A little background on LINE

We built it in days so families could reach each other.

LINE launched in June 2011, in the weeks after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The phone networks were overwhelmed, but internet connections stayed up. A small team at NHN Japan built a messaging app in a matter of days so that people could reach their families when the phone lines were silent. That origin is not a marketing story. It is the reason the app was designed the way it was: fast, light, and built to work when things are difficult.

Over the following years, LINE grew into something much larger than an emergency tool. It became the default way that people in Japan communicate. Not just young people. Grandparents use it to video-call their grandchildren. Elementary school parents use it to coordinate class events. Small business owners use it to talk to their customers. The sticker culture, the Timeline, the Official Accounts. All of it grew out of watching how real people actually wanted to use the app, not from a product roadmap drawn up in a boardroom.