Twitter launched a Japanese based mobile version last Thursday. This is their first foreign language platform so far. Twitter launched a PC version in the spring of 2008. The product really took off earlier this year when Twitter users jumped four fold in a very short space of time. News services and companies also seem to be jumping on the bandwagon. “It’s an excellent opportunity for us to see where we can go in Asia in general because Japan represents a leading edge, with advanced mobile usage” said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.
In Japan internet adoption is extemely high. Two thirds of its 120 million residents are on the internet. It is also one of the top five languages in Wikipedia.
However the social media culture in Japan is very different to other countries. Privacy is valued very highly in japan. As Tomohiko Kezuka a young social media expert puts it: “Anonymity is a part of the culture here. I think many Japanese people are ashamed and anxious that their ‘internet personality’ will be discovered by real friends or colleagues. Some anonymous power users, using pseudonyms, have a lot of authority in Japanese social media. On top of that, many believe anonymity helps protect people from crime and harassment, especially in the mobile social media for young people.”
This means that on the most popular social network sites such as Mixi people generally represent themselves with avatars. There are also two very popular mobile social networking sites GREE and Mobage-town. Japan has 17 million blog sites with 3 million active bloggers. Ameba offers a blog hosting service, like Wordpress.com or Blogger. By inviting television personalities to blog and participate, Ameba’s traffic is growing rapidly. However most participants are again anonymous. YouTube is wildly successful here, but here too users don’t generally broadcast themselves. Posting pet videos is far more popular and has bred a generation of animal celebrities.
The business uptake of social media in Japan has been slow however twitter seems to be changing this. Do you have business interests in Japan? Social media marketing is a strategy that seems ready for development in Japan. SociaLnk is keen to explore new marketing techniques with you.
