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
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by
Tim
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.
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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
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by
Tim
This weekend thousands of J-Pop fans celebrated the much anticipated opening of San Francisco’s gleaming NEW PEOPLE J-Pop Center.
The shopping and entertainment complex aims to become North America’s epicenter for Japanese fashion, design, art and cinema. Celebrations included a traditional sake drum breaking, Lolita fashion show and movie premiere for 20th Century Boys that brought out the crowds.
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by
Tim
Hitachi’s ZoomSight is a tool to help those with low vision or difficulty in distinguishing between colors to browse website content more quickly and conveniently.
Features:
- Zoom Scale
Magnifies text and pictures from 50% to 300% for better readability, especially useful for the elderly
- Display Color
Black on White, White on Black and Invert Color options all make it easier for users to read content depending on the user’s specific sight impairment
- Text-To-Speech
Reads out web pages using a sophisticated synthetic speech engine
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Special events at AT & T Park
Home of the San Francisco Giants, AT & T Park is located right on the water and is a one of a kind, beautiful ball park with a spectacular view of the Bay. Each season the Giants put on specially themed promotions for various groups, everything from “Irish Heritage Night” to nights for knitters, firefighters, you name it.
This year’s Japanese event featured the only San Francisco appearance this season of the New York Mets, who are actually pretty hot this year. btrax’s office is located only one block away from the park, so we decided to go cheer the Giants on after work and bring home some cool sake sets, courtesy of Kikkoman.
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3F – Gallery
2F – Retail Stores
M – NEW PEOPLE Store
1F – Cafe
B – VIZ Cinema
VIZ Pictures
Japantown’s New Look
New People is a 20,000 square foot, striking, contemporary building located at 1746 Post Street in the heart of San Francisco’s Japantown (one of only three remaining in the country). As a new destination and source of stimulation for both San Francisco locals and tourists, New People will bring a new cultural energy to an area filled with history.
With three stories above and a basement below, New People will share Japanese cinema, retail and art, all under one roof. New people will attract those eager explore new cultural inspirations or who would like a crash course in Japanese popular culture.
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by
Tim
The Live Audio Recording Question
btrax often gets requests involving recording and publishing voice using a computer’s microphone – from people such as educators and musicians.
Given all the demand for tools to create, edit and distribute images or videos, it would seem a third-party solution for audio would already exist.
But amazingly no one seems to have tried since Odeo (previously run by the Twitter founders Evan Williams, Jack Doresey and Biz Stone) gave up on recording podcasts and reverted to being a multimedia playlist portal four years back.
Odeo used Adobe Flash technology, which has since become even more sophisticated.
Solutions Outside the English Sphere
It turns out my mistake was researching for solutions only in English. Once I started digging around search engines in Japanese I found a fantastic voice recording and publishing start-up called Koebu.com.
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A Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) survey of 864 foreign companies in Japan last fall revealed 63%said they plan to expand their business in Japan. Their plans for scaling up revolve around sales and ramping up production capacity. This growth comes at the same time as Japan is facing a lack of skilled workers due to decades of low birthrates, lengthening lifespans and a huge population rapidly approaching retirement age.
by
Tim
According to the Ministry of Finance Japan foreign direct investment will reach 15 trillion yen by fall 2008 and is projected to hit the government’s goal of 5% of GDP by 2010. U.S. firms and investors account for 57% of the total influx of investment.
by
Tim
