Cool kids in Japan are addicted to LINE

I've just come back from twelve days in Japan and I was interested to discover that Facebook is not cool. In fact even Mark Zuckerberg's sister, Randi, after a recent trip to Tokyo admitted in a blog, "The cool kids are using LINE".

LINE is a two-year old messaging application that lets people exchange information, send stickers and play games with their friends. It already has 230 million users, a milestone that took Facebook five years to reach.

LINE has an office on the 27th floor above Shibuya Crossing, the world's busiest pedestrian intersection and having made an attempt to cross it only a few days ago, I can testify to its scariness.  Akira Morikawa, the Line CEO is thinking big - in fact his intention is to become the world's number one online service, bigger than Facebook and bigger than Google.

LINE has been ranked No.1 in the free app category in 52 countries including Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Spain, China, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Russia and many more!

He claims they have a considerable advantage over Google+, Facebook or even Twitter, which is, they were designed for a smartphone generation and haven't had to make that leap from desktop to mobile.

I recently wrote a blog, 'Why I'm selling Facebook Shares', in which I said Facebook was becoming uncool for teenage kids in the UK and sighted the phenomenal growth in messaging apps such as Whatsapp as a threat to the omnipotent social network.  And now having come across LINE in Japan it makes me think that maybe the uncool thing is a bit more global than I realised.

Before you snigger at Mr Morikawa's global aspirations remember the Japanese have set many a global trend, from the Sony Walkman (without which there would have been no Ipod) to fashion.  Yes fashion - Paris, London and Milan more often than not take their cue from the cool kids in Tokyo, so it's worth keeping a close eye on LINE.