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Japan: Social Media

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An Overview
Online Advertising
Blogging
Microblogging
Social Networking
The Japanese Social Prism

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An Overview
The image on the left shows a brief history of social media landscape in Japan since 1987. Social media in Japan consists primarily Internet and mobile-based tools or platforms for sharing and discussing information. Given the high Internet and mobile penetration rates in Japan, several companies are moving online and mobile as the primary means to engage their consumers.

Online Advertising
In their 2008 report, Dentsu found that traditional media advertising had gone down by 7.6% but online advertising gained 16.3%. Growth is especially high for search engine advertising due to greater focus on cost-effectiveness and the launching of cross-media approaches. Mobile advertising also rose significantly because of the robust mobile market in Japan. Total spending on Internet advertising has hit ¥698.3 billion.
Search Engine Advertising Search engine advertising rose 22.9% from 2007 to 2008, to ¥157.5 billion, the highest growth rate in the Internet advertising market. Despite the fluctuations in the economy, ad placements were strong among advertisers focused on its cost-effectiveness. Cross-media advertising also become widely established, in which a user is prompted by a television commercial or other media announcement to conduct a search.
Mobile Advertising Mobile advertising has grown 47.0% from 2007 to 2008, to ¥91.3 billion. due to the widespread adoption of 3G mobile phones and fixed rate services, the mobile advertising market has become increasingly brisk. This has provided an environment for users to enjoy rich media content and a range of services targeting young people with iPhone and other smartphones. The recognition of the mobile Internet as an effective advertising medium has encouraged its use in mass campaigns by national advertisers, and advertising utilizing social networking services (SNS) and a variety of other fields continues to burgeon.

Source: Dentsu

Blogging
	Japanese Champions the Blogosphere According to the Technorati’s State of Live Web 2007 report, the top three languages used in the Blogosphere are Japanese, English and Chinese. · Japanese – 37% · English – 26% · Chinese – 8% · Italian – 3% · Spanish – 3% · Russian – 2% · French – 2% · Portuguese – 2% · German – 1% · Farsi – 1% · Others – 5% These figures were based on a total of 70 million blogs in the blogosphere. This means that 25.9 million blogs are written in Japanese while the total population in Japan in 2007 is 127.8 million (The Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd, 2008). Assuming that all Japanese blogs are written by the Japanese, that is a whooping 20.26% of Japan that blogs or own blogs! Source:Technorati’s State of Live Web 2007 report
Japanese are the most frequent blog readers, beating South Korea and the U.S. From The Edelman International Blogging Study: Japan, the average Japanese blogger reads blogs 4.54 days in a week and Japanese influencers (bloggers who are generally more influential; exact definition can be found via the source link) read blogs 4.62 days in a week. Both figures are at least double that of South Korea, UK, France and US. From the figure, you can also see that Japan’s blogosphere has a greater percentage of blog-readers than the other listed countries. Source:Edelman international blogging study
Online Behavior: Most Japanese are Spectators In Spring 2008, the MIT Sloan Management Review also found that Japan has the highest blog readership of 52%, which doubles that of US and is five times that of UK. Blog reading also seems like the favourite online activity of Japanese bloggers, outdoing activities like reading reviews and rating and participating in discussion forums. From the top three favourite Japanese online activities i.e. read blogs, read ratings/review and participate in discussion forums, we can observe that the Japanese prefer to engage in visiting and spectating behaviors than generating their own content i.e. write blogs and post ratings and reviews. Source:MIT Sloan Management Review (independent research paper unavailable online)

Microblogging
Twitter
Twitter is the leading micro-blogging site in Japan. Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates (say, 140charactersor fewer) ormicromediasuch as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, includingtext messaging,instant messaging,email,MP3orthe web.
Twitter 2009 in Japanese, its first foreign language platform Since the birth of microblogging in 2006, Twitter has gained popularity in Japan and other parts of the world. Before, Twitter was a purely english platform. In Oct 2009, Twitter decided to launch its first foreign language platform in response to the growing demands of the Japanese population. Not surprisingly, the platform is friendly to cell phone users. Twitter collaborated with a local internet firm Digital Garage Inc. early in 2008 and their survey showed that 95% of Japanese twitters use their mobile phones to access Twitter. As Japanese folks are not good at talking to strangers directly, they will have to come up with creative ways to engage Japanese twitters. For example, Daichi Ito, an online editor, decided to liven up Friday nights by inventing a hashtag #twinomi (twitter combined with “drink” in Japanese) to allow people to tweet about their beverage of the moment and any random thoughts. Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons and board member of Digital Garage Inc., talks about the Japanese Twitter platform, localization of foreign Web products and the microblogging culture in Japan in an interview. He mentions that Twitters mechanism was designed to have a large SMS component, which appeals to the mobile-savvy Japanese audience. He also said that the Japanese market is usually ignored by companies as it is difficult to penetrate but by the time they decide to enter Japan, it might be too late or there are other similar service providers already. Twitter might be taking a chance in Japan now, but they might enjoy first movers’ advantage now. For now, Twitter seems to hold promise as it seems to be able to gain significant acceptance by the Japanese market, which has not been as welcoming to the other popular U.S.-based social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. However, only time can tell whether Twitter will succeed in Japan or not. Source: The JapanTimes Online
TwitVideo – A Window of Possibility in Japan TwitVideo is a third party service provider that is not affiliated to Twitter. It is a new application available in Japan, where users can upload video via computer or mobile. The application is not available to other markets presently and was influenced by the high video consumption of the Japanese consumers. Although there does not seem to be news about integrating video into the Twitter platform, it might be a matter of time before a third party detects this opening. Adrian Roche of OgilvyOne Japan said, “This is a good idea as it amplifies local Twitter penetration. Tweets don’t necessarily have to be constrained to text, so I see this as having interesting potential.” Source: Pat McCarthy, editor of WOMMA

Social Networking
Mixi About a quarter of Japanese online users participate in social networking sites. Mixi, currently Japan's biggest social network, became the first to tap on Japan's blogging craze by adding a social element to it. In June 2008, Mixi accounted for 12.4 million, or 41%, of the 31 million unique visitors for all social networking sites in Japan, according to research firm comScore. MySpace was a distant second, with 1.2 million visitors, followed by Google-owned Orkut's 638,000 and Facebook's 538,000.
Mixi trashes Facebook and MySpace in Japan According to comScore’s findings in 2008, Mixi has 50 times more unique users than MySpace and 100 times that of Facebook (table 1). Mixi also outdid Facebook and MySpace in the frequency of visits and duration per visit by Japanese users (table 2). A distinct advantage of Mixi in Japan is the provision of a mobile platform for Mixi; A huge part of the Japanese online user-base accesses the internet and engages in social networking via their cell phones. Although Facebook’s appeal to the Japanese audience tripled since it launched its Japanese platform, Mixi still beats it probably due to its specialization in the Japanese language platform and exclusivity as you can only join the network upon invite from a Mixi member. Advertisers in Japan may want to place their money in Mixi, which appeals to a greater local audience.	Table 1 Table 2

Source: comScore

The Japanese Social Media Prism

H. Yoshikawa, Y. Yamagichi, and T. Nakamura created the Japanese Social Media Prism based on the concept presented at www.briansolis.com. Each Flower petal represents a Online Media Service Category (each petal represents a category with its title beside it). The better-known services are placed nearer the outer circumference of each petal. This prism is being maintained constantly to accommodate changes in the social media sphere in Japan, so please be sure to visit the original blog post for the most recent version of the prism. Source: Asiajin

Traditional Media	Technology Implications	Technology Penetration

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Traditional Media Technology Implications Technology Penetration

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