Sir Paul McCartney launched an official profile on mobile app Line last week. He already has more than 270,000 followers. And that’s just one of the surprising stats around the social networking app, which is still seen by many Westerners as that messaging app that’s huge in Japan.
That’s only partly true. Line is certainly huge, having signed up more than 260m users since its launch two years ago, with 160m of them having registered in 2013 so far.
But the app is about more than instant messaging: it’s a fully-fledged social network, complete with its own games platform and ambitions to move into music and shopping.
It’s also not just big in Japan. “80% of our traffic is from outside Japan. People consider it to be more Asian, but now it’s a different story,” says Sunny Kim, senior vice president and head of business development for Line Euro-Americas, before reeling off some figures to prove it.
“We’ve got 17m users in Taiwan, 18m in Thailand, 14m in Indonesia, but now also 15m in Spain, and we expect to have more than 10m users in Mexico and other Latin American countries this year. And now we think it’s time to enter more high-profile countries like the UK.”
That’s the reason for Kim’s visit to London: Line’s apps are already available here on various smartphones, but the company is planning a proper launch in the coming months, signing up more celebrities and brands – McCartney isn’t a bad start on that front – and getting local designers to create digital stickers that will appeal to Brits.
Stickers? They’re another intriguing element to Line’s growth. In August, the company said it was making more than $10m a month selling stickers in its apps, with people able to use them as richer emoticons when messaging friends.
Some are based on big stars or brands – Barcelona and Real Madrid have their own Line sticker ranges in Spain – while others are based on Line’s own characters, who are so popular in Japan that they have their own TV cartoon called Line Town.
“People know all about chatting apps, so they want to know what’s different. And when they first install Line, it’s the stickers: they’re very cute, and when you start to use them in chatting, it’s really addictive,” says Kim.
“In Spain, people were very excited about the [Lionel] Messi stickers for example. But then they discover our photo-sharing features, and then Line games. So people discover our functions step by step.”
Earlier this year, comScore estimated that Spain had 24m smartphone users, so the fact that 15m people there have at least registered for Line is impressive. Football clubs may also be high on the company’s priority list for partners in the UK, as it hopes for similar growth here.
More stats? Line says that in July, it had 73m unique monthly users worldwide of its app’s Facebook-style Home and Timeline features, and that 7bn messages were being sent every day using the app in August, including 1bn stickers.
Line’s games business is also growing at a rapid pace, and shaping up as a genuine alternative to Facebook as a platform for developers to build social games on. Kim says that there are now more than 36 games on Line, which have collectively generated more than 190m downloads.
Initially, Line made its games in-house using its own characters, basing the gameplay on popular casual genres, from bubble-popping to gem-swapping. Line Pop and Line Bubble have been downloaded 33m and 25m times respectively.
“We are opening up our platform to third-party game studios, and depending on the markets, we are inviting local studios,” says Kim.
Line’s games include Line Bubble and Line Pop with 25m and 33m downloads respectively
Line has numerous rivals in the messaging/social space, from Korean firm Kakao – which has a similar mix of social features and games platform – through to Western messaging apps like WhatsApp, and on to bigger beasts of the social networking world like Facebook (which is also getting into stickers) and Twitter.
WhatsApp announced this week that it now has 350m monthly active users, and it seems to be the company most in Line’s sights, judging by some of Kim’s comments, from her claim that Spanish people were “a little tired of WhatsApp” when Line launched there, to her description of it as a “first-generation” app whose market share in Asia is “meaningless”.
“No one uses WhatsApp there, but we know that every market is different: France is strong for Facebook Messenger for example,” says Kim. “The market is open for competition: we always know that the next month, some new service can change this market.”
Relationships with celebrities and brands will be important: as well as signing them up, Line is trying to educate them in how best to use its app, how that differs from Facebook and Twitter, and what kind of data they can get back in return.
“They’re not just counting the clicks. People sending messages to Line users can watch on a real-time basis how many users open the message, and how long they played the video for,” says Kim.
“Then next time, they can adapt their message based on the learnings from the previous one. It’s a very advanced marketing tool for them. And for famous singers, they can easily have a million subscribers on Line. That’s the minimum, actually!”
As for the advice, Line is keen for its celebrity users to understand that the app is about more than text-based marketing – something that Facebook and Twitter have also moved towards in their advice for social marketing.
“Our proposal to celebrities, especially musicians, is that we are operating in a smartphone and 3G or 4G environment, so you should try to push more interactive and video content, not just a text,” says Kim.
“In Asia, we’re releasing new packages with top singers: a sticker plus MP3 files. It’s a new format: people can listen to the music on Line, but the exciting part is when they sing the song, they can send a sticker to their friends.”
Music will play a bigger role in Line’s future: the company recently announced plans to launch a service called Line Music, enabling people to listen to songs with their friends. It’s due to launch this year – in Japan at least – but for now Kim has no more details to share.
She’s focusing on the global rollout for Line as a whole, including the UK. “We are anxious to get into this market, so we will prepare for the service this year or early next year,” says Kim. “We don’t want to introduce Line as a new messaging app, though. It’s a new social service for the young generation.”
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