How Line forced its users to play games 100 million times a day
Good afternoon, dear habrazhiteli. For two years now I have been leading the mobile games and apps promotion agency. We often promote games in Asia and, accordingly, we encounter various tools, interesting cases and features that we plan to share here.
Today I would like to tell you about how Line, one of the most popular instant messengers in the world, made its users play games 100 million times a day.
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If you have not yet encountered any information about this messenger, then, for starters, I will bring to your attention a brief introduction with the main differences.
So, Line is the most popular Japanese mobile messenger with Korean roots (similar to WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber, KakaoTalk, Skype), now managed by the Japanese company Line Corporation. It was launched in July 2011 and is now used in 230 countries. Initially, Line did not differ from its counterparts, including a fairly standard set of functions (free and in-apps) of similar applications. The main difference is the stickers - emoticons 99 leveled, cute pictures, often associated with some kind of event, celebrities or specific emotions. For example:
In August, the company announced its revenue of 132 million US dollars, which was an increase of 348.9% compared with the previous year and 45.3% more than in the previous quarter. This made Line the most successful instant messenger among its peers.
Now the total number of Line users is more than 300 million. Mostly they are users from Asia, the application is also gaining popularity in Spanish-speaking regions, and at the moment its main efforts are directed to India, Turkey and Western European countries, including France, Germany and Italy.
Actually, the most interesting thing is how in such a short time the company achieved such results. According to Darin Hwang, Global PR Line Manager, the key components to the success of the application are:
The result is that Line’s success formula is based on a fan mix and convenience in everything.
100000000 - this is the total number of times the games were launched on the Line platform in just one day. And this means that every minute the games were launched, not a few - 139,000 times.
How?
It's simple, in November 2013, the company celebrated the anniversary of the launch of its own gaming platform - Line Games (in my opinion the most important secrets of Line's success), allowing you to play and compete with your friends. Now it has 39 different games.
Separately, it is worth noting that you should not confuse Line Games with Line Play and Line Play games
Line Play is a game - a virtual world, positioning itself as: "Express yourself through your journey." NHN Japan was released in November 2012 as a separate component of the Line services ecosystem: coupons, horoscopes, music, movies, maps, purchases, news, comics, weather, it is successfully integrated with the messenger. But Line Play games are games already integrated with Line Play. This integration allows you to play with your virtual friends, chat with them and receive virtual items that can be used directly in Line Play. During the year, the game gained 13 million users in 210 countries, with 6.8 million living outside of Japan.
Returning to Line Games, the company itself, in honor of the anniversary of the service, announced the launch of an interesting promotion. The main mission was the condition - within 12 hours to reach the figure of 100 million game launches. By the way, at that time, on the platform, on average, games were launched per minute 250,000 times, or only 85 million per day.
These 100 million should be considered as follows:
Well, in return, all the players of the platform received such a special issue of stickers:
Promotion tools in the Line are similar to those familiar to us on Vkontakte, Facebook, Twitter. Those. The classic correctly built and prepared SMM works very well. It is also worth noting that the Japanese react very sharply to a bad translation, an illogical text from the point of view of the Japanese language, therefore I advise you to use a nive in your work. There are a number of unique chips that do not just stand out, but work much more efficiently. So, in my opinion, there are several main effective promotion tools:
As a result, it is worth remembering that promotion in Japan and in the Line is not a cheap pleasure, and considering the very conservative and closed mentality of the Japanese, it is also not simple. Spamming will not work for the masses. That is why it is necessary to approach this carefully and seriously, because our “well, let's try” can turn out very badly.
All pictures were taken from the official blog Line
Today I would like to tell you about how Line, one of the most popular instant messengers in the world, made its users play games 100 million times a day.
')
If you have not yet encountered any information about this messenger, then, for starters, I will bring to your attention a brief introduction with the main differences.
So, Line is the most popular Japanese mobile messenger with Korean roots (similar to WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber, KakaoTalk, Skype), now managed by the Japanese company Line Corporation. It was launched in July 2011 and is now used in 230 countries. Initially, Line did not differ from its counterparts, including a fairly standard set of functions (free and in-apps) of similar applications. The main difference is the stickers - emoticons 99 leveled, cute pictures, often associated with some kind of event, celebrities or specific emotions. For example:
Some statistics
In August, the company announced its revenue of 132 million US dollars, which was an increase of 348.9% compared with the previous year and 45.3% more than in the previous quarter. This made Line the most successful instant messenger among its peers.
Now the total number of Line users is more than 300 million. Mostly they are users from Asia, the application is also gaining popularity in Spanish-speaking regions, and at the moment its main efforts are directed to India, Turkey and Western European countries, including France, Germany and Italy.
Actually, the most interesting thing is how in such a short time the company achieved such results. According to Darin Hwang, Global PR Line Manager, the key components to the success of the application are:
- A huge number of cute stickers (stickers), expressing a variety of emotions, often in the dialogues replace whole sentences.
- Real Line toys and other related brand products.
- Friendly interface and various unusual ways to search for friends (shaking or QR code).
- Opportunity to buy special design stickers in Line Shop for symbolic prices.
- Official profiles of favorite celebrities that allow you to communicate with them, and brand pages that provide their most current news.
The result is that Line’s success formula is based on a fan mix and convenience in everything.
How Line got its users to play games 100 million times in 12 hours
100000000 - this is the total number of times the games were launched on the Line platform in just one day. And this means that every minute the games were launched, not a few - 139,000 times.
How?
It's simple, in November 2013, the company celebrated the anniversary of the launch of its own gaming platform - Line Games (in my opinion the most important secrets of Line's success), allowing you to play and compete with your friends. Now it has 39 different games.
Separately, it is worth noting that you should not confuse Line Games with Line Play and Line Play games
Line Play is a game - a virtual world, positioning itself as: "Express yourself through your journey." NHN Japan was released in November 2012 as a separate component of the Line services ecosystem: coupons, horoscopes, music, movies, maps, purchases, news, comics, weather, it is successfully integrated with the messenger. But Line Play games are games already integrated with Line Play. This integration allows you to play with your virtual friends, chat with them and receive virtual items that can be used directly in Line Play. During the year, the game gained 13 million users in 210 countries, with 6.8 million living outside of Japan.
Returning to Line Games, the company itself, in honor of the anniversary of the service, announced the launch of an interesting promotion. The main mission was the condition - within 12 hours to reach the figure of 100 million game launches. By the way, at that time, on the platform, on average, games were launched per minute 250,000 times, or only 85 million per day.
These 100 million should be considered as follows:
- Only runs of games on Line Games were considered, excluding the LINE PLAY and LINE PLAY game;
- 1 launch was counted as one press of the PLAY button. Running games that do not have such a button counted only once, regardless of how many times the game was launched during the promotion;
- Stickers could be obtained the day after the promotion and only if the Line POP game is installed. Otherwise - it was necessary to install it.
Well, in return, all the players of the platform received such a special issue of stickers:
How to advance in the Line?
Promotion tools in the Line are similar to those familiar to us on Vkontakte, Facebook, Twitter. Those. The classic correctly built and prepared SMM works very well. It is also worth noting that the Japanese react very sharply to a bad translation, an illogical text from the point of view of the Japanese language, therefore I advise you to use a nive in your work. There are a number of unique chips that do not just stand out, but work much more efficiently. So, in my opinion, there are several main effective promotion tools:
- Official account.
There are two types: Corporate and Account Celebrities. Their most effective and useful feature is that such accounts, among other things, also provide the ability to send private messages to their fans. The only cost of such an account is 2 million yen (19420 USD) + 1.5 million (14565 USD) monthly. Quite a lot, but worth it. This is a little easier for companies that have retail stores in Japan, their account rate is 5,250 yen (51 USD) per month.
Companies such as Coca Cola, Pepsi Lawson Inc., Nippon Television Network Corporation, H & M, Groupon, McDonalds, KFC and others have already taken advantage of this opportunity. World stars include Katty Perry, Paul McCartney, Avril Lavign, Backstreet Boys, Kesha and others.
- Stickers.
This is the most viral tool in the messenger. New stickers disperse at lightning speed. You can sell your original stickers in the store of stickers, and you can release a free series, thus arranging a promo of your business. This service is worth 10 million yen (97,102 USD).
They were released by Paul McCartney, Katty Perry, FC Barselona, ​​Real Madrid, Disney others.
- Official accounts in Line Play or as they are called in the game - rooms.
This tool is just gaining popularity. For example, Hello Kitty's room has been visited 33.9 million times since July 13, and Panasonic’s room has been visited 7 million times since March 29.
- Line Games - extremely effective for developers and indie teams so that Line can act as a publisher of your game. Of course, the game will preliminarily undergo a rigorous audit of ideas, design, gameplay and monetization. And if everything is good, then it will publish it under his own name (Naver - in the App Store and Line Corp - on Google Play), which means millions of users within a few months.
As a result, it is worth remembering that promotion in Japan and in the Line is not a cheap pleasure, and considering the very conservative and closed mentality of the Japanese, it is also not simple. Spamming will not work for the masses. That is why it is necessary to approach this carefully and seriously, because our “well, let's try” can turn out very badly.
All pictures were taken from the official blog Line
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/209958/
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