Mochio Umeda lives in the Bay Area but he is very influential in Japan. His best selling book, ‘Web Shinkaron’, was excitedly accepted by business people. His word is straight-forward and impassioned. He describes what is Google, what is the Web 2.0, what is open source. Those things were not well understood by the Japanese… Continue reading Mochio Umeda – Japan’s leading web visionary
Day: October 29, 2007
Rakuten: online shopping monopoly
Rakuten is a giant. Rakuten group has an Internet shopping mall ‘Rakuten‘, a hotel reservation site ‘Rakuten Travel’, ‘Rakuten Securities’, ‘Rakuten Credit Card’ and so on. Rakuten has $1.72 billion annual sales. The mall and the travel agent has the biggest share of their markets like Amazon did on the book market. Mikitani started his… Continue reading Rakuten: online shopping monopoly
Hatena: a web company with geekish tastes
Hatena started its business in 2001 with Jinriki Kensaku Hatena (similar to Yahoo! Answers). They have released 16 services so far (as of 2007) and became a famous role model of a geek company in Japan. As a private company, their financial statement is veiled. Their announced number of users reached 400,000+ in April 2006.… Continue reading Hatena: a web company with geekish tastes