Written on April 23, 2008 – 4:51 am
Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
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Today the Twitter founders and the Twitter team from Digital Garage announced via a live streamed press conference that it is launching its Japanese language version of Twitter. Digital Garage have been working on the Japanese market introduction of Twitter to develop a Japanese language version of the popular microblogging platform. This is the first time that Twitter will be available in a language other than English.
Japan has taken to Twitter at a ferocious rate, with Tokyo being the largest origin city for Tweets in the world (twice that of second placed San Fransisco and New York) using the previous English-only version. The number of Japanese users is growing at an accelerated rate already within the tech savvy community and it is expected that the Japanese version will give an additional boost as it can now support mainstream users. The local language distribution of online platforms has traditionally been a key point to growing larger sites in the Japanese market, with services such as Yahoo and Google blossoming only after they offered the Japanese verison.
The fear however is that Twitter is popular because it is foreign and users feel they are cutting edge because they are using a product that is cutting edge enough to not have been translated yet.
The Japanese Twitter will also have another first. It will be the first time that Twitter displays advertising within the Twitter page. When you switch to Japanese language, you will see an ad panel above your sidebar.
Initial reaction in the Japanese Twitter community is a lot of chatter but a lukewarm response to the advertising and a good dose of criticism about the quality of the translation.
This is a first release though, so I will reserve judgment. What will be telling is how fast the Japanese user base grows from here.
Written on April 22, 2008 – 9:56 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Nick Gonzalez, former TechCrunch blogger who used to sleep over 3 nights a week at Arrington’s, just told the crowd at the “Intro to Blogs & Social Media Marketing” Web 2.0 Expo session what he considers to be THE best TechCrunch post ever. Well, this is the legendary article:
The honor goes to Duncan Riley, who wrote a post about Japanese Internet service providers that wanted to ban file sharers from the Internet. According to Gonzalez, it’s not just the best post because it has more than 1000 comments. No, the main reason is that it brought in an “insane amount of traffic”. “Somebody buzzed the story, and somebody else did as well. It ended up at the Yahoo front page, which leads to around 300,000 clicks per second. That’s a crap load of users”.
Here’s what Arrington said about this spectacular event:
The link went live at 5:45 PM PST as one of the bottom four links in the news box (these send less traffic) and was up through the day. Despite the fact that yesterday was a Saturday (slowest traffic day of the week) and that it was up only 1/4 of the day, we had our highest traffic day ever and over 1,000 comments were left on the post.
So in terms of traffic Gonzalez is obviously right. Yet I think that when it comes to blogging, quality is more important than quantity. That’s why I prefer one of Arrington’s editorials to be the no. 1 TechCrunch post ever..
Update: read this post by Oliver Taco: TechCrunch Can’t Do Math
Written on March 29, 2008 – 12:08 pm
Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
I have written before about how QRcodes are a great way to access websites on mobile phones and how they are already commonplace in Japan. They are used in advertising and in everyday services that allow mobile access.
Cabal recently blogged about another method for locating websites in Japan. The method shows a search box with the search term inside that will help you locate the website in lieu of a URL. Of course this implies you should go home and type this term into your favorite search engine to locate the website.
This system only works if you have the top search result position or the top advertising position on that keyword, but I am guessing these companies have made sure at least that they bought the keyword out so they appear as the top paid search result on all the major search platforms. The thinking is that people can remember a keyword easier than a URL. From doing a quick ask-around of Japanese friends, it seems that most find this advertising annoying and unclear. I am not a fan of it either.
Another method that seems to have a quite high representation in Japan and hasn’t been talked about in western press that much is the menu navigation method.
The Menu Navigation Method
This method of getting people to your website is also aimed at mobile users. Entering URLs on a mobile phones can be time consuming and frustrating, so many advertisers are looking at ways to get users to their pages in simple ways that involve scrolling and clicking rather than typing.
This method is based around one of the sad realities of the Japanese mobile web. Most traffic on the mobile web is funneled through the landing pages of the major carriers (DoCoMo, AU and Softbank). It is changing slowly but it is still the case that most people use these pages just as many PC web users use Yahoo, Google or other portal pages to find their content.
This is an example from the ANA website showing the navigation paths from each of the three major carrier topages. NB. DoCoMo uses iMode, AU uses EZWeb and Softbank uses Yahoo Keitai.
Using this established familiarity with this portal page navigation, a lot of advertising replaces the URL with a path of navigation from the top portal page from the major carriers. The carriers are obviously happy because it keeps people in “their world” as long as possible.
More important though, they also charge money for portal listings. This process allows them to filter for “approved” content and control the economics which is fast moving towards free for connectivity on the mobile phone. As connectivity charges go down, total advertising and listing revenues are growing.
The main flaw to this method is the difficulty in remembering the navigation steps, sometimes there are up to 8 pages to click through before you get where you are going. The negative effects of this are limited by the usage case which usually has the advertising appearing in locations where you can refer to the navigation path while entering in your mobile phone. Places such as magazines, train platforms and PC sites are common locations to see them.
The Menu Navigation Method looks to be here for a while, but only as long as the carriers control the navigation pathways. Once people start to break out from the major portals, you may see the use of this technique drop, but if history is anything to go by, the Japanese people will keep to their safe portals for a while yet.
Written on March 21, 2008 – 11:02 am
Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
I just read that Kevin Rose is growing a mustache for Amsterdam… surely Kevin has some more original ideas as I managed to do that already several weeks ago as my own special tribute to Holland when I visited Amsterdam and Utrecht to sit on the jury of the Dutch-Japan GameJam.
See here proof and execution of concept a clear month before Kevin and Alex will grace the the city of Amsterdam.
[ And in answer to the question about what the Dutch ladies think of mustaches... it was mixed results, but certainly gets a lot of attention. ]
Written on March 19, 2008 – 7:45 am
Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
Via a tip off from one of my staff in our internal office chat here at UltraSuperNew Inc., comes news that Google has updated the interface for its top page for Japanese users.
The new design keeps the position of the main search bar and associated links, then adds a line of quick access icons below that to some of Google’s other services. There is a tabbed menu, then 5 items shown under each tab.
The first tab can be translated as “recommended”, it includes Google Mail, Youtube, Google News, Google Maps, Google Transit.
The second tab can be translated as “all kinds of search”, and provides links to search interfaces for images, blogs, books and the desktop.
The third tab is “convenient tools” and includes Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader and Google Toolbar.
The final tab is “more fun” and has links to Youtube, Picasa, Blogger and Google Earth.
One thing to note about the treatment of all these links is that they are all referred to by what you can do or what they are rather than the product name. For example Picasa is referred to as a photo management tool and not by its name, “Picasa”.
The design change seems to be more in line with what Japanese users expect (generally a higher need to see more information on the page) and is a big move for Google moving away from their long standing simple home page. Its nice to see Google treating individual markets in a special way.
Written on March 14, 2008 – 9:18 am
Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
I was tipped off via Peter at Bubblefoundry and an article over at CScout Japan about a magazine that is out currently here in Japan that is filled with pretty much only free things that you can download from QRcodes with your mobile phone.
The Magazine is called Tada Gets (site is made for mobile and is all in Japanese), which basically means “get it free”. The pages are filled with a little text and/or image explaining what you can get and then the QR code that will get you to a mobile website where you can download the free content.
I mentioned earlier that the use of 2D codes in Japan was already a reality and this is just one example of how they are tightly integrated into the lives of Japanese people on a daily basis.
Here’s the QR Code for The Next Web Blog URL. You can get your free QR code for
your URL from the great guys at
mofuse.com
Written on March 4, 2008 – 9:56 am
Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
Mixi, Japan’s biggest SNS and blog, has just announced that starting 1st of April they will amend the terms of use (Japanese only) to give Mixi complete ownership and ultimate control over user generated content.
This is big News in Japan with stories on all the biggest Japanese news sites (eg. Yahoo, Livedoor). This may be a game changer in several ways for SNS in Japan.
First we will find out if Japanese users really value the sanctity of their data. History tells us that it is actually not very high on the list of concerns when big companies are involved, but very high when you are dealing with small companies. Mixi being about as big as they come in the SNS world may not cause much of a stir, but if this hits the press enough, they may be in for a backlash and a change of priorities from the users.
Second is what Mixi will do with their new found data dictatorship. Could they start using your friend’s images to advertise to you, integrate advertising into user generated content just as Facebook tried to and received a lot of backlash? Could it be just a first step into censorship as they gear up for a push into China?
I will be keeping an eye on how this shapes up… when someone the size of Mixi makes a move like this it is bound to shape the way all the other players do business.
Written on February 12, 2008 – 12:30 am
Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
Yesterday Ernst-Jan Pfauth wrote a story about the use of 2D barcodes as shortcuts to mobile web sites. What a lot of people in Europe don’t realize is that 2D barcodes are already a success story, … just not in Europe.
In Japan a local version of the 2D barcode called QR Codes (Quick Response Codes) has widespread acceptance and a very large user base. All handsets released on the Japanese market these days (and actually for the last several years) have been preloaded with a QR code reader. This makes the QRcodes available to pretty much everyone with a standard handset. The numbers are somewhere around 90-95 million people out of 100 million mobile subscribers. That is a pretty large potential audience for the technology.
[ UPDATE: previously I used some old research data for some of the numbers. The reality now is actually a much better percentage and I have changed the numbers below accordingly based on a 2007 study]
In Japan about 80% 95% of people know what a QRcode does and just over 50% of people in Japan 93% of those people have used them. That may not sound like a screaming majority That is a pretty good majority, but and in terms of certain youth markets, that covers an almost complete coverage and puts the technology in a position where it can be a seamless part of any ad campaign already…. and actually it is already a part of just about every ad campaign.
A standard fashion magazine in Japan will be filled with codes with direct links to the mobile shopping page for the product depicted or an mobile competition form to fill out. The also are found on business cards as a short cut to add someones details to your address book. You can search popular coupon magazine, Hot Pepper, for QR codes you can scan and then show the resulting mobile web site page at restaurant to receive a discount. The system is everywhere and highly successful. (more…)
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