LINE continues to amaze. Just a few weeks after hitting 40 million downloads, NHN Japan’s social app passed the 50 million mark (on July 26 Japanese time, to be exact).
LINE was first released in the Japanese App Store on June 23, 2011. It took 399 days to go from zero to 50 million downloads, which is obviously an amazing accomplishment.
23.5 million LINE users live in Japan – if this growth continues, LINE will soon have overtaken Japan’s biggest real-identity social network Mixi.
NHN Japan is currently trying to transform the relatively simple app into a full-fledged platform, which includes social games. The company monetizes the app by selling so-called stickers, large-sized images that convey emotions in a more fun way.
Here is how LINE grew since launch:
And here is a comparison on how many days Twitter and Facebook took to reach the 50 million user mark:
