Do you remember LINE? More than a decade ago, this messaging app dared to stand up to WhatsApp itselfand there was no shortage of people who thought they could take the throne from it. The initial momentum based on funny characters and stickers eventually faded over time and you might be wondering what happened to this messaging app.
If we review the most used messaging applications in Europe, LINE does not even appear in the list, so we might think that it followed in the footsteps of ICQ and also ended up in the landfill, but no. What happened to LINE?
Promising beginnings
From the ashes of the March 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami (the one that hit the Fukushima nuclear power plant) was born LINE, a new messaging app created by NAVER, a Korean company. The disaster destroyed the lines, making it impossible to call or send text messages, while WiFi and 3G connectivity remained usable. So LINE was born in June 2011.
Unlike WhatsApp, LINE was launched in a colorful and informal style and its main interest lay in its high quality, very expressive stickers and quite generous in size. It triumphed in Japan from the first day.
It was LINE in 2012
NAVER has figured out how to maintain interest in LINE by launching many new features in a short period of time, with milestones such as the app allowing free calls and video calls since 2013. For reference, WhatsApp only added audio calls in 2015 and video calls didn’t arrive until the following year.
Along the way, LINE added a miniature Facebook, group chats, a sticker and theme store, business profiles, and its sticker cartoons. a merchant empirewith its own series on Netflix, a coffee franchise and much more.
LINE had something that the rest of the messaging apps lacked: personality.
LINE has grown rapidly and tried Copy WeChat’s formula to become the next super appby launching additional services such as LINE Man (food delivery), LINE taxi (taxi), LINE Out (VOIP calls), LINE News (news), LINE Pay (payments) and many more.
Attempt to conquer Europe
LINE’s rapid growth pushed its creators to attempt the impossible: conquer Europe. At that time WhatsApp was already more than established as a mobile messaging standard, but that hasn’t stopped attempts to find users interested in something a little different.
LINE promised a more fun and relaxed way to chat than WhatsApp (which wouldn’t have stickers until 2018), with a colorful interface that didn’t care about Material Design, with its own personality.
Plus, with some very interesting additional benefits: it had calls and video calls and There was no need to give your phone number to chatsomething that continues to plague WhatsApp today. Not only that, but LINE had a pretty decent PC version that didn’t rely on us keeping our phone on, like WhatsApp Web did back in the day.
Various sticker packs in Spanish. One of them, original from LINE, with texts adapted to the Spanish market
TV commercials, promotional deals with content creators to create sticker packs and official stickers translated into english They were part of LINE’s artillery to try to win users in Europe. And it worked, to some extent.
But just as the goat climbs the mountain, The Spanish people launched WhatsApp and our LINE contact list became increasingly depopulated, until it fell into oblivion.
Big in Japan (and Taiwan and Thailand)
LINE is still alive and adding birthdays
However, LINE is not dead although a bit of a party. A parranda is mainly found in three places: Japan, Thailand and Taiwan.
Statista estimates that LINE currently has 178 million monthly usersincluding 86 million Japanese. This map from Reddit (compiled with data from Eager Nomad) clearly shows LINE’s limited domains, in light green. While not in first place, the app still has a significant user base in Indonesia as well.
LINE is the leading messaging app in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan, with a strong presence in Indonesia. Map by @Oblimix on Reddit
In these places, LINE has remained strong all these years. The pace of updates of the application has been reduced compared to its first years, but the application has been renewed several times while maintaining its brand, with a design that remains its own in the ocean of uniformity that is the mobile landscape. Today.
The cats are still blue (unless you change it), the Brown, Cony and company stickers are still there, along with thousands of other creations created by businesses and individuals, with statuses, official accounts, music, payments and their own Discover. LINE is today the super application that WhatsApp wants to be.
In 2024, LINE looks like this
Actually, nothing stops you from using LINE these days. Although they have stopped trying to expand their domains outside of Asia, nothing has changed in this regard and, if you can convince those around you to use LINE, it is indeed an excellent option. What happened to LINE? LINE never left. We left LINE.
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