I had my doubts about Facebook Japan‘s growth recently, but now Javier Olivan (Head Of International Growth at Facebook), confirmed that Facebook is growing quite nicely in Japan indeed.
In an interview with Nikkei Trendy, Olivan said that
- Facebook’s growth in Japan has been “very promising” lately (he said Facebook doesn’t break down country-specific numbers)
- Facebook tries to fit the Japanese online culture
- Facebook has translated its UI into Japanese, opened an office in Tokyo, launched a job search service within Facebook and released a dedicated mobile website specifically for Japanese feature phones to meet demand
- he expects Japanese web users to reveal their real names online, which is very important for social commerce, for example
- he expects Japanese social game makers to publish more games on Facebook in the future
- he expects more and more “normal users” (not early adopters) in Japan to use Facebook
