LINE on Android OS Developer(s) LINE Corporation Initial release March 2011 Operating system iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Nokia Asha series, Firefox OS. Available in English, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian Type Instant Messaging Client Licence Proprietary Website line.naver.jp/en/ Line is a Japanese proprietary application for instant messaging on smartphones and personal computers. Line users exchange text messages, graphics, video and audio media, make free VoIP calls, and hold free audio or video conferences. Line, launched in Japan in 2011, reached 100 million users within eighteen months and 200 million users only six months later.[1] Line became Japans largest social network in 2013; on 25 November 2013, it announced that it had 300 million registrants worldwide, of which 50 million users are within Japan.[2] Line was originally developed as a mobile application for Android and iOS smartphones. The service has since expanded to BlackBerry (August 2012),[3] Nokia Asha (Asia and Oceania, March 2013),[4][5] Windows Phone (July 2013),[6] and Firefox OS (February 2014).[7] The application also exists in versions for laptop and desktop computers using the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS platforms. Line began in 2011 as the brainchild of engineers at NHN Japan, the Japanese arm of Naver Corporation (formerly NHN) based in South Korea. Today the popular messaging service is operated by LINE Corporation, a spinoff company headquartered in Japan, while still remains a subsidiary of Naver.[8] Contents [hide] 1 Development 1.1 Market share 2 Features 2.1 Stickers 3 Limitations 4 Related applications 4.1 Line Camera 4.2 Line Card 4.3 Line Brush 5 Anime 5.1 LINE Offline 5.2 LINE Town 6 LINE in popular culture 7 See also 8 References 9 External links Development[edit] Line began as a response to disaster. Japans devastating Tōhoku earthquake in March 2011 damaged telecommunications infrastructure nationwide, obliging employees at NHN Japan, a unit of Koreas NHN Corp, to rely on Internet-based resources to communicate. The companys engineers developed Line to facilitate this. NHN Japan released Line for public use in June 2011.[9] The application proved hugely popular and by late October Line experienced an unexpected server overload.[10] After concluding that the scalability process needed to be improved, NHN Japan chose to adopt HBase as the primary storage for user profiles, contacts, and groups.[11] Within eighteen months of its release Line reached 100 million users; six months later it reached 200 million[1][8][9] and on November 25, 2013 is used by 300 million users or doubling in just 7 months.[12] On July 3, 2012, NHN Japan announced the new Line features Home and Timeline. The features allowed users to share recent personal developments to a community of contacts in real-time, similar to the status reports in social networking services such as Facebook.[13] On 6 February 2013, the success of Line led NHN Japan to announce a new spinoff company named Line Corporation. Line Corporation, based in Japan, continues to develop Internet resources such as Line, the Naver Japan search portal, and the Livedoor ISP and blog platform. Games, including those for the Line Game brand, remain under the auspices of Hangame Japan. A new joint venture named Line Plus Corporation, also based in Japan, develops overseas markets. At launch the majority of Line Plus shares were held by the newly created Line Corporation (60%) with the remaining shares (40%) held by its Korean parent NHN Corp.[8] Market share[edit] Line began in summer 2011 as a communication system for NHN Japan employees, then saw explosive growth when released to the public in June of that year. By January 18, 2013, Line had been downloaded 100 million times worldwide.[14] The number expanded to 140 million by early July 2013 and to 200 million by
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 10:25:44 +0000
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