Residing at the bottom of the LINE screen are our tabs: Home tab for the user's base of operations, Chats for where text-based conversations with their friends happen, and Calls for connecting by Voice. And nestled between Chats and Calls lies LINE VOOM, of the LINE's most fun and engaging features. Originally debuting as TIMELINE, the feature was reborn as LINE VOOM in 2021. To learn why and what VOOM means, check out the story below!
From messenger-based friendships to follow-based
Timeline started as a place to share news with your LINE friends. Useful new features were then added, like relay posts, group notes, and birthday celebrations, however, it never received the kind of traction we hoped for. It was hard to say why exactly, but through our analyses, we began to realize that for many people, they didn't like using Timeline as a free social media space — the two functions are just too fundamentally different, in terms of how people use them, think about privacy, and many other factors.
As a result, from 2020, there has been a trend of moving from messenger-based friendships to follow-based friendship. At the same time, looking back on the overall direction of the service, video-oriented content was elevated to being the core of the service, so we realized that we needed a new name to reflect the major changes that were transforming our service.
Introducing LINE VOOM!
Timeline was relaunched and rebranded under the slogan "Connect to fun." LINE VOOM was created as a portmanteau, combining "Visual Room", "Video Room" and "Boom." And with the relaunch, the Timeline tab changed to the word VOOM, along with the VOOM symbol, in the shape of a play button.
UI,UX designed for video content navigation and continual consumption
Thanks for LINE's long experience creating the most engaging and stylish app designs, VOOM designers decided to focus on centering the service around two tabs: For you and Following. The For You tab allows users to watch interesting videos, with new videos provided in succession, one after another, to encourage users to keep going. The Following tab is a space for the creators a user follows, similar to the previous Feed tab, and provides a flow so that you can continue to view related content through the feed viewer.
VOOM launches with a colorful campaign
To spark interest in the VOOM relauch, we also produced a series of special videos. The first video announced the changes to VOOM. The second introduced the service, using a collection of content and creators from all sorts of genres. Then a third video introduced some of our more unique creators, and finally, on the day of the release, we delivered a tutorial explaining how to use VOOM.
The future of LINE VOOM~
VOOM has already launched to much acclaim, but we haven't stopped working to make it the best service we can. The VOOM team continually conducts workshops and analyzes keywords, collaborating with the BX and Motion teams and listening to our users voices to expand the service.
What's next for LINE VOOM? The sky's the limit. But one thing is for sure — we're never going to stop doing all we can to make VOOM is best service we can.