While WhatsApp has so far kept its messaging service simple and free of advertisements, rival apps like Line, Kakao Talk and WeChat have been scrambling to find ways to make money through additional services like video games and official accounts for corporate users. For those apps, one big challenge is to make sure that those efforts to generate revenue won’t undermine their appeal as communication and social networking tools.
For example, Line, which is popular in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, now has three major sources of revenue: free-to-play video games that make money from in-game purchases of virtual items and other services; “stickers” featuring cartoon characters that users buy and send as messages; and official accounts for businesses and celebrities who pay fees to send a set number of promotional messages. Last month, Line said its revenue for the fourth quarter of 2013 rose more than fivefold to 12.2 billion yen ($120 million) from 2.2 billion yen a year earlier.
Line says the promotional messages sent by official accounts are different from traditional ads in that users only receive them if they choose to become subscribers of those accounts. A Line spokeswoman says the app is advising corporate and celebrity account users to avoid sending messages too often, while keeping each message short. If users think that they are getting too many messages from a certain account, they can block the account. As a business model, the official accounts work like ads. In Japan, monthly fees for Line’s accounts increase if the businesses and celebrities using them get more subscribers or send more messages.