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Japan: Internet Landscape
On this page:
- Overview
- Statistics
- Internet usage
- Search engines
- Social networking
- Microblogging
| Overview |
Number of netizens: 90.91 million (end 2008)
Internet penetration: 75.3%
Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, Japan
Japan is ranked 3rd in the world when it comes to number of internet users, falling behind only to China and US who occupy the 1st and 2nd positions respectively. In the 2009 Global Broadband Quality Study sponsored by Cisco and conducted by University of Oxford's Saïd Business School and University of Oviedo’s Department of Applied Economics, Japan was ranked 2nd in the world, surpassed only by South Korea. The study also did a ranking of cities with the highest BQS (Broadband Quality Score) in the world and Japan stood out with the most cities in the top 20.
- Yokohama (1st place)
- Nagoya (2nd place)
- Sapporo (4th place)
- Osaka (7th place)
- Tokyo (18th place)
Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication
| Statistics |
Internet Usage  Source: comScore releases top Japan website rankings | According to the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), 73% of all internet users use both personal computers and mobile terminals to connect to the Internet. In 2005, the number of wireless users in Japan accessing the internet, surpassed the number of PC users. Recent reports suggest that even more Japanese will access the internet through mobile devices. According to "The Face of the Web," a study by market researcher Ipso Insight, Japan is the world's foremost Internet-based economy, with nearly nine in 10 people using the Internet every 30 days, and users averaging nearly 14 hours per week online. In a survey conducted by comScore in June 2008, the following sites were ranked the top 10 most visited websites in Japan. |
| Search Engines  Source: Yahoo! attracts more than half of all searches in Japan | Search engines form an integral part in determining the accessibility of users to websites. The accompanying graph depicts the popularity of search engines in Japan. According to Motoko Hunt, who provides Japanese search marketing services in the US, Europe and Asia, online search has become the primary source of information in Japan and everyone goes online to research products and services that they consider purchasing. In contrast to other countries, however, many Japanese people use mobile search. It is important to note that the Japanese search using the language of the country of origin, while generic terms are searched using Japanese characters in most cases. Japanese brands such as Sony and Panasonic are typed in Japanese characters, whereas a search for white paper in English will be done using English keywords. Read an interview with Motoko Hunt on search engine optimization. Source: Motoko Hunt on search engine optimization in Japan |
| Social Networking  Source: Japan's Facebook usuage  the most time spent website ranking Oct. 2009 *column:ranking/name of service/ total amount of time spent/ total user/number of visit per person(from left) Source: IT media | Social networks are an essential component of the online experience, especially in a conformist country like Japan. The table below shows the most popular social networks in Japan, along with the user growth from 2007 to 2008. However, unline other popular western social networks, most profiles and identities on social netowrking platforms in Japan are purely virtual. The early promises of a new, open social frontier, akin to the identity-centric world of Facebook and MySpace in the U.S., have been replaced by a realm where people stay safely within their circles of friends and few reveal themselves to strangers. People rarely give their first names to those they don't know well, changing the entire scope of SNS in Japan. This penchant for invisibility in the Japanese social media scene has made it hard for Western social networks to establish themselves. Belated forays into the Japanese market by Facebook Inc. and News Corp.'s MySpace, for instance, have failed to generate much of a buzz. However, Mixi, which blended itself into this closed Japanese culture from the very start, by keeping itself a closed, by invitation-only, friends-only network, ranks foremost in popularity and usage in Japan. Source: Japan's online social scene isn't so social In 2009, Japanese SNS service provider (mixi, GREE, DeNA) installed social game system. Thanks to that, they developed their service a lot. In case of mixi, it ranked as second time-spent web site in October. (exceeded Youtube) Source: IT media |
| Blogging The Washington post described the Japanese as "blog wild", given their dominance of the blogosphere. Although English speakers outnumber Japanese speakers by more than 5:1, slightly more blog postings are written in Japanese than in English, according to Technorati, the Internet search engine that monitors the blogosphere. By some estimates, as much as 40% of Japanese blogging is done on mobile phones, often by commuters staring cross-eyed at tiny screens for hours as they ride the world's most extensive network of subways and commuter trains. Blogging in Japan, though, is a far tamer beast than in the United States and the rest of the English-speaking world. Japan's conformist culture has embraced a technology that Americans often use for abrasive self-promotion and refashioned it as a soothingly nonconfrontational medium for getting along. Bloggers in Japan shy away from politics and barbed language. They rarely trumpet their expertise. While Americans blog to stand out, the Japanese do it to fit in, blogging about small stuff: cats and flowers, bicycles and breakfast, gadgets and TV stars. Compared with Americans, they write at less length, they write anonymously, and they write a whole lot more often. As Technorati puts it, "In Japan, it is not socially acceptable to pursue fame." According to the Technorati 2007 "State of the Blogosphere" report, Japanese is the #1 blogging language in the world, accounting for 37% of all blog entries posted on the Internet. English accounts for only 36% of all blog posts. Source: Japan's bloggers: humble giants on the web Japan market intelligence: Taking blogging to the streets |  ameba: one of the biggest blog service provider |
| Microblogging The advent on Twitter in 2006 saw Japan latch on very quickly to micro-blogging. Microblogs allow short posts, usually up to about 140 characters, somewhat like instant status updates. They are designed to give people following your posts a quick insight into what you are up to and have more of a feeling of a public conversation than a blog post. When Twitter noticed the heavy number of Japanese users on Twitter, they decided to launch an exclusive Twitter Japan webpage in 2008. Today, Tokyo is the most active city in the world for this microblog market leader. In fact, Twitter entered Japan with a different business model than its English webpage.Twitter Japan features an innovative advertising space and encourages companies to create Twitter profiles, Twitter feeds and Twitter fanbases. In the accompanying video, Joi Ito from Twitter Japan talks about Twitter's foray into the Japanese market. Source: Understanding the social media landscape in Japan Twitter actually makes money in Japan Since 2009, micro blogging has boomed rapidly. And In 2010, it revealed that about 50% of tweet uses languages other than English and Japanese is the second most used language on Twitter. (14%) Source: IT media | |
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Latest page update: made by kenichinishimura
, Mar 24 2010, 9:08 AM EDT
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