freshtrax

SF New Techとは
主にインターネット関連のホットなスタートアップ企業を紹介し注目を浴び続けてきた、サンフランシスコで最も熱いITイベントのひとつ。SF New Techのメーリングリストには、5,000人以上が登録し、業界で話題を呼んでいる出席者達が目立つ各イベントは常に完売という大人気。月に一度の頻度で開催され、毎回厳しい選定をパスした4社がプレゼンをし、出席者からの質疑応答で盛り上がる。

大手メディアスポンサー
そしてそのイベント情況を、ＮＹタイムズをはじめJustin TV等の大手のメディアスポンサーが報道。アメリカから世界へ強力アピール出来る為、駆け出しのスタートアップ企業がここでプレゼンをしたことをきっかけに大ブレイクしたケースも多い。大手メディアによる報道のせいか、時折、ＧoogleやPayPalをはじめ、IT業界の大企業がスターットアップ企業と方を並べてプレゼンし、新規サービス又はプロダクトを公表をする場として活用していた例もある。

SF New Tech ＋ビートラックス ＝ 「SF New Tech Japan Night」
btrax(ビートラックス) は、米国市場を中心に海外向けWebコンサルティングを提供しているクリエイティブ・エージェンシー。　グローバル市場展開を検討している企業を、Webコンサルティングやメディアを通してだけでなく全面的に支援していきたいという念願から、SF New Techと共同企画し、日本の企業を米国市場に紹介するSF New Tech Japan Night というイベントを2010年10月13日に主催することに。

SF New Tech Japan Night参加企業の募集中
現在イベントで英語でプレゼンする参加企業が募集されていて、参加企業にとっての利点には：

• アメリカ市場へ強力アピール
• ネットワーキング
• パートナー企業の発掘
• VC・投資家の獲得
• 日・米のメディアからの注目
• 最新のWebトレンドに関しての情報収集
• 海外進出の足がかり

申込み期限
2010年8月末日が申し込み期限。ただ、参加企業が決まり次第締切の可能性大。迷っていてチャンスを逃しては惜しい。　あなたの海外進出の第一歩が、今、ここにあるかもしれない。

Photo by Giorgio Montersino

日本では大型連休で海外旅行ラッシュとなるゴールデンウィークが過ぎ、アメリカでは旅行シーズンを迎えようとしています。そこでこの５年間で、休暇中のプランの立て方が、昨今のWeb技術進歩によってどれぐらい変わったかを見ていきたいと思います。

昨今の旅行関連会社、Webメディア活用動向は？

旅行関連会社はどのように、Webツールやソーシャルメディアプラットフォームをリサーチしたりシェアしたりするのだろうか。またどのようなユニークなツールを、旅行業界の強力なプラットフォームとして彼らは採用しているのだろうか。

旅行が簡単にオンラインで予約出来たりなど、デジタル化の進んでいる日本・中国を中心にWebメディアの活用法は、昨今急速に変わりつつあります。

カスタマー同士のやりとりが、カスタマーの満足へ

昨今、有名どころの大手旅行会社のWebサイトでは、マーケティング上でも鍵を握るコンテンツの多くが旅行者のクチコミや写真など、ユーザーから投稿されたコンテンツを中心に構成されている様子を見ることが出来ます。

こういった旅行者たちの実際の経験談が、潜在的な旅行ニーズを強力に引き出し、また旅先のブランディングや、交通状況にも影響してきます。そして影響された人たちはまた、自らの旅の思い出をソーシャルメディアへ投稿し、次へ繋げるという好循環を生み出していきます。

ここに2つの興味深い成功例をご紹介したいと思います。
ExpediaとTripAdvisorという旅行検討・予約サイトです。全く違ったアプローチをしています。

Expediaには、カスタマーが旅行プラン検討中に、リアルタイムで質問に答えてくれるお問い合わせ専門スタッフが常駐しています。またTripAdvisorには、ユーザーがこれまで行ったことのある場所やこれから行きたいと思っている場所をを記録し、友達に共有できるFacebookアプリを持っています。

またダニーブラウン氏は、トロントに本拠地をおくFour Seasonsを、ソーシャルメディアをうまく活用している大手ホテルブランドのひとつだと紹介しています。YOU TUBEを活用した動画配信や、Twitterのような簡易ブログツール、FacebookやiPhoneアプリ上では、Four Seasonsのファンページを設けています。

ソーシャルメディアの活用で万事OKというわけではない。

ソーシャルメディアをうまく活用し成功するには、リアルタイム性がありかつ相互にメリットをもたらすことがとても重要です。しかし昨今、ソーシャルメディアでユーザーをつのったものの、継続することが出来ず放置され、ユーザーがおざなりにされているケースが多々見受けられます。

データでもこの現状は明らかとなっています。
5月上旬、Water$Stoneは、アジア旅行者でFacebookに登録した人の41％、Twitterに登録した人の20%が30日以内にログインしなくなり、更新が途絶えていることがわかったと報じた。

それゆえ、ソーシャルメディアの活用はアカウントを作成してもらった後が重要なのだ。有効な基盤をソーシャルメディア上に築くには、それらを乗り越えるに値するだけのブランド力と、長期的な投資が必要になるのです。

ブランド力って？

ブランド力とは、御社がカスタマーに対して持ってもらいたいイメージや感覚のことを指します。

メジャーなブランド力のあるサイトに訪れると、更新頻度の高いブログや、Twitterのフォロワーたちを活用した有効なソーシャルメディアの基盤を整えています。こういった事例をより知り活用すること、長期的な革新や成功を手に入れていくことができるでしょう。

ビートラックス社には、社内スタッフがこういった取り組みをしていきたいクライアントに対して、調査や支援しているため、結果に繋がるノウハウや実績があります。戦略と実践の積み重ねが、ソーシャルメディアやコミュニティを成長させていき、効果的な結果を生み出すための重要なポイントとなります。

Travel2.0の世界では、ユーザー達が旅先での体験や発見が、オリジナリティあふれるコンテンツを創り出してくれるのです。

よい旅を！

Image by Bethany Mann

Last week DeNA and Yahoo! Japan announced that they will launch Yahoo! Mobage this summer as a PC based game. The two companies believe combining the platform for Mobage-town (more than 18 million registered members) with Yahoo! Japan’s strength and ability to attract customers with the DeNA’s game development and operational expertise offers the opportunity for major marketing and development synergies.

Akky Akimoto at Asiajin stated “If you see by stock value, Yahoo! Japan and DeNA are No.1 and No.3 among Japanese web companies among listed. Even though the number of registered user is ranked 3rd, after social after social network competitors Mixi and Gree.”

Mixi, GREE, Mobage-town – Japan’s top three social networking services have either already opened or decided to open their platforms to third-party developers in the last few months. This has certainly caused a lot of buzz in the Japan Social gaming sector.

Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat exclusively reported on April 26 that “Zynga, the maker of FarmVille and other popular social games, is preparing for an alliance with Japan’s Softbank investment firm as a way to break into the fast -growing Japanese market.”, Japan is seeing significant growth in social gaming, even the U.S. shows signs of a slowdown.”

In March, Serkan Toto of Asiajin reported that a company called Index “will not only translate in-game texts, buttons etc. but also provide help in re-designing games to make them more appealing for Japanese customers” signaling a business pull to Japan social gaming.

DeNA has seen a 136% jump in operating profit and record revenue.

Because of our strong Japan to U.S. market experience, the btrax team helped bring DeNA’s popular Japanese Mobage Town to U.S. audiences through some localization work. Here its Mobage Town is called MobaMingle.

Due to the rise of Facebook games like Farmville combined with surging iPhone game app sales, MobageMingle has not yet attracted the same attention in the U.S. as its Japanese counterpart.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that DeNA is pushing the PC version in Japan where mobile dominates. Maybe a strategic chess move to establish a stronger beachhead in the U.S.?

DeNA can take advantage of a high Nielsen-rated partner like Yahoo! Japan to get the word out, but will users jump on board their product?  Let’s watch this one closely.

Follow btrax on twitter (@btraxinc) and facebook

 Contact Greg Viloria, here or on twitter (@SocialMktgMgrSf) and LinkedIn

Larry Page & Sergey Brin | Art by Graziano Origa

As people have gradually built more of their life on Internet platforms, the accumulation of wealth has shifted from manufacturing magnates and media barons to tech entrepreneurs – all under the age  of 50. The top 15 Internet and computing related billionaires according to the latest Forbes ranking.

1. Larry Page
$17.5 billion (37 yrs old) Page is the co-founder of Google and an American computer engineer.

2. Sergey Brin
$17.5 billion (36 yrs old) Brin is also the co-founded Google, the largest internet company in the world. Page and Brin are referred to as the “Google Guys”

3.Michael Dell
$13.5 billion (45 yrs old) founder and CEO of Dell, Inc

4. Jeffrey Bezos
$12.3bn (46 yrs old) Bezos used to be a financial analyst before he founded Amazon.com in 1994.

5. Pierre Omidyar
$5.2 billion (42 yrs old) Omidyar founded eBay in 1995 when he was 28 years old, which has become the most popular shopping site on the Internet.

6. Mark Zuckerberg
$4 billion (25 yrs old) Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, the most popular social networking site that started in 2004. At age 25, he is the youngest Internet billionaire in the world.

7. Robin Li
$3.5 billion (41 yrs old) Li is the co-founder of China’s most popular search site, Baidu. He is twice as rich he was in 2008, and Baidu’s stock is raising 281% in the last 12 months.

8. Jeffrey Skoll
$2.4 billion (45 yrs old) Skoll was the full time employee and first president of eBay. He is no longer involved with the company; he now focuses on producing films related to social and environmental actions.

9. James Balsillie
$2.3 billion (49 yrs old) Balsillie is cofounder of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, which is perceived as business-user oriented.

10. Shi Yuzhu
$1.6 billion (46 yrs old) Yuzhu founded Giant Interaction in 2005 and it has become very successful. It is one of the most popular online game companies in China.

11. Yoshikazu Tanaka
$1.4 billion (33 yrs old) Tanaka is the world second youngest self-made billionaire after Mark Zuckerberg. He left Rakuten in 1994 (the most popular online shopping site in Japan), and he started his fortune on social networking site called Gree.

12. Jerry Yang
$1.3 billion (41 yrs old) co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo!. He is currently on the Board of Directors of Alibaba and is also on the Stanford University Board of Trustees.

13. Marc Benioff
$1.3 billion (45 yrs old) Benioff was born and raised in San Francisco. Benioff started Salesforce.com in 1999 in San Francisco, and Salesforce.com has raised 140% over the past year.

14. Peter Thiel
$1.2 billion (42 yrs old) Thiel co-founded and was the CEO of PayPal. He was an investor in Facebook, and he is currently on Facebook’s board of directors.

15. Jack Ma
$1.2 billion (45 yrs old) is the founder, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group. Yahoo has become one of the investor when Alibaba went public in 2007.

Following up on our blog post about Japan’s Top Ten Websites (by overall traffic), we wanted to highlight some important alternative rankings for hot sites that illuminate the direction Japanese audiences are heading towards.

Naturally, Alexa is not the last word in ranking what sites are the most popular, given the complex variables at play. Nielsen’s Net Ratings found  interesting results for Top 10 Most Popular SNS Websites in Japan, published on CNET Japan:

1.  Ameblo.jp – 21. 2 million users
2. Livedoor.com (blog platform) – 18.6 million users
3. @nifty homepage (portal similar to Yahoo) – 16 million users
4. OCN (portal similar to Yahoo) – 13.7 million users
5. Seesaa (blog platform) – 13.1 million users
6. Yahoo.co.jp (Yahoo’s blog platform) – 13 million users
7. Infoseek isweb (website creator service) – 12.3 million users
8. @nifty kokorogu (blog platform) – 12.2 million users
9. ２channel (anonymous forum site) -  11.8 million users
10. Hatena (photo album, diary and social bookmarking site) – 11.7 million users

In this ranking Mixi surprisingly falls out of the top 10, notching only 15% of the SNS users while Ameblo and Livedoor reach more than 30% of users. Even Hatena has nearly 20%. This reinforces Japan’s reputation as being the world’s top blogging culture.

By comparison,  about 62% of internet users in Korea uses Cyworld and about 56% of internet users in the U.S. and Australia uses Facebook. So it is possible for the most popular sites to capture more than half of all Internet users in a whole country, although Japan has not reached that point yet.

Online Culture Differences
Americans are used to thinking about popularity in terms of English language brand giants like Google and eBay, but abroad many of those big names are sideshows.

To illuminate that, a few weeks ago we ranked the Top Ten Most Popular Websites in China. This week we turn our attention to Japan and what sites Alexa lists as the online hotspots there.

Similar to China, search engines and infotainment web portal sites are the biggest players, while only one online shopping site broke the Top 10. However,  Japanese social network leader Mixi  should be at the top if Japanese users behaved as Chinese users, but instead Mixi lags at #8.

This further highlights the ways Chinese and Japanese culture, entrepreneurship, and online business are different – a caution sign to anyone lumping them together in their branding or marketing plans.

Japan’s Top 10 Traffic Ranking

1. Yahoo.co.jp
Yahoo is much stronger in Japan then Google – the global percentage of Internet users who visit yahoo.co.jp is about 5 % daily. Much of this stems from the popularity of Yahoo’s sub-brand sites such as Yahoo! Auction (Japan’s #1 auction site), Yahoo! Travel, and Yahoo! Weather.

2. Google.co.jp
Google’s multilingual search engine has not risen substantially in popularity over the years, despite several attempts to raise its profile in Japan. Yahoo’s quicker market entry and focus on partnership building helped Yahoo! Japan establish a decisive foundation. However, Google Map’s street view launch in 2009 did much to boost their appeal in Japan.

3. fc2.com
A free and easy to use website creation and blog hosting company. Hovering somewhere between Big Daddy and Blogger FC2 has stealthy crept upward in the rankings beating out companies that have much better brand recognition to break the top 3.

4. Youtube.com
YouTube is an area Google has had success in, managing to dislodge the native video website NicoNico Douga, which suffered due to copyright issues that YouTube was faster to contain and solve. The percent of global Internet users who visit youtube.com daily is about 23% and 8% of those are Japanese Youtube site visits.

5. Rakuten.co.jp
Rakuten is like Amazon and eBay rolled into one – the juggernaut is Japan’s focal point for ecommerce and has made its founder Hiroshi Mikitani one of the top ten Internet billionaires. The portal now boasts 30,000 stores and over 7 million registered users. Rakuten also has strong sub-brands such as Rakuten Travel and Rakuten Finance.

6. Ameblo.jp
A Japanese free blog site that has been quick to innovate as new trends have cropped up. In December 2o09 it launched Ameba Now, a micro-blogging platform to compete with Twitter Japan, and just launched in March 2010 its Flash-based avatar app for Facebook called Ameba Pico.

7. Livedoor.com
It is said over  three million Japanese use livedoor blog site.Percent of global Internet users who visit livedoor.com is close to 1.2% daily. This search engine and information portal became famous primarily due to ex-CEO Takafumi Horie.

8. Mixi.jp
Japan’s native and most popular social networking site has easily maintained its lead over Facebook (ranked #31), despite Facebook’s technical prowess. Facebook is a prime example of a company that waited too long to jump into the Japanese market and has struggled nightly against Mixi’s position.

However, Facebook’s influence is finally being seen at Mixi, which made the rare move of altering its business model by opening up their community to outside app developers, albeit in a limited way. In 2009 Mixi introduced social gaming, which have helped it stay on top as the #1 social networking site in Japan.

9. Google.com
When you search Google.com in Japanese using only Chinese-derived characters, you hardly find any Japanese sites in the results. Given that expats only make up a fraction of Japan’s population, this means Japanese are conducting searches in English at a high rate, something also reflected in China.  The percent of global Internet users who visit google.com is about 30-42% daily.

10. Wikipedia.org
The Japanese are some of the most loyal users and avid editors of Wikipedia with over 40% accessing the site every week.

Photo by by heavylift