Chat App Line’s User-Generated Sticker Program Nets $30M In Its First Six Months. Stickers are more than just glorified emoticons, they’re big business don’t you know?
While games account for the lion’s share of chat app Line’s revenues, it’s banking $10 million per month from stickers since 2013 and it started letting users make and sell their own earlier this year. Its user-generated Creators Market opened in April, and Line has now revealed that it sold more than $30 million (¥3.59 billion) in stickers from independent ‘creators’ during the market’s first six months of business. That’s a nice complement to its existing, licensed sticker business. Half of that revenue figure (less Apple and Google’s app store cuts) is banked by Line, while the other half goes to the artists behind the stickers. (That’s not such a shabby deal when you consider who provides the distribution.) In total, close to 36 million sticker packs have been bought from the Creators Market, Line said, that’s from a total base of 270,000 creators.
Furthermore, it is also another monetization stream. Mojime Lets You Create Custom Stickers for WeChat. Are your mobile emoji and stickers just not doing it for you?
If you’re on WeChat’s mobile IM service, you can feature in your very own custom sticker, with MojiMe. Developed by China’s Tencent, the makers of WeChat, MojiMe for iOS and Android lets you snap a quick headshot to use with dozens of animated characters – making for stickers with more personality than ever before. Ritot: A Smartwatch That Projects Notifications Onto Your Hand. The ordinary concept of what a smartwatch is has been challenged by four guys in San Jose, who have been working a new device as part of a crowdfunding project that uniquely projects media onto the back of your hand.
The Ritot is appears to be very straightforward to use, with you being able to view the time by simply shaking your hand and a variety of notifications – including missed calls and new messages – by connecting the watch up to your smartphone. Included with the watch is a wireless battery panel that also doubles as an interface that lets you change the colour of the watch’s projections.
An Indiegogo campaign was launched on July 7, and it has already bypassed its $50,000 goal by 229 percent, raking in an impressive $114,200. Mass availability of the watch is still unconfirmed, but backers have the ability to snap it up for $120. The first shipments are expected to start in early 2015. Chat App Company Kakao is Merging with Korean Web Firm Daum.
Kakao, the Korea-based company behind the Kakao Talk mobile messaging app, is merging with Daum, the country’s second largest internet portal.
The news is surprising, since Kakao had been tipped to go public before 2015 at a valuation of over $2 billion. The Yonhap News Agency reports that the merger – which is a stock swap arrangement — will create a company worth three trillion Korean won ($2.9 billion) but there is no confirmed price at this point. The new entity — ‘Daum Kakao’ — will become the second largest company listed on the KOSDAQ, according to the news agency. Daum announced the merger this morning (hat tip Tech In Asia), but it is said to be formally announcing specific details of the deal later today. Youku Tudou Hits 400M Daily Mobile Video Views. Couple Social Network Between Launches E-Commerce Store. Between, an app that originated from South Korea for couples to share their moments in a private social network, is developing its platform as it launched an e-commerce store today first in South Korea, where 60 percent of its users are.
This comes after billion-dollar Japanese mobile games firm DeNA invested in Between earlier this year, which we predicted would lead to an array of other services including mobile commerce and games, as DeNA is most well-known for that. Between is teaming up with local Korean partners such as 10×10 and Wincube Marketing to launch a gift shop for couples, where mobile coupons will be issued for them to redeem their presents. This comes as Between says it has crossed 7.3 million users worldwide, with 1 million users in Japan — within a year of entering the Japanese market. Line Shows Twitter What its DMs Could Become. Mobile messaging service Line is continuing to grow its revenues at an impressive rate, after the company revealed that revenue generated during its first quarter of 2014 period reached 14.6 billion yen, around $143 million.
Sina Weibo Drops 'Sina' From Its Name Ahead Of US IPO. China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform Sina Weibo has just dropped ‘Sina’ from its name to become known only as ‘Weibo,’ as it aptly announced via Weibo today.
The logo on the service’s homepage has also been changed to reflect the switch in name. Weibo means “microblog” in Chinese. This move essentially makes the platform synonymous with microblogging in China and overrides all other similar services — which include Tencent Weibo — and comes as it recently filed for a US IPO to raise up to $500 million. A recent report published by state-affiliated research organization China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) showed that as of end-2013, the number of microblogging users fell from 2012 by 27.8 million users, while usage declined by 9.2 percentage points.