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Understanding Line, the chat app behind 2016’s largest tech IPO

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Re: Understanding Line, the chat app behind 2016’s largest tech IPO

#41

Post by matthewrudy »

I've been a big Line user ever since I moved to Taiwan two years ago (and subsequently moved back to Hong Kong)

Taiwan has embedded Line into their social norms in the same way as most countries have done with Facebook.

It's safe to assume that anyone you encounter, regardless of age or social status, is available on Line.

The branding is also very pervasive, doing promotions with convenience stores, clothing, toilet paper, and anything else you can think of.

It's won over Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia.

It's gradually winning over Korea. (there were at least 5 merchandise stores in Seoul a few months ago)

However, growing out of those core markets hasn't worked so well.

Hong Kong has been targeted for a few years (opening a flagship store, and a few pop-up shops), and it gets reasonable use over here.

But it's not managing to kick WhatsApp or wechat. (I saw a recent stat of 35% of users)

So if they can't win over Hong Kong, I'm not sure how it'd work on Europe or North America where their "asian cute style" branding doesn't win them so many bonus points.

Re: Understanding Line, the chat app behind 2016’s largest tech IPO

#42

Post by darylc123 »

kalleboo wrote: post #40

LINE has actually turned out to be my favorite messaging app. Stickers aside, it's one of the few ones with a native desktop app, support for sending video clips, it has a really good group chat implementation (you can attach notes to a chat which is useful for stuff like planning meetups). There's integration with their other services as well - if you subscribe to LINE Music you can embed a song into a chat. It just…

FYI, messenger.com is a standalone site for FB Messenger.

Re: Understanding Line, the chat app behind 2016’s largest tech IPO

#43

Post by captainarab »

egypturnash wrote: post #37
MichaelGG wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>sticker I drew for him That's pretty neat, but I haven't seen that; how do you do your own stickers? I don't think anyone would argue against being able to send free-form drawings. The stickers in Skype and Telegram, otoh, seem to be mostly "meme junk". Random clips of TV, or (IMO terrible) cartoony drawings. My daughters use them sometimes, same with strings of emoji. But I find it expresses far less than words wou…

Line and Telegram both let users upload their own sticker sets. And I am a professional cartoonist who thinks nothing of spending her spare time drawing a bunch of goofy drawings of one of her characters. Really I kinda had to; all my pro cartoonist friends have them too, and I felt naked talking to them without a set! http://egypt.urnash.com/blog/tag/stickers/ has an older version of the set I did for myself. Still…

These are awesome / hilarious! Awesome work!

Re: Understanding Line, the chat app behind 2016’s largest tech IPO

#44

Post by voltagex_ »

sho_hn wrote: post #7
simbalion wrote: post #4

This stuff is a fad, like the housing bubble and the .com boom. People who don't really understand technology or the internet or how people use both think they smell gold and they take us on these ridiculous roller coaster rides about "The next big killer app" or whatever. Then that app is dead in 5 years. I guess if all one is interested in is making money, then good for them, kudos. But in the grander sense.. "the…

I'm not sure that's the case for Line. I've used Line only sparingly, but I live in South Korea, which has KakaoTalk, the chat app usually described as being to Korea what Line is to Japan (or vice-versa, since Line was patterned after Kakao). Their UX is very similar. KakaoTalk is huge. It's hard to separate from being Korean. Everybody has it by default. It's the standard way to communicate. It's used for notificat…

That's interesting - what do you mean by being used for notifications? Sites / services / stores can send you a KakaoTalk notification? I experimented with sending alerts for server health via WhatsApp but the phone number -> ID ties make it difficult.

Re: Understanding Line, the chat app behind 2016’s largest tech IPO

#45

Post by brokenmachine »

kalleboo wrote: post #40

LINE has actually turned out to be my favorite messaging app. Stickers aside, it's one of the few ones with a native desktop app, support for sending video clips, it has a really good group chat implementation (you can attach notes to a chat which is useful for stuff like planning meetups). There's integration with their other services as well - if you subscribe to LINE Music you can embed a song into a chat. It just…

Some tech-inclined friends use Hangouts, and I don't communicate with them much because opening up Chrome decimates my battery life. That client was also very slow to adopt basic UI features such as copy/paste of images and drag and drop.

Is there a hangouts app for iphone? Can you only use hangouts through Chrome on an iphone?

I'm on Android and I've been very happy with hangouts. Works great moving seamlessly between my phone, tablet and PC. Saying that in the past they were slow to adopt those features is irrelevant now as the features you mentioned are currently supported.

I would rather use an end-to-end encrypted chat app, but haven't been able to change over yet. I tried Chatsecure with a tech-savvy friend but could never get it to work. It would never handshake successfully. You could see the handshaking messages in Hangouts, so I know it was able to send messages and trying to handshake (both the ones I sent and the ones my friend sent), but it would never connect.

Re: Understanding Line, the chat app behind 2016’s largest tech IPO

#46

Post by rahimnathwani »

matthewrudy wrote: post #41

I've been a big Line user ever since I moved to Taiwan two years ago (and subsequently moved back to Hong Kong) Taiwan has embedded Line into their social norms in the same way as most countries have done with Facebook. It's safe to assume that anyone you encounter, regardless of age or social status, is available on Line. The branding is also very pervasive, doing promotions with convenience stores, clothing, toilet…

It's interesting you bring up the contrast between Line/WeChat usage between Taiwan and Hong Kong. Perhaps people in Hong Kong are more likely to have frequent contact with acquaintances in mainland China, than are people in Taiwan. I'm not sure it's about cultural differences or branding. Just path dependence.

Re: Understanding Line, the chat app behind 2016’s largest tech IPO

#47

Post by sidek »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #46
matthewrudy wrote: post #41

I've been a big Line user ever since I moved to Taiwan two years ago (and subsequently moved back to Hong Kong) Taiwan has embedded Line into their social norms in the same way as most countries have done with Facebook. It's safe to assume that anyone you encounter, regardless of age or social status, is available on Line. The branding is also very pervasive, doing promotions with convenience stores, clothing, toilet…

It's interesting you bring up the contrast between Line/WeChat usage between Taiwan and Hong Kong. Perhaps people in Hong Kong are more likely to have frequent contact with acquaintances in mainland China, than are people in Taiwan. I'm not sure it's about cultural differences or branding. Just path dependence.

Anecdotally: it isn't just proximity to mainland China. It's proximity to China and the West. Depending on what social groups you run in, you're more likely to use both facebook/tumblr/etc and/or Chinese social networks.

A lot of people I know had Line, but most of them didn't really use it for messaging-- just the games, especially TsumTsum.

Re: Understanding Line, the chat app behind 2016’s largest tech IPO

#48

Post by rahimnathwani »

sidek wrote: post #47
rahimnathwani wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting you bring up the contrast between Line/WeChat usage between Taiwan and Hong Kong. Perhaps people in Hong Kong are more likely to have frequent contact with acquaintances in mainland China, than are people in Taiwan. I'm not sure it's about cultural differences or branding. Just path dependence.

Anecdotally: it isn't just proximity to mainland China. It's proximity to China and the West. Depending on what social groups you run in, you're more likely to use both facebook/tumblr/etc and/or Chinese social networks. A lot of people I know had Line, but most of them didn't really use it for messaging-- just the games, especially TsumTsum.

Yes, the point I made about HK/mainland and WeChat applies equally to HK/Western and WhatsApp/FB.

Re: Understanding Line, the chat app behind 2016’s largest tech IPO

#50

Post by inthaiguy »

Am in Thailand and everyone has Line. I have all the relevant messengers and really not much pain switching between them. What I can't understand is how WhatsApp squandered its early lead. This IPO represents their failure capturing the market. Had they really executed, they could have owned mobile chat.
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