LINE is a social networking service provided by LINE Corporation, and it is the application with the largest number of users in Japan. Comes with VoIP and text chat function, allowing you to easily communicate with multiple people.
The Birth of LINE
LINE was born in 2011. Since it was launched, LINE has been used worldwide and is now a popular service with over 200 million active users worldwide.
The number of active users in Japan is said to be over 80 million, including large number of young people in their 20s and 30s.
Before the advent of LINE, most social networking services, like mixi and Facebook, were used on computers or Flip phone.
Since the appearance of LINE, more and more people in Japan have been using smartphones, and it has become a popular mobile communication tool.
Today, it is said that younger people use smartphones than computers, so it is expected that the use of LINE will continue to increase in the future, as it is an application that allows users to communicate easily anytime, anywhere.
Reasons for LINE’s popularity
Stamp function
LINE has a wide variety of free and paid stamps. By using these stamps, you can express different emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, etc. to others with just one stamp.
Paid stamps can be used semi-permanently and can be given to friends as gifts. Free stamps, on the other hand, are provided by companies for advertising purposes, so the number and variety of stamps are limited.
Many users purchase paid stamps within the LINE app, store them on their phones, send them to their LINE friends, or even give them to their friends as gifts.
Even if each person doesn’t feel that they are spending a lot of money, the sales on the LINE side are huge. If 80 million users in Japan are going to buy 100 yen worth of stamps every year, that would amount to 8 billion yen a year. Not all of the proceeds will be retained by LINE, but even if only 30% of the proceeds are retained by LINE, that’s a profit of 2.4 billion yen per year.
LINE Stamps can also be created and sold by individuals. Some of the most popular creators earn over 1 million yen from LINE stamps alone. If you are good at writing illustrations or are an influencer, you may be able to make money from stamps.
Calling function
In 2011, phone lines were the norm, with charges based on the time and area of use, such as 10 yen per 30 seconds.
On the same year, telephone lines were the norm, with charges based on the time and area of use, such as 10 yen per 30 seconds, so if you were on the phone for hours, your phone bill would become very expensive. However, in the case of LINE calls, the system does not charge any call charges because it uses the Internet connection.
There was Skype at that time, but few people used it using smartphones, and LINE has specifications that make it easy to use with smartphones.
Group chat function
If you are a student, and you want to contact few friends from your club or class, you can invite them to a group and send the information there, and it will be sent to all of them. Furthermore, if others react, the content will also be communicated to everyone. Then, the conversation is saved there and can be easily read back.
This group feature has also led many people to download the app after being introduced to it in order to include their friends in the group.
Easy to exchange contact information
There are several ways to exchange contact information, but the most important feature is that it is easy to do.
It is possible to exchange contact information using QR codes, ID searches, and phone numbers.
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