Photo: Tomas Rodriguez / Corbis
What's behind the app?
Ten billion messages are sent daily with WhatsApp . The back-and-forth is often a matter of seconds. But there is competition on the market: the Japanese App Line with 260 million users is now also available in Germany. What's behind the app? And what are the differences to the leader WhatsApp?
Line is a video telephony-enhanced mix of WhatsApp and Facebook, which is now also available in Apple, Google and Microsoft stores. Still, the Line communications service is predominantly active in Asia, but with 1.5 million users worldwide, the new app is slowly emerging from the shadow of the big top dogs.
What does Line offer in contrast to its competitors WhatsApp and Facebook?
Visually, Line is quite similar to its competitor WhatsApp. But there are video telephony, a Facebook-like newsfeed with status messages, photos & Co., games and a desktop version added, all for free. Profit makes Line with the sale of advertising partnerships and virtual objects in the games.
The only downside: The use of Line devours many data packages. So if you are not surfing with flat rate, but prepaid, you should be careful. As soon as the available data volume is used up, the connection deviates to a special service of the network operator.
Our verdict: Whether the App Line prevails over WhatsApp and Facebook, remains to be seen. In the end, most of them eventually end up where their own friends sign up.
