“You just got schooled... by a fish.” Business Fish certainly isn’t short on confidence, but who is this sharp-suited man with a fish’s head, and why is he popping up in the comments in a growing number of people’s Facebook feeds?
The answer: Business Fish is one of the packs available on the social network’s Sticker Store, which has been quietly picking up steam in recent months.
Found by tapping or clicking on the smiley face icon when commenting on a friend’s Facebook post, the store is currently focused on free packs of characters from individual designers, sticker studios like Quan and Ghostbot, and brands.
The latter include Shaun the Sheep, Snoopy, Paul Frank, Pixar and various Cartoon Network shows, but it’s the surreal creations like Business Fish, Sinister Oyster and HamCat – yes, a cat with a slab of ham for a face – that appear to be catching on just as much.
Quan is the Tokyo-based company behind Business Fish, as well as other sticker packs like Sugar Cubs, Yuttari Dragon, Yarukizero, Piyomaru and Masked Wrestler Q. It’s one of a number of companies exploring the idea of digital stickers as first popularised in messaging apps like WeChat, Line and KakaoTalk in Asia.
This being 2015, Business Fish also has his own Twitter feed, which comes across like a shouty mobile phone salesmen on Bad Drugs with a stuck Caps Lock key:
BUSINESS FISH HI MY NAME BUSINESS FISH PLS TAKE MY BUSINESS CARD pic.twitter.com/QqFe2gj14b
— BUSINESS FISH (@business_fish) January 31, 2015
BUSINESS FISH 2 RIGHTS DONT MAKE A WRONG BUT HOPEFULLY A 25% OFF UR NEXT ORDER VOUCHER CODE DOES PLS
— BUSINESS FISH (@business_fish) February 19, 2015
BUSINESS FISH FEEL FREE 2 CLIMB THE BUSINESS FISH LADDER 2 SUCCESS B--------U S--------I N--------E S--------S F--------I S--------H
— BUSINESS FISH (@business_fish) February 18, 2015
We should probably consider our blessings: if this was 2005 rather than 2015, he’d have a ringtone, a prominent TV advertising campaign, and – god help us – probably a pop single too.
The new Crazy Frog? Perhaps. One interesting thing about Business Fish and other sticker packs on Facebook is how they’re being adopted by mainstream internet users first. Quirky Japanese characters that your parents may discover before you.
For now, Business Fish lacks a business model: Facebook’s sticker store only contains free packs, rather than charging like the Asian messaging apps, for whom stickers are an increasingly lucrative business.
