By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
There have been various attempts at establishing a business social networking service in Japan in the past years, but none of these have taken off. In September 2007, LinkedIn inked a deal with Tokyo-based web company Digital Garage to bring the service to Japan, but that never happened (LinkedIn...
Currently, it’s 1.5 million people: ;. Facebook translated its UI into Japanese in 2008. For Facebook, Japan is one of the few remaining white spaces on the world map, next to South Korea, Russia, and China (where it’s blocked). By way of comparison: Japan’s homegrown social...
Inception and general approach: You can broadly say that Facebook first copied Friendster (the CEO openly admits this) before going over to Facebook on a regular basis (apps, share function, like function, LBS, real-time elements, feed system, Mixi Connect etc.). Mixi today is Japan’s only...
Here is the link to a column I wrote on Twitter Japan for the journal for the American Chamber Of Commerce in Japan. Excerpt: The social networking and micro-blogging service Twitter is quite a phenomenon. Created four years ago in the U.S., the site quickly developed into one of the trendiest...
Foursquare doesn’t break down country-specific numbers, but anecdotally speaking, it’s pretty big. Some hints: Some months ago, I read in an interview (with the CEO, I think) that Tokyo is one of the cities with the most check-ins worldwide. (Sorry, can’t find it now) The API is...
Here is the link to a column I wrote on the race between Facebook Japan and Mixi for the journal for the American Chamber Of Commerce in Japan. Excerpt: A platitude often proffered regarding doing business in Japan is that pursuing a one-size-fits-all internationalization strategy mostly results in...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry