Line Passes 300M Users And No They Don’t Own Line.com

You’ve probably never heard of Line, and no I’m not talking about Line.com the parked page on Sedo. I’m talking about LineCorp.com the messaging giant that started in Japan and will soon have more users than there are people in the United States. 100M of those sign-ups have come over the last four months and the service is still growing, and fast.

LineCorp

Now let’s compare this to Line.com which I agree is an incredibly valuable name, probably a seven-figure name, but that is sitting dormant with, well, zero users because it’s a parked page.

line-dot-com

So let’s talk about the world of messaging apps and then I’ll get back to the LineCorp.com vs. Line.com discussion. So you’ve heard of a little company a few blocks from my place called Snapchat right? You’ve also probably heard of a messaging app called Kik. However I doubt you’ve heard of Line, WeChat, or KakaoTalk all three of which have more users than Kik.

Are you out of touch? Not, not really, you’re just not plugged-into the incredible growth of messaging apps outside of the US. Kik has a whopping 90M users but this pales in comparison to competitors like WeChat who boasts 600M users. Never heard of WeChat? That’s because it’s China’s #1 messaging app and yes, those numbers are right, there are more WeChat users than there are people in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico, combined.

So now back to Line.com. 

line-user-growth

My point here is not to bash Line.com for sitting parked while LineCorp.com build a billion dollar business. I personally help startups acquire one-word .COMs and know how valuable they are. If I owned Line.com myself I’d probably have a hard time parting with it for under $1M. So no issues there, got it?

What I am saying is that there is often a lot of talk in the domain world about how you have to own the .COM before you can build a successful business. There’s also a lot of rumors about companies losing so much traffic to the .COM that they have to buy it eventually. I think that’s a bunch of BS.

If a company called Line can get 300M users and do it all with LineCorp.com I think it’s hard to say that not owning Line.com is hurting them. Like I said above, I still see Line.com as a seven-figure name and think the owner should hold-onto it until he gets an offer in that range. Still for anyone out there thinking that you need to own Line.com to build a successful company called Line, sorry but that’s just not true.

Agree with me? Disagree with me and want to tell me I suck? Comment and let your voice be heard!

(Chart credit – LineCorp)

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton