LINE, a Japanese messaging app, just announced that its charity "sticker pack" has raised about $552,000 for victims of Typhoon Hayain, a storm that ripped through the Philippines last month.
One of several free mobile messaging services popular overseas – including WeChat and WhatsApp – LINE is an enormous company that makes a lot of its money through selling stickers. Stickers are cute emoji-esque images that users can insert in their messages, and LINE makes more than $10 million per month selling them.
The creators of LINE are no strangers to dealing with natural disaster. The app was released two months after the devastating 2011 earthquake in Japan, in response to the fact that people couldn't communicate with their telephones or email services from mobile carriers during the resulting chaos.
The "Pray for the Philippines" pack includes eight stickers. It went on sale November 15 and will continue to be available for about $1 until the end of the year, when all the proceeds will be donated to the Philippine Red Cross. The $552,000 raised so far is the total LINE made from the relief pack after Apple and Google took their transaction fee cuts.
Check out the rest of the stickers:
