Stickers. They’re big in Asia and going global, don’t you know? Line, a company that makes more than $10 million per month from selling them and also lets regular people submit designs, has so many packs that it created a new app that specifically helps you find new ones.
If you think Facebook’s standalone app for adding stickers to your photos is overkill, then the Line Stickers app for iOS and Android is most definitely not for you.
The app serves up over a million stickers, letting Line users tag the ones they like with phrases. Tagged stickers show up in a feed of Line users from each country, allowing others to vote on them, leave comments and tag friends.
The idea — it appears — is that you can peruse your feed for new sticker ideas, and head to the store if you find one you like.
Big caveat though: the initial selection inside the app are paid-for and come from its thriving Creators Market, as far as I can tell. So cheapskates like yours truly won’t have much joy here, but I guess you can feel good for supporting indie stickerists with your cash.
I’d like this app if I could do things, such as post stickers to Line chats or annotate them for future use. But you can’t. This app is only useful if you have a sticker fetish and don’t mind opening your wallet to fund it.
Line also has a selfie sticker app — but personally I think it’s most notable contribution is preloading stickers and emoji as you type.
That development has made actually having to open the in-chat draw to add a new sticker an arduous task. It goes without saying then, that having to download and open a standalone app just to find stickers that you need to buy is a ridiculous proposition to most of Line’s 500 million registered users. Or maybe it’s just me…