, if they wanted to.

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dba7dba
S Korea is usually best known for hardware products and not software/online
products but they do have some innovative online sites.

Examples cyworld. Founded in 1999.

naver.com. Largest search engine in Korea.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/technology/05online.html?_...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/technology/05online.html?_r=0)

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sparkzilla
The stickers are a lot of fun. Facebook tried to copy it, but it's not the
same.

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eva1984
It is actually from Korea

~~~
chulk90
It's not from Korea. It's by the Japanese subsidiary of the Korean company.
You can _technically_ say it's Korean, but it really isn't.

By the way, I'm a Korean.

~~~
ryanhuff
Were you born in S. Korea?

