Three Questions for the CEO of Messaging App Line

How the Japanese company Line turns free messages into real revenue.

The killer app for the cell phone was SMS. For smartphones it’s using your data connection to send short messages for free. Messaging apps such as WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, and Line, based in Japan, top the charts of most popular apps around the world and are used daily by billions of people. WhatsApp alone ferries 30 billion messages a day—significantly more than the global SMS system.


Three Questions for the CEO of Messaging App Line