“Smartphone girl” – apps and websites aimed at a new market
Japanese Market Trends
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Pinterest is still an invitation-only system, but signing up is easy through Facebook and Twitter. By using Facebook’s open-graph system, links posted on Pinterest are published to Facebook’s news feed if the user chooses to allow Pinterest to have those permissions.

The first photos you probably see when you visit Pinterest? Photos related to fashion, models, sweets, etc. Many reports have found most of Pinterest’s users to be female, and while it expanded quickly due to its focus on women in the US, the potential for popularity in Japan is also very high.

Because photos are generated by people’s interest, and because Pinterest generates more traffic than Google+, a large number of corporations are utilizing Pinterest as an effective marketing tool.

The fact that 60% of Pinterest’s user base is female should be closely observed. When considering marketing on Pinterest, women cannot be ignored by any means.

In terms of mobile usage, smartphones are becoming increasingly popular in the hands of young women. Previously smartphones were mostly popular along males, such as young businessmen, but women these days look to smartphones to replace their older cell phones. Morever, women consume more goods compared to males, as found in this report from TechDoll (Japanese).

Based on the rising consumption of goods by Japanese women, a new term has come to describe this phenomenon. This market is now labeled as “Smartphone Girl” or “Sumaho-joshi” (スマホ女子) in Japanese. It is quickly becoming a time where women influence the market and men create the goods. The female buying power in the market can also have an influence in marriage and traveling; as well as purchasing a house, insurance, or even appliances.

With the rise in idols such as AKB48 and the increase in buying power from female high school students and young women alike, it is no wonder that more smartphone apps try to tap into this quickly growing market since more women are buying smartphones and accessing the Internet.

What impact is there given these facts? Although it is new market, it is growing quickly. Here are five apps that are approaching this market.

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pape.mu

When we hear the words “a market that targets women,” we think of fashion first. For example, the recent New Year’s sale at 109 Shibuya (a famous fashion shop in Japan) totaled 20,000 people. Even the premiere of the iPhone did not attract that many people; it shows that women at that point are more interested in fashion over technology.

pape.mu was created to keep young women up to speed with the latest and hottest fashion trends. It organizes blog articles about the hottest brands, the latest trends, and clothing coordination into one application. It can even be called the female-oriented fashion version of Flipboard. pape.mu is making strides in becoming the newest fashion-oriented media for women, as you can browse fashion information almost like you are reading a real magazine. In addition, the more a user accesses and uses pape.mu, the more optimized the information becomes, delivering information tailored to the user and allowing them to access their favorite fashion blogs quickly.

In Japan, many fashion bloggers are currently using Ameba, a popular Japanese blog service, as their primary blogging tool. However, I feel readers can access fashion information faster through pape.mu because of its more optimized functions and usability.

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Papelook

Papelook goes hand in hand with pape.mu and also has the ability to recommend and optimize itself based on the types of information a user views the most. It began as an idea of free expression in a blog, and it allows the user to clip photos taken with their iPhone and put them in a scrapbook or add cute characters to them.

Papelook was downloaded 150,000 times last year after its October debut and opened up the demand for similar apps that can be utilized by many people. It gives the user many different ways to decorate their photos and share them to sites like Twitter and Facebook, and it has accommodated the needs of its user base well.

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snapeee

This application, I think, is currently very famous in Asia. It is a picture sharing app, but can also be called a social purikura machine that allows you to share the photos you’ve decorated within the app.

To demonstrate, I took and decorated this photo using snapeee. Stamps and decorations can be stuck onto a photo and uploaded snapeee’s timeline, and it can also be uploaded onto Facebook or Twitter. In addition, a partnership with GREE and KDDI allowed for the development of a marketplace within snapeee that allows users to purchase and download new stamp sets. Although the market exists for monetization of the app, usage of both shopeee and snapeee continue to grow. I would love to see snapeee follow in the footsteps of LINE in the Asian market and become one of the most popular apps.

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Nameko Mushroom Cultivation

Did you know Nameko Mushroom Cultivation has grown quickly among women in Japan these days? Oricon, a Japanese ranking site, calls it “the application that can be played with a little free time”, and currently ranks first among students in their teens and 20s, as well as businesswomen in their 20s and 30s. Unexpectedly, Nameko Mushroom Cultivation Game has attained 2,000,000 downloads and unprecedented popularity among women.

Is this a game that is “played” in a typical manner like other games? It is actually more like an app that generates a sense of fun and achievement when a nameko mushroom is harvested. The mushrooms grow in real time, and mushrooms cannot be harvested until after a certain period of time. After harvesting, new mushrooms can be fed and cultivated, and after several hours they will again be available for harvest. Harvesting requires the user to log into the application twice, and by influencing the users to log into the app several times the app slowly becomes something a user will continue to play.

Three elements that I noticed that captivate women in playing this game are the harvesting of mushrooms, raising the mushrooms, and the surreal factor of raising fungi within an app. These are also elements present in Tamagotchis, which grow and are raised; Pinterest, which brings out the factor of cultivation, and a surreal environment, in which it is otherwise nonsense to raise
mushrooms through an app. These three factors are what I feel make this application a huge hit.

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On top of that, websites are taking advantage of the “Smartphone girl” market creating sites that are specifically meant to attract a “Smartphone girl”:

- AppWoman(http://appwoman.jp/)
- iPhone girls (http://www.iphone-girl.jp/)
- WomenApps(http://www.womanapps.net/)
- app sommelier (http://appsomm.jp/)

From these sites, it is clear that the number of apps and other mobile media catering to women will continue to increase as the number of women obtaining smartphones continues to grow. Even YUME TENBOU, an e-commerce site, has released an application that allows users to virtually try on dresses using their iPhone, and attention should be paid to this app as well.

Decowee, a unique add-on for Chrome, allows a user to decorate the Internet and upload their decorated versions of websites to Twitter. Although it requires you to install the add-on before it can be used, this way of thinking is new and unique. Not only will the website decorating be ornamental, but it can also be reflected in real time by others who also have the plugin installed. It has opened new possibilities in plugin development for a future plugin that will target young women for website designing and possibly spread their influence throughout the web.

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Although it seemed like only a select few sites and apps catered to the “Smartphone girl,” it is obvious from the above examples that apps and websites geared towards women is quickly growing. Technology normally has an innovator and an early adapter, which involve people with high literacy and can be a very small number even within the male user group. Up until this point, the first priority for technology was among the most technologically advanced users. However, the Internet is becoming more familiar and natural to us without a need to be “Internet-savvy” to use the Internet. Services are becoming more efficient, and the release of popular gadgets like the iPhone became the starting point of a large blue ocean that has yet to be fully explored.

The natural flow of the Internet as well as the higher standards for UI/UX flow has created a path that gives technology the ability to reach even the most technologically illiterate users.

mixi, ZENRYAKUprof, and CROOZreal won the popularity of Japanese high school student users of mobile technology. How will these services change and how will they rise in popularity once smartphones become more prevalent among female users?

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Original post written by Shinichiro Kinjo. Mr. Kinjo is a designer and hacker from Japan. Follow Shinichiro on Twitter as well as http://hanpanai.com/ for even more news and commentary. English translation edited by Miko and Erin.

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How the “Shy” Japanese are Using Social Media
DeNA, General (English), GREE, Japanese Market Trends, Mobage Japan
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Social Network Services (SNS) used by the Japanese are both common to other users in the world but also different. I will describe some of the differences that the Japanese use and why they use them the way they do.

Social Network Usage in Japan – Some Similarities, Some Differences

Now, when you ask Japanese people what SNS they use, most Japanese will not think about Facebook.

Why? Because, there are social network sites which are still more popular than Facebook in Japan and each Japanese user’s time is taken up those those other social media sites.

The SNS in which the Japanese use changes according to the environment they’re in. For example, a young woman and student who lives in the rural areas of Japan will use mixi, a businessman will use Facebook or LinkedIn, and a student in Tokyo or a young man will use Twitter.

It can be said the Japanese tend to have a practical use of  the social networks in Japan.

Social gaming in Japan has shown great momentum. Japanese social gaming networks like DeNA‘s Mobage has 32 million users and GREE  has 130 million users network in the world.

Mixi, Facebook, and Twitter are three major social networks in Japan, and it could be said that a comparatively realistic social graph is used as a baseline for the Japanese.

On the other hand, Mobage and GREE could be called social media sites which uses a virtual graph and is used on many mobile phones.

Although I introduced five social media famous in Japan – mixi, Facebook, Twitter, Mobage, GREE, there are two unique SNS – Facebook and Twitter. These SNS are unique because these SNS are not built in Japan.

These two services were proven to be very important for the Japanese because it teaches the Japanese a new use of the Internet.  It requires them to use their identities in the open like a real name or face on the public web.

In Japan, many say 2010 to be a year of Twitter and for 2011 to be a year of Facebook.

 The Japanese are Shy

As you know, Japanese people are very shy or introverted.

The Japanese seldom argue in the open compared with a foreign person and they care about the feelings of people around them – a friend, a coworker, and general people.

Japanese people tend to care a lot about the reputation of their surroundings. For this reason, Japanese talk around a subject sometimes.

For example, if Friend request comes by Facebook from their Boss or maybe a friend that is not getting along, Japanese people cannot refuse due to their politeness. They accept the request even if they don’t want to do so.

Most postings to a social network become contents that a boss or co-worker can see. In order to avoid being pointed out in a photo which is posted on Facebook, the frequency of using services like Facebook decreases. There are many some persons who use two or more Twitter accounts – a realistic account and dummy account.

In Japan, Twitter is very popular because it is mobile friendly and they can tweet the dissatisfaction openly.  When using a dummy account they can feel comfortable that it won’t cause a problem at either at their company or at home.

Although I have not lived in the United States, do Americans use SNS the same way?

Starting from 2004, the most popular social network in Japan is mixi. The number of average friends is said to be 40 persons, and main users have a social graph of like-minded friends – like friends from Junior High School or Elementary school.

Since Japanese people are always caring about their off-line life, mixi gives the Japanese comfort with its walls. It is still popular with feature phone users. Last summer, mixi started a service like Facebook.

Japanese Businesses Love Facebook

Since Facebook is a platform which has 800 million people in world, a Japanese company can connect the products of Japan to the world by using a Facebook fan page.

Satisfaction Guaranteed is a main cultural feeling in Asia. It could be called a good example. Thus, Facebook in Japan is very business oriented first versus being from students first like the United States.

Japanese Look to a Virtual World for Relaxation

Today, the companies which is the most powerful in Japan are Mobage and GREE.

Although these are social gaming platforms, they are services which specializes in the use of mobile unlike Zynga.

Mobage and GREE use a virtual social graph. A realistic social graph is not used fundamentally.

During the day, the Japanese care about a boss or his clients and when they go home late at night, they will care about a wife or a child. Many of Japanese businessmen or salaryman are tired.

Since he is tired with the off-line world, the salaryman asks for  a virtual private room. The only place where he can go is in the Mobage or  GREE social media worlds.

For example, there is a game which you can fish with a friend. Although it is great for the pure enjoyment of fishing and competing for the number of fish, in order to get a good fish, a good fishing line is required. If you want to get an even bigger fish, it is necessary to purchase a fishing rod.

Some users are spending 10,000 yen($100.00) or more per month. I think that it is because Japanese people are hungry for having acceptance, so they use money and time in mobile social games.

As you can see, Social Networks provide a similar but different experience for the Japanese and fill some basic needs for the Japanese. Do people in the US feel the same?

This blog ariticle was written by Shinichiro Kinjo and transposed into english. Mr. Kinjo is a designer and hacker from Japan. Follow Shinichiro on Twitter as well as http://hanpanai.com/ (Japanese) for even more news and commentary.

Related stories by btrax – Facebook and Mixi – Contrast in Cultural Comfort Zones

 

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Popular Japanese Visual-kei bands on Facebook
General (English), Japanese Market Trends
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main-picJ-pop, once dismissed as derivative, disposable and with a shorter shelf life than sushi, has acquired a cachet of cool. Japanese musicians have developed their own unique take on the pop-music idiom, and Visual-kei (glam rock) bands like X Japan, Luna Sea, and Dir en Grey are now piggybacking on the global popularity of pop-culture exports such as anime and video games.

Through the 1950s and ’60s J-pop had next to no impact on the international music scene, apart from the odd novelty song,  a watershed moment came at the end of the 1970s, when Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), a trio whose best-known alumnus is keyboardist/composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, helped pioneer the electro-pop genre along with Germany’s Kraftwork. YMO’s unprecedented international success gave J-pop musicians a much-needed dose of confidence and paved the way for acts such as New Age keyboardist Kitaro, heavy-metal band Loudness and female punk trio Shonen Knife to take their music to the world in the 1980s and ’90s. And the explosive growth of social networking services like Facebook and MySpace is now giving Japanese musicians a new and powerful way to connect with music fans everywhere.

J-pop has blossomed into a bewildering variety of genres and sub-genres, supported by legions of dedicated followers. Their collective purchasing power makes Japan the world’s second-biggest market for recorded music.

They include boy bands Arashi and SMAP, whose popularity is bolstered by a never-ending round of appearances on TV shows, commercials, radio programs and concerts.

J-pop’s biggest act in the last few years has been female idol ensemble AKB48, a group of high school girls whose initial claim to fame was performing live shows daily at their own theater in Tokyo’s Akihabara electronic district. AKB48 struck a chord with the otaku (nerd) demographic, and the group has now achieved total media saturation.

Recently, on social media; especially on Facebook, many Japanese Visual-kei rock bands started attracting many fans outside of the country. The interesting pattern is that most of those bands had their highs in the ’80s and ’90s. Some of them even disbanded for quite sometime before reuniting in recent years. One of the examples of the case would be X Japan. Although they achieved nation-wide success soon after they signed up with major label back in 1989, they broke apart in 1997 followed by the death of one of their most popular members; hide the lead guitarist. Since then until they reunited in 2010 after over 10 years of silence. During the time, there have been almost no activities as a band except for their leader; Yoshiki’s appearances on Japanese TV shows every once in a while.

The band with a similar story would be Luna Sea. They have been considered as a “younger brother” to X Japan winning huge popularity from Visual-kei fans back in ’90s. They closed the curtain in 2000. Then in the end of 2010, they have “rebooted” themselves resuming their activities as a band. Even though they are considered to be the godfathers of Visual-kei genre back in the country, thanks to Facebook’s fan pages, they seems to be getting huge popularity from the overseas.

Some of the popular J-pop Visual-kei bans on Facebook:

X Japan

x-japan

Luna Sea

luna-sea

hide

hide

Dir en Grey

dir-en

Yoshiki

yoshiki

雅-MIYAVI-

miyavi
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