By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
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...
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...
GREE has announced a wide-reaching partnership with Dentsu, one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world. What’s interesting is that the alliance is supposed to bolster GREE’s internationalization efforts (and they do need every bit of help they can get in that area). In...
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...
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...
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...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry