Japan's LINE: Social Media with Personality

A Japanese colleague pointed this out to me.  In FastCompany. Creative idea.  Its a kind of digital/analog idea.   Its making value of emojis.  Virtual stickers.  Does that work outside of Japan?

" ... In Japan, the mobile messaging app LINE is so pervasive that young people swap LINE IDs instead of phone numbers. Worldwide, the app has more than 170 million active users a month. Though that leaves it smaller than Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and China’s WeChat, LINE has excelled at something that’s arguably tougher than racking up hundreds of millions of users: It’s parlayed its app’s popularity into pan-media pop-culture relevance and a powerful business model. ... "

The system also integrates a number of games, see below.

(Update) More on the LINE application.