LINE makes 80% of its revenue from stickers (20%) and games (60%). I can't see stickers as a workable revenue model outside of Asia. As for games, it may work, but I don't think Westerners like the idea of integrating their games into their messaging apps/services. After all, Facebook tried this with games, but nowadays people prefer to play standalone game apps on their mobile devices.
I'm thinking less about Zynga-like in-browser games, and more like Candy Crush (solo game but it's arguably more fun with others, and def faster/cheaper) and Quiz Up (obv a two person game). For the same user, they'll have different friends lists on SnapChat vs Facebook, and may want to play games more with former vs the latter.
Agree about sticker, but other virtual goods are open. Farmville was rumored to be making $1m a day, and I believe it. Who knows what other iterations we'll see.
It's also notoriously difficult to break into (in the software space) for Western companies. With Japan, there's the isolationist culture, and with China, there's the Great Firewall.
For those who did not get the reference, Valve paid out 400K$ in the first week of 2014 [1] to item creators for Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, which are purely cosmetic video game items ("hats") [2].
