Riding Social Media’s Growth in Japan
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)
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