Hacker News Reader

Comment by recuter | Hacker News Reader

So this is an Asian WhatsApp type thing that capitalized on its stickyness to push games and stickers? What is the formula for the meteoric rise?

View on HN

I asked a bunch of Thais why they switched to Line 1-2 years ago. Number one reason: cute stickers. Sending stickers, is quicker and more fun.

This is so retarded. Also shows how hard it is to predict what's profitable.

Why is that retarded?

No, it's not retarded. It just shows that you don't understand the market.

my understanding is that they were in the right place at the right time to capture the tip from feature to smart phones in a country with an unusable SMS system and an unbelievable virtual goods market.

source: friends were in social / mobile games in Japan 2010-2011

> WhatsApp

That's funny, because the only people I ever saw WhatsApp were Chinese.

Don't forget the Dutch, it's used by pretty much every smartphone user over here.

Oh I'm sure it is. I've heard it's popular in Southern America as well?

I'm just speaking from my experiance in Australia: WhatsApp is a Chinese thing.

FWIW, WhatsApp is huge in Nigeria; at least the major cities like Lagos.

Everyone in Mexico uses it too

WeChat from China has close to 400 million users, bigger than Line from Japan at over 200 million. These two dominates Asia, at distant third is KakaoTalk from Korea. WeChat is strongest in China, where Line is Japan/Taiwan. WhatsApp and even Facebook has to worry, as all my younger relatives are sharing status/photos in WeChat, abandoning Facebook.

I'm in Sydney but I'm seeing otherwise. Most if not all of my Chinese friends are using WeChat primarily. Sure they may have WhatsApp installed and use them sometime but if they talk to their Chinese friends it always WeChat.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com