Wow. There's a lot of these sticker based chat apps coming out at the moment. LINE was the first I used on a regular basis.. There's also COM and Kakao in japan.. Who was the first to popularize it?
we're not sure who was first, but we believe it is a new and important use case on the mobile internet. reducing what used to take 10 or more messages down into a single click. as far as i know, emoji was invented in japan, popularized by apple, and stickers have been popularized by many of the experiences in asian markets.
I don't know if it was the first, but LINE is pretty insanely popular in Asia right now. I have friends from Taiwan, Japan, and China who use it, and a few of them all but insist on communicating that way!
Kakao is pretty ubiquitous on Korea too. I like the look of path but unfortunately its nigh impossible to choose your social network - it's just whatever gets adopted by the majority. I wouldn't choose to use kakao but since a lot of my contacts use it I kind of have to!