Nikkei Business Online is reporting that Kenji Kasahara is ready to sell his 55% stake in Mixi (it’s not unusual for Japanese CEOs to hold such a large percentage of their companies, even after multiple rounds of funding and an IPO). To make it clear: this is just a rumor at this point, and Japan’s…
CyberAgent‘s Ameba platform is becoming more and more popular. In their most recent financial report, the company has released some pretty interesting stats on how the blogging/social networking service grew over the last months in Japan. Monthly page views hit 36 billion in March – more than those of Mixi (click to enlarge): The number…
LINE, a smartphone messenger app made by NHN Japan, the Tokyo-based subsidiary of the Korean web powerhouse, continues to amaze. The app, which makes it possible for users to call or message each other for free, now boasts a whopping 30 million users – just after hitting 20 million last month. It has 13.5 million…
LinkedIn surely faces an uphill battle in Japan, the country with the long list of business social networks that failed, but the company is trying. After rolling out a version with Japanese UI, establishing an office in Tokyo, and launching a special “navigation” service specifically for local users, the service’s position has improved, but it’s nowhere…
Mixi, Japan’s biggest social network (still), is getting more serious about social commerce: the company has entered a partnership with Mobage operator DeNA to launch Mixi Mall. The social commerce platform was pre-announced back in January. DeNA is bringing in its experience in running a popular mobile and PC retail site (“bidders”, which has 8 million…
Facebook reached an important milestone: the company’s Tokyo subsidiary today announced that the number of active Japanese users on Facebook users hit 10 million (active=logged in at least once per month). In other words, 10% of Japan’s web population is actively using Facebook. The number of registered users should be much higher, probably 15+ million….
Mixi released their financial report for the third quarter of fiscal 2011 (October to December 2011), and things aren’t looking too good for Japan’s largest social network. Sales, for example, went down 2.7% year-on-year to 3.447 billion yen (US$45 million), while operating profit plunged 50.5% to 535 million yen (US$7 million). By way of comparison: GREE’s…
Japan’s biggest real-identity social network Mixi and Mobage operator DeNA have announced an e-commerce partnership. The companies are in the process of setting up an online shopping service for Mixi members that’s scheduled to start in late March this year. The idea here is to combine Mixi’s tight social graph (only close, real friends are usually…