日本动漫版Skype走红全球

    喜欢收集虚拟贴图的用户大多位于亚洲，这些地区多年以来一直深受“Hello Kitty”等日本动漫文化的影响。但与GREE和DeNA等成功突围的日本企业一样，NHN日本的韩国母公司Naver也希望连我能在全球和美国市场取得更大成功。

    Naver最近聘请了美国说唱歌手史诺普•道格为代言人，向美国儿童宣传用日本风格的动漫形象发送信息是多么潮。由此可见，Naver正在花费重金吸引美国用户。Naver美国的首席执行官简妮•韩称：“我们实现了飞速增长，最初是依靠吸引与日本和韩国有关系的用户。现在，我们的产品在全世界都获得了更广泛的参与。”

    “我们现有的很多贴图都已在美国流行开来，尤其是拿手的动漫形象。我们还计划在今后几个月向欧美市场推出更多更加本地化的内容，”韩还补充说。“连我的主要优势之一在于，我们承诺不会像其他应用程序开发商那样通过挖掘用户数据赚钱。”

    日本创业大师威廉•齐藤称，连我要想在美国市场取得成功，需要克服一些挑战。他指出，连我要求用户用手机号码注册，存在滥用的风险。“首次安装时，连我就根据你的手机号码建立索引。这种做法存在极大的安全隐患。一旦NHN的数据库泄露（这只是时间早晚的问题），即便非连我用户，其联络信息也可能被泄露，”齐藤说道。“假如有一天比尔•盖茨或日本首相（连我的用户）接到骚扰电话，那么很可能是连我出现了信息泄露。”

    齐藤认可贴图功能的吸引力，也承认发送贴图和创建群组都很简单。但他同时指出，要在欧美市场推销可爱的卡通动漫形象，恐怕没有在亚洲容易，而且群聊功能对美国人来说也并不陌生。不过，Naver似乎正在非常卖力地向亚洲以外的市场推广连我，期望它能风行全球。

    齐藤说：“连我面临的挑战在于，从地域上讲，全球流行的聊天应用都有各自的势力范围。目前几乎没有什么‘溢出效应’，也不清楚最终是否会出现一个全球性的赢家。而假如有的话，又会是哪一款应用。我个人认为，一家韩国公司的日本子公司很难打造出一款在全球获得成功的社交应用，不过我希望自己是错的。”（财富中文网）

    译者：项航

    Users driven to collect virtual stickers reside in Asia for the most part, where for years they have lapped up Japanese exports such as manga, and "Hello Kitty" characters culture more readily than elsewhere. But like other Japanese successes such as GREE and DeNA the app maker's parent company Naver, of South Korea, wants to make a bigger impact globally and on the US now.

    With newly acquired pitchman Snoop Dogg in tow in the US to tell the kids how cool it is to message with Japanese-style characters, Naver is investing heavily in acquiring new users here. "We have had a tremendous organic take up initially by users with a connection to Japan and Korea but more recently we've seen broader engagement with the product," says Jeanie Han Naver USA's CEO.

    "Many of our existing stickers have proved popular with users in the US particularly our flagship characters however, in addition over the coming months we will be producing more and more localized content for users in the US and Europe." One of Line's strong suits is that it promises not to mine personal data to make money, unlike some similar app makers, she adds.

    Rhere are some challenges to the success of Line in US says Japan start-up guru William Saito. He points out that the requirement from users to register with their cell phone number is open to abuse. "From the first install, it indexes you based on your cell phone number. Thus, in this use case, I see an incredible security risk where, when (it's just a matter of time) the database at NHN is compromised, it could potentially release contact information of people who aren't even Line users," he says. "The day Bill Gates or the Japanese Prime Minister [a Line user] gets random calls from people, you can guess it was a Line leak."

    He sees the attraction of the stickers, the ease of sending them and how creating a group chat is relatively easy but points out the selling of "cute" characters may not be as portable as it is in Asia. Nor is group chatting foreign to US residents. Nonetheless, Naver appears to putting as much effort, if not more, into making Line a hit outside Asia as it did on that continent. The hope is to make Line a worldwide hit.

    "The challenge for Line will be that the chat apps that are popular worldwide are each used in different geographical silos," says Toto. "There is hardly any spill-over at the moment, and it's unclear if there will be a global winner in this race and if at all, which service that will be. "Personally, I have my doubts that the Japanese subsidiary of a Korean company can operate a globally successful social app, but I hope I will be proven wrong."