btrax blog

Mixi
The #1 social networking site in Japan, but threatened by Facebook growth has launched a developer API and other big platform changes
17 million Japanese users

Facebook
The 300 million strong SNS juggernaut should hit 1 million Japanese users in Q1 2010 and double by Q4 of 2010. Their Japanese user base is beginning to move away from English speaking users to more mainstream.
743,000 Japanese users

Twitter
The startup poster child of 2009 is steered in Japan by serial entrepreneur Joi Ito’s Digital Garage and has been profitable by running ads from the start. Growth is exponential, especially now that key celebrities are coming on board as Ashton Kutcher did in early 2009 for the US market. English and Japanese are currently the only languages the Twitter API has been released in.
783,000 Japanese users

YouTube
One of the highest trafficked sites in Japan, rolling over strong competitor NicoVideo despite its less robust user interaction toolset.
21.7 million visitors/month (35% of all Internet users with average 187 min. engagement)

NicoVideo
Has faced similar growth difficulties as YouTube due to copyright infringement, but diehard users love the ability layer text comments and art directly onto videos, sometimes completely obscuring the original content. The Japanese company has launched prototype sites for the Taiwanese, German, Spanish and English markets.
11.3 million visitors/month (18% of all Internet users with average 193 min. engagement)

Flickr
Snap happy Japanese have flocked to the site from the early phases of the site and have been enthusiastic innovators of Flickr innovative API – despite the fact that it still doesn’t have a Japanese user interface. Yahoo’s acquisition has helped introduce the service to an even wider audience domestically, but the separate nature of massively popular Yahoo! Japan means the Japanese market is still relatively untapped for Flickr.
636,000 Japanese users (2007 figure – thought to be in 1-2 million range now)

Get to Know the Market – Basic Statistics

Asian Countries

• Internet users in Asian countries 704 million users
  • China 338 million users
  • Japan 94 million users
  • Korea 37.5 million users
• Market size - Population in Asia 3.8 billion (56.3% of World Population)
• Internet Growth in Asia (2000-2009): 516.1%
• Internet Growth in the rest of the world: 291.1%
• Internet Users in Asia: 42.2% of the world’s users
• Internet Users in the rest of the world: 57.8%

Asian-Americans in the U.S.

• Estimated number of U.S. residents: 15.2 million
• Asian population in California: 5 million
• Percent growth of Asian-American population between 2006 – 2007: 2.9%
• Asians of Chinese descent in the U.S. in 2007: 3.54 million

Three Ways to Serve the Asian Audience

Quick & Easy translation

• Reduced number of pages
• Translated text
• Having same images used in the original site
• Using same page layout as the original site

Mid-level Localization

• Fully translated text on same number of pages
• Localized headlines by native copy writers
• Localized images
• Using same page layout as the original site

Brand-Level Localization

• Optimized design for the target market
• Fully localized text and copy
• Optimized page structure
• Optimized page layout
• Localized visual and Flash elements
• Local language SEO
• Twitter / Facebook content in target languages
• YouTube video with captions

Things NOT to do

• Using mechanical translation
• Convert all text to images
• Translation by a non-native speaker

* Stats from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm

You may soon be able to sip Twitter brand wine. This shows not only the power of people interacting through Social Networking Sites, but also its potential business development model. All these new projects involving people generating content can be very creative and fun. As we have already mentioned, companies are trying to use these sites to create buzz for their products and company images. They are currently working hard to make people talk about themselves. And some are really enjoying this effective tool. That, however, is not the entire story.

Making Buzz on your Brands

The monitoring of user-generated content has been focused on classifying keywords presence. According to Overtone, Inc., many companies are still hiring people to literally read and manually categorize content. This method creates confusion because nobody can go over everything and accurately classify the words within a certain amount of time.

Different colors, different tastes, like different opinions

Overtone does not only focus on social networking sites, but analyzes emails, phone calls, and other various customer communications.  They are not hiring people to do them manually; instead they have automated listening text analytic algorithms. But there are companies like Radian6 which are focusing on SNS sites. The commonality between them is “listening”. When I studied conflict resolution in graduate school, we learned that “listening” is the basic tool to resolve conflicts. My advice to companies: listen after you sing!

Photos by Yuka O.

雖然Google Wave 早在今年五月舊金山舉行的Google I/O會議上公開發表了，但最近常常看到人在網路上要Google Wave 的邀請。由於Google Wave 還是在測試階段, 所以只開放給10 萬位用戶進行測試，而且一定要有邀集才能使用。相信還是有很多人不清楚到底Google Wave 是甚麼，所以就在這裡簡單介紹一下吧! Google號稱Wave是「前所未見的的電子郵件」服務。基本上，這項服務將改造電子郵件的收件匣，把電子郵件, 即時通訊, 網路多媒體分享整合起來，若是開發人員共襄盛舉，還可與社群網路連成一氣。

Google Wave不只是一項產品也是一個建立在雲端科技上的網路平台。它橫跨對談與文件軟體，讓使用者可以把好幾項工具在做的事通通整合在Wave。它可以執行在網路瀏覽器環境中，也可以在Apple iPhone或Google Android之類的手機上。使用者也可以將Wave內容嵌入於其他網頁像是部落格和Wiki中然後並可以同時更新。

撰寫Wave就像是在email、Google Doc或部落格的環境下打字。它右邊欄位靠左是討論區，有一個收件匣，左邊有一個瀏覽窗上面有類似Gmail的通訊錄。差別在於Wave並非連到伺服器的郵件，而是建立在網雲上的共享物件。Wave另一個特別的地方就是, 不像部落格，線上討論區, 或wiki，Wave可以幾近即時更新變動:只要網路回應速度夠快，你在Wave打字時其他人就可以看到回應。不過你還是可以設定打字完成才顯示回應。

文字當然只是Wave的一小部份。Wave還可以顯示影像、圖片、音樂、和news feeds，當然也可以搜尋。Wave之所以與眾不同就是既不完全是公開的對話，也不完全是私下的對話。使用者在鍵入一則訊息、上傳相片或增加聯絡人的同時，就建立了一個「wave」。其他聯絡人也可事後再追加，後來被追加的人也可以看到之前的對談或任何的修改。而且，除非這個「wave」的發起人限制新成員加入，否則被加入者也可自己再加入其他的聯絡人。

目前而言，Wave的全部功能還不是非常明朗，再加上Wave開放讓開發人員自行去研發各式的應用軟體，所以將來的功能可能會超出我們的想像，不過雖然Wave的功能強大，普遍試用的人還是覺得有點不太好上手，所以就讓我們看看Google可不可以再一次的讓我們驚豔吧!

完整的Wave公開發表會請看這裡

Photos by 松林Ｌ and Ribbit Voice

In B2B situations, sometimes and often many times, it is hard to reach the right person who makes decisions for business deals.  Those people who have decision powers tend to be those who are inaccessible besides business hours. They are unlikely to attend networking social events or contact people on social networking sites. They are hard to reach and be found. Why?

Well, they are simply busy after work.  They have kids to take care of. They have elderly parents who need to be driven to doctors. They have errands to do for their families. They do not have time for themselves until 9 or 10 pm at night. By that time, they are too tired and have to be in bed so that they can restart the same busy day the next day.

Then how and where can you convey your messages that your products are good or worthwhile to take a look at? I recently went to a seminar in Santa Clara which was hosted by KeyPoint Credit Union. It lasted from 11:30am till 1:30 pm with lunch included. It seemed to me that there were about 50 professionals gathered to listen to Linda Popky, the president of L2M Associates, Inc. I not only got hints and new ideas from the session, but also I met several professionals in different fields in such a short period of time.

a Presentation by Linda Popky of L2M Associates on "Thought Leadership"

According to Mr.  Noyman , the Director of Sales & Development  of Keypoint, they have been hosting the lunch time events. And their evening sessions easily attract 50-100 people per night. But the power of lunch time sessions should not be neglected. My professional friends, who are also busy with family responsibilities after work, say they go to breakfast/lunch time sessions or listen to podcasts and webinars, but not many evening sessions and they are hardly use any networking sites or twitter, delicious, etc.

If you are looking for a way to reach inaccessible busy people, organizaing attractive events during breakfast or lunch time is a good option. People will come if food is free, presenters are interesting, and locations are convenient to their offices. It does not have to be a face-to-face meeting as well. They could be webinars or online meetings. But don’t forget: Be creative and explore ways to attract other professionals in your field.

Companies struggle hard to establish their corporate images and differentiate their products. Hence, the word “branding” refers to the work of companies that spend money and time on advertisements and brand positioning.  But ironically, the images of brands are established from the people’s side.  They don’t necessarily have to be consumers.

For example, Apple’s mainstream image was of a quirky, high-end, personal computer manufacturer. But now they are almost universally known as innovators of simple user interfaces – from their introduction of the mouse ,to the before-its-time Newton PDA, to the popularization of touch technology.Or Google, which has become not only a tech giant, but a verb and noun as ubiquitous as Kleenex or Xerox.

Starbucks, a worldly recognized brand.

There are, I think, three vectors to decide branding images. One is pricing. The other is value. These two seem to determine demand and supply, but actually there is one more, “emotion”. The more people love a company and its products, the more successful the branding is. Online branding specialist Martin Lindstrom says that “brands are in principal all about emotion.”

When a company and its products are loved,  a brand will be established. People talk about what they use and buy.  When Google became a well used search engine, the word “googling” started to spread.  People started to use the verb to replace “searching”. People found it so easy to use that they started to use it daily.  Like an avid rock fan, you may wait in a long line to purchase a concert ticket.  One fan creates a community which supports the existence of a group. If a community is formed around a brand, branding is complete.

Treasure for a fan

Since the internet makes it easy for us to form online communities, branding has been progressing speedily especially SNS where many people gather, talk, and exchange information.

Branding starts with your love and passions.

Photos by Yuka O.