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Messaging app Line, which recently announced it has passed 150 million users, has withdrawn a function from its iOS app that allowed users to gift paid-for stickers to each other by paying for them with a virtual currency. The change, spotted earlier by The Next Web, was explained by the company in a blog post today, in which it wrote: “As of 15:00 today, May 10, 2013, we regret to announce that we will be withdrawing the function to send purchased stickers as gifts to friends on the iPhone version of LINE.”

Line did not go into detail as to why it is withdrawing the paid-for gifting function, saying only that Apple asked it to remove this feature. It is also removing purchases of the virtual currency used for sticker gifting. The change only affects Line’s iOS app. Users can still buy stickers for their own use, or gift free stickers.

Line said:

We received a request directly from Apple who operates the AppStore, that this sticker gifting function will have to be withdrawn from the app, and we do apologize for the disappointment this may cause to all of you who are having fun sending stickers as gifts to your friends.

The problem with Line’s process here appears to be that it was bypassing Apple’s in-app payment rules — i.e. circumventing the sanctioned in-app payment process via use of a virtual currency. That’s a pretty clear no-no, although some other apps, such as Skype or Spotify, get round this issue by allowing users to buy services outside the app and then make use of their credits within the app.

It’s unclear whether Line allowed users to buy virtual currency via its web platform and then redeem those credits in-app, which may be one workaround. Another would be for Line to let users gift stickers by making direct in-app payments — which would not cut Apple out of the transaction.

We’ve reached out to Line with questions and will update this story with any response. Line noted on its blog that free sticker gifting can continue within the iOS app, and Line users are also able to buy stickers for their own use (via an in-app purchase) — so it’s clearly the virtual currency that’s the culprit here. Line added that iPhone users will still be able to receive stickers gifted to them by Android users. Any iOS app users with remaining Line coins will be able to gift stickers to use them up.

Line, which is now operated by Line Corporation, after a corporate name change last month, reported its first set of financial results earlier this week, announcing some $58.9 million in revenues for its Q1 – around 30% of which, or some $17.67 million, came from sticker purchases. The majority of Line’s revenues (around 50%) come from game in-app purchases.

Line does not break out its sticker revenues further so it’s unclear how large an impact the iOS change will have. However if paid-for sticker gifting is a significant revenue stream the company could deploy an alternative payment mechanism to keep offering the feature on iOS.

Line, a free-at-the-point-of-use messaging app made by NHN Japan Corp which recently passed 150 million worldwide users, has announced earnings for Q1 2013 – revealing for the first time how much of its revenue comes from game in-app purchases and how much from its other shtick: stickers. Line uses free social messaging and gaming services as its hook to draw in users, and monetises its offering via entertaining add-ons that can be purchases within its apps.

According to the Q1 results, Line is drawing the vast majority of its revenues from Japan — the region where its app was first rolled out. Some 80% of the ¥5.82 billion yen ($58.9 million) Q1 revenues come from Japan. It also noted that its total Q1 revenues are up 92% on Q4 2012:

Breaking the revenues down by content type, game in-app purchases account for around half (50%) of the Q1 revenues, while paid stickers (Line offers some free stickers) generated around a third (30%).

Line also reveals that it now has 24 “seed games” — or games that can be downloaded from within its main messaging app — 191 varieties of stickers and 92 official accounts (for celebrities and brands) across Japan, Thailand and Taiwan.

The company notes it will be reporting earnings regularly from now on, and also indicates that it will be adding new types of in-app entertainment content — mentioning shopping and music as two areas of focus, among others.

It also says it plans to strengthen marketing of its app in Asia, Spain and South America, but interestingly does not mention the U.S. — where Line launched back in January.

Asia evidently remains Line’s primary market but there is plenty of messaging variation and competition within the region. For example, Chinese WhatsApp rival WeChat — made by Tencent – has now passed 190 million monthly active users.

Line, a free-at-the-point-of-use messaging app made by NHN Japan Corp which recently passed 150 million worldwide users, has announced earnings for Q1 2013 – revealing for the first time how much of its revenue comes from game in-app purchases and how much from its other shtick: stickers. Line uses free social messaging and gaming services as its hook to draw in users, and monetises its offering via entertaining add-ons that can be purchases within its apps.

According to the Q1 results, Line is drawing the vast majority of its revenues from Japan — the region where its app was first rolled out. Some 80% of the ¥5.82 billion yen ($58.9 million) Q1 revenues come from Japan. It also noted that its total Q1 revenues are up 92% on Q4 2012:

Breaking the revenues down by content type, game in-app purchases account for around half (50%) of the Q1 revenues, while paid stickers (Line offers some free stickers) generated around a third (30%).

Line also reveals that it now has 24 “seed games” — or games that can be downloaded from within its main messaging app — 191 varieties of stickers and 92 official accounts (for celebrities and brands) across Japan, Thailand and Taiwan.

The company notes it will be reporting earnings regularly from now on, and also indicates that it will be adding new types of in-app entertainment content — mentioning shopping and music as two areas of focus, among others.

It also says it plans to strengthen marketing of its app in Asia, Spain and South America, but interestingly does not mention the U.S. — where Line launched back in January.

Asia evidently remains Line’s primary market but there is plenty of messaging variation and competition within the region. For example, Chinese WhatsApp rival WeChat — made by Tencent – has now passed 190 million monthly active users.

Line has become an important mobile messaging network and source of game distribution in a very short time. NHN reported today that its Line messaging app now has more than 150 million registered users, up 50 percent from just three months ago in January.

Those users have downloaded more than 100 million games, even though the number of games accessible on the network is just 24.

Launched just 22 months ago, the free-calling and messaging app has taken off in Japan. It has also grown in other regions, including Spain and the Spanish-speaking region of South America. Spain already has more than 10 million Line users.

Line’s official camera app had more than 30 million downloads worldwide in April alone. NHN, based in Korea, released Line as a group communication service on mobile devices in June 2011. Line is now offered in 12 languages and regions including Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. Altogether, Line has hit the No. 1 app in 41 countries in the free category.

Until recently, Line had just 16 games, and they garnered more than 100 million downloads. Now the number has expanded to 24 games. The service competes with other mobile messaging networks such as Kakao Talk in Korea, WeChat in China, and others in the U.S.

NHN is Korea’s top Internet company, operating the search portal Naver, the online game portal Hangame, and other web businesses as well.

Filed under: Games, Mobile

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Line, a free messaging app made by NHN Japan Corporation that’s competing with the likes of WhatsApp and Viber, has pushed past 150 million registered users globally, up from 100 million in January. Line launched back in summer 2011 in Asia, and is especially popular in Japan, but has been pushing outside its home region, expanding into the U.S., Europe and Latin America.

It’s worth noting that Line’s user metric is registered users rather than active users — the company does not break out the latter but Line’s U.S. CEO has previously told TechCrunch the proportion of registered to active users can be as high as 80% in its Asian markets.

For some comparative context on Line’s user figure, Viber announced it hit 175 million registered users back in February. While messaging giant WhatsApp doesn’t break out registered users but earlier this month said it now has more than 200 million active monthly users – claiming more monthly users than Twitter.

Line said its global growth has been helped by the more than 10 million registered users it has acquired in Spain since launching Spanish iOS and Android apps late last year. It has also kicked off a TV ad campaign to raise Line’s profile in Spain. Add to that, Line said it’s seeing “steady growth” in the Spanish-speaking South American region, having added French and Brazilian Portuguese versions of its apps in March.

Line offers free messaging and social networking services on its platform, focusing on the youth market with games, stickers and kawaii mascots also part of its platform — the latter now have their own cartoon show (called Line Town) in Japan.

Line said the combined download figure for 16 of the games it offers on its platform was more than 100 million as of March. While its official camera app, Line camera, passed 30 million global downloads this month.

The inability of Apple and Samsung to agree on proposed jury instructions has hinged upon a few key issues, particularly the distinction between simple copying and patent infringement.

In July, Facebook rolled out a new “seen by” feature for groups, which let people know who has seen a post or announcement in that group, and when. And, although Facebook didn’t make much of a song and dance about it at the time, it looks like it is actually offering this feature on photos, too.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the “seen by” feature in photos works just like the “seen by” feature for other group posts: someone who posts a photo to a group can see how many people in that group have viewed it, who those people are, and what time it was that they viewed the photo. And that information is not exclusive just to the poster, either — others in the group can see who viewed a particular picture, too.

The “seen by” feature on a photo was first brought to our attention by Christo Wilson, a computer science PhD student at U.C. Santa Barbara, whose professor, Ben Zhao, was the one who first noticed it appear on a photo of his daughter that he posted to a group of users.

Zhao told TechCrunch in an email that he first noticed it on Friday. “I have a lot of friends who visit a group page we created for my baby daughter, and the first timestamp showed up last night,” he said.

I joined Zhao’s daughter’s page as well, and I could also see the names of all the users who had viewed each photo. This feature doesn’t seem to be appearing on other Facebook groups that I am in, yet.

It’s unclear whether Facebook would ever extend the “seen by” feature to photos that appear on all users’ accounts, not just those of groups.

On the one hand, Facebook has clearly been growing the number of places where people can view who has viewed their content. In May, Facebook added “seen by” details to messages between individual users and groups. Then in July, it appeared on group posts. In that context, it makes sense for it to extend to group photos, and possibly more.

Zhao notes this could be ”a phased rollout and something that will be coming for other more broader contexts as well.”

On the other hand, making something like this more widely used could be viewed as Facebook encroaching too far into how it monitors — and reports — on how the social network gets used. Photos have a more personal nature, and as Josh pointed out when Facebook launched the group “seen by” feature,

Facebook spends a lot of time fighting spam and scam hawking “profile spy apps” that would supposedly let you see who has viewed your profile. It’s repeatedly stated that no app can do this, and I’d say it’s highly unlikely to ever show who looked at photos. I mean, people might be a lot more apprehensive to browse photos, especially of romantic interests, if they knew other people could see their activity.

So much for never touching photos… But in any case, if privacy concerns and apprehension deters users from looking at photos, that would run counter to Facebook’s bigger strategy to get people using photos more, part of how it hopes to keep people engaged on its platform.

If a feature like this, which basically will tell someone when you have looked at his/her photographs, feels uncomfortable now, there may well be a time when it feels less so. Facebook could be the one to usher in that change.

As Zhao notes, it’s “just another step in the ‘Zuckering’ of our social norms, slowly eroding what most people consider to be over the line from a privacy perspective.” (In his work, Zhao happens to specialize in “large-distributed networks and systems, data mining and modeling, security and privacy, and wireless / mobile systems,” with current projects focused on “querying, modeling and mining massive graphs, analysis of social networks and online communities, and wireless systems and protocols.”)

In groups, that discomfort in any case should be less so — the picture has been sent to a group you are in, so of course you might look at it. That’s slightly different from visiting another user’s (say an ex-boyfriend’s) set of photos and browsing through them all.

And it puts Facebook more in line with Path, which also lets users know who has viewed their “moments.” That alone could be a sign of how Facebook is trying to better tailor its service for those who want to use it in these more personal, traceable ways.

We’re reaching out to Facebook about this feature and will update as we learn more.

Update: Facebook confirmed both that photos posted to groups have been included in the feature since launch, and that the “seen by” feature is only for photos that are part of a group post, not others. “We have not announced plans to extend the seen by feature to other products beyond Messenger and Groups,” the spokesperson said.

I’ve broken this out into lots of steps. You could do it all in one or two steps with a shell script or other geekery. I wrote this to keep each step simple, and get you into Excel as quickly as possible, instead.

I’ve railed about fixing broken links for years now. I’ve presented webinars about it, talked about all manner of fancy tools and generally made myself a pest.

What I’ve never done, though, is shown folks how they can quickly find those busted external links using basic tools. So, here goes:

Why bother?

With a log file, you can find broken external links that Google hasn’t. Google Webmaster Tools only shows you broken links found by Google. GWT ignores:

1. Old broken links that Google assumes are no longer relevant;
2. New incoming links that are broken, from sites like bit.ly;
3. Broken social media links, if they’re not driving many clicks.

Don’t you want all those links from Twitter? How about all the old .edu links you used to have, but lost when you took down the target pages?

Hell yes. Here’s how you can find them using your log files:

Get your tools together

If you’re using OS X or Linux, you have everything you need except, possibly, a spreadsheet program. Google Docs will work, or OpenOffice for big files, or Excel for the coolest stuff (like pivot tables).

If you’re on Windows, you’ll want to install CYGWIN—that gives you all of the command-line tools I talk about in this post.

1: Get access to the log files

If you run your own site, you can download the log files yourself. Otherwise, though, you’re going to have to ask someone else to get ‘em for you, and that’s rarely popular. Here’s how you can make the process less painful:

1. Explain why you need them: To improve sales. Log files will give you the best potential linking ‘wins’, and reveal the biggest site indexation problems.
2. Explain the value: The log files will let you more accurately spot ‘big two’ issues (links and indexation) than any other method. Both have huge implications for site traffic. Which has huge implications for sales.
3. Explain exactly what you need: Don’t just ask for ‘the log files’. Let them know you just need a 5-10 day slice of the files or, if the site’s really busy, just a day or two.
4. Provide them an easy secure location to upload the zipped files. An FTP or Dropbox folder should work fine, and it saves them a step.
5. Assure them we’ll delete the logs the moment we’re done.

The key here: Make this an easy process. The first concern of whoever you ask for the files will be: “Is this a lot of work for me?” and “Is this a security issue?” Answer those concerns before they’re raised.

1b: If you can’t get the files

I’ve spent weeks, literally, trying to get log file access from a client. Usually, that’s because no one knows what I’m talking about. If you run into this, try these steps, in this order:

If the site’s located with a hosting company:

1. Read the company’s tech support docs. You may find the information you need there.
2. Check the site’s control panel. It probably has an area for log file management, or a file manager where you can click around and find the log file folder.
3. If all else fails, contact the hosting provider’s tech support team. Pick up the phone. Talk to a human being. You’d be amazed how well that works.

If the site’s self-hosted or managed by an internal team:

1. Get in touch with whoever manages the server day-to-day. Whether they know it or not, they’ll have the info you need to get the logs.
2. If they can’t find the files, but they’re willing to let you get access, get SSH or Remote Desktop permissions on the server. You can then click around and find the log files, or go directly into the IIS control panel/Apache configuration file and find the log file location there.
3. If they can’t find the files and they won’t give you access, find out their server platform. Then research possible log file locations on that platform, and ask them to look there.

Got the files? Great! Time to get to work.

2: Extract the log files

Now, you can go download the log files. You probably have a bunch of compressed files up on a server somewhere. They’ll look like the right-hand side of my FTP window:

Transferring files via FTP

Download them to your machine. Decompress them using whatever utility makes sense. If these are .gz files, you can extract them using the GUNZIP command:

gunzip *.gz

That will extract every file in this folder with a .gz on the end, and leave you with something like this:

Extracting files with GUNZIP

Log files may be compressed using ZIP, or something else. You can find the right extraction tool using, I dunno, Google?

3: Combine the log files

Ideally, you need a single log file. To combine the log files, use the CAT command:

cat access_log > biglog.txt

The above command will:

1. Read each file that has a name starting with ‘access_log’.
2. Write the contents of all of those files into a file named ‘biglog.txt’.
3. The single ‘>’ tells CAT to erase a pre-existing file named ‘biglog.txt’ and start over. If you use ‘>>’ then CAT will add to the existing file, instead.

If the files are really huge you may have to keep them separate. But that’ll only be an issue if, once combined, the final file is multiple gigabytes in size. GREP is really good at processing huge files.

Interlude: What you need from this file

You need to find all of the broken external links. So, you’ll need four pieces of data:

1. The response code. A web server responds to a request for a broken link with a 404 error code, which then gets stored in the log files you just combined. The response code will let us filter for broken links.
2. The referrer. It also stores the referrer—the URL of the linking page. We’ll use this to figure out the value of the broken link.
3. The request. It stores the request—the URL of the linked page. The request will tell us which pages we need to replace or redirect.
4. The user agent. Finally, it stores the user agent—the type of browser or bot that made the request. This will let us exclude Googlebot visits.

With those four items, you can find all of the external broken links visited by browsers other than Googlebot.

4: Use GREP to find the 404 errors

Now to the good stuff. You’ve got one gigantic log file. You can use the GREP command to search through that file at super speed.

Use this command, changing the htm and file names as relevant:

grep "\.htm*[[:space:]]404[[:space:]]" biglog.txt > errors.txt

This command will:

1. Find every line in the log that includes ‘.htm’ and ‘ 404 ’. It uses a regular expression, or regex. I kinda suck at regex, so go to this site if you want to learn more.
2. Write that to a file called errors.txt.

This can take a minute or two.

You may need to change the .htm. We’re using to exclude all of the requests for .gif, .png and other non-html files. We only care about pages this time around. If your site uses php, and all of the URIs end with .php, you’ll have to change .htm to .php.

5: Get rid of Googlebot

We need to remove all 404 errors generated by Googlebot. GREP can do the job, again. Use this command:

grep -v "Googlebot" errors.txt > errors-no-google.txt

This command will:

1. Search through the file you generated in step 4.
2. Find every line that does not include “Googlebot”. The -v inverts the search, so GREP finds all lines that don’t match the search criteria.
3. Output that line to a new file called errors-no-google.txt. If the file exists, it’ll wipe that file and create a new one. Use >> if you want to append to the existing file instead.

Notice how fast GREP ran that command? Pretty nifty, huh?

When I ran through this exercise on my laptop, I took a .5 gigabyte biglog.txt file and trimmed it down to a 904kb file that just contained the errors I needed. It took a total of 5 minutes, start to finish. Try this in Excel and you’ll see smoke rising from your computer. GREP is so cool that I’ve written about it before.

6: Prepare your spreadsheet

Using whatever spreadsheet software you prefer, import the errors-no-google file as a space-delimited text file:

A space-delimited import in Excel

You won’t need most of the columns. Only three columns really matter:

1. The column that includes GET or HEAD and a URL. That’s the request—the page on this site that someone tried to load.
2. The column that includes a three-digit number. It usually comes right after the request. That’s the response code—the server’s reply to the request. If GREP did its job, the response should be 404 for every line in the sheet. Sometimes it goes wrong, though, because of a ‘404’ somewhere else in the row. Poop happens.
3. The next column should be a URL, or a dash. That’s the referrer. If someone clicked a link on another page, that other page’s URL is the referring URL. It’s shown in this column. If they typed in the page address, or if their browser is set up to hide the referrer, the referrer is ‘-’.

You can delete the rest of the columns. Then insert a new row at the top of the page and label the columns:

That’ll let you indulge in some data processing niftiness later on.

Oh, and save the damned spreadsheet. Nothing sadder than losing all your data because your cat strolled across the keyboard.

7: Set up filtering.

Put your cursor in the heading row you created in step 6 and click the filter button:

The filter button in Excel

Now you can sort and/or filter our stuff you don’t need. For example, I may not want to see all of those ‘-’ referrers:

Filtering out ‘dash’ referrers in Excel

And I probably only want to see external broken links, so I can filter out all referrers that include this site’s domain name:

Filtering out a domain name in Excel

Note that I used ‘does not contain’ for the second filter. Read up on Excel’s filter tool. It’s your friend.

8: Find the broken external links

Phew. Finally. We can find some external links. Take a look at the result:

The final spreadsheet – a link goldmine!

It’s a link goldmine!!! Every row represents a broken link from another site.

Now you can use a pivot table or other spreadsheet awesomeness to find the biggest problems:

Pivot table report showing most-requested broken links.

Or, you can just browse through the raw data. Either way, you’ll find great, easy incoming links.

9: Prioritize the links

Prioritize broken links like this:

1. Broken links from high-authority sites get fixed first. These links could really give you a rankings boost.
2. Broken links with a high number of requests get fixed next. A lot of people are still clicking them.
3. Everything else.

10: How to fix the links

None of this work means a thing if no one fixes the links! Here are the ways to fix them, from best to worst:

1. Rebuild the missing page. If the broken link points at a deleted page, replace that page. If the site’s an online store and the link points at a product that’s out of stock or no longer available, put up a page, at that URL, that says ‘This product is out of stock’ or ‘This product is no longer available’. Then provide links to other relevant pages, or to customer support, or to the category page.
2. Build a new page. If the broken link points at a page that never existed or had to be deleted, create something new (but relevant) there.
3. Build a detour page. Create a page that summarizes what the old page said and then says ‘But this page is gone now. Sniff. Instead, go over here.’ Then link to an alternative.
4. Use a permanent redirect. Create a 301 redirect from the broken link URL to a relevant page. Do not simply redirect to your home page! That just confuses your visitors.

Always use options 1-3 before 4. A permanent redirect is a very imperfect solution, and best applied when you have no other options. 301 redirects will reroute authority for a while, but eventually the authority ‘decays’. Plus, a high number of 301 redirects on a site can wreak havoc with Google and Bing. Both search engines’ crawlers will give up if they see too many redirect ‘hops’.

Put away that letter opener…

This post has over 1800 words. At this point you’re probably ready to stab me. Please don’t. I like my insides in.

And, this isn’t nearly as hard as it seems. With practice, you’ll be zipping through all these steps in under an hour. It’s by far the quickest, easiest way to improve site authority.

Many of you know I LOVE MONKEYS (cough, Jason Konopinski, cough) and you may have already seen this image floating around Facebook, but I just had to share it here…as a special addition to Gin and Topics.

Every time I see this posted on another person’s Facebook page, I squeal. I mean, look at him! Cutest. Thing. Ever.

It makes me want one! I wonder if he and Jack Bauer would get along? I could walk Jack Bauer on a leash and hold my monkey’s hand, and we could share ice cream cones. It would be grand!

Alright. So on to the weekly specials. We have tight pants, a seal dancing to Michael Jackson, a song about the differences in women ages 29 and 31, a kid who has to apologize to a plane full of people, and a skinny white kid rapping about his bike.

5. A Fight Over Tight Pants. Holy. Cow. So this is what it’s like when your friends are celebrities and you have an audience and you can totally make fun of hipsters and tight pants. Kyle Akerman sent me this Jimmy Fallon clip where he fights with Will Ferrell over whose tight pants are the best. Trust me. It may be the second best thing you see all week (behind the monkey, of course)!

4. Seal Dances to Michael Jackson. I guess I’m pretty predictable because Claudia Scimeca sent this to me, knowing full well it would make it in Gin and Topics (I don’t just love monkeys; I also love dancing animals). But wait until you see it! It’s a seal dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.” I mean, it could be MJ reincarnated. Super freaking awesome!

3. 29/31 by Garfunkel and Oates. I think I’ve watched this at least five times because it’s H-I-larious! It’s two women – one aged 29 and the other 31 – singing about the differences between the ages, when it comes to love, wedding, and a marriage. At 29, you think you have all the time in the world to find “the one,” but by 31, you’re desperate and ready to settle down with cats. It’s funny because it’s true. And Konopinski gets a second nod from me today because he also sent me this (which I then sent to my sister-in-law, who just turned 30).

2. Kid Apologizes to Plane for Cutting in Line. We’ve all been there. The person who cuts in line, particularly in security at the airport or at the grocery store or at a sporting event, and everyone shakes their head and looks at one another, but no one says anything. Well, this kid did it to get on to a Southwest flight with his buddies, his coach caught him, and they made him apologize to the entire plane, over the sound system, once it was ready to take off. Thanks to Ken Mueller for the find!

1. Performance by MC Spandex. I fully understand you might not appreciate this last one if you’re not a cyclist, but my dad sent it to me and I find great humor in it. It’s a skinny white guy rapping about why his bike is better than yours. And, when I had to stop on a dime during a ride earlier this week, I began to hum this tune.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Can you hear the iPhone 5′s footsteps? Anyone buying an iPhone 4S today can.

Apple stores are now price-matching Sprint’s discounted online pricing for iPhone 4S when asked. Officially — and online — the price is still $199 for the cheapest iPhone 4S, the 16GB model, but in Apple Stores around the county, all iPhone 4s models are now discounted by $49 … if you ask.

Source: Apple

Official online iPhone 4S pricing

While the iPhone is a bit better deal today, the bigger story is that the iPhone 5 must be very, very near. Apple, which typically keeps 4-6 weeks of channel inventory, looks to be clearing out old stock in preparation for the new model.

The updated pricing takes the 16GB model down to $149, the 32GB to $249, and the top of the line $64GB model to $349. An Apple employee at the Apple Store at University Village in Seattle verified the price cuts verbally on the phone.

(Note: All prices are based on a two-year contract.)

But don’t expect to see any 25 percent off signs at your local Apple store. You may have to ask for the deal to get it.

Image credit: Getman/ShutterStock

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat