Mixi: Japan’s social network

Posted on December 20th, 2007 by Shunichi Arai

Mixi logo

[Update 2011-03-08] Mixi was passed by Gree in 2010, and likely to be passed by Mobage Town, too. See this.

Mixi is the biggest social network service in Japan.(was the biggest until summer 2010). It has 11 million users so far. It’s a phenomenon. Before Mixi, the Web was not attractive enough for non-techie people. Mixi changed that. Mixi changed the daily social life of Japanese people.

Batara Eto – an intern from Indonesia – proposed the project to clone Friendster in 2003. He developed the site in the next few month. The site was named ‘mixi’. It’s quite a remarkable example which shows the diversity of the workforce is the key to success.

Mixi is not very different from Friendster, but there is a small but significant difference from Friendster or Orkut. Mixi has a blogging feature. It really helps to keep users visiting the site. Mixi is actually a social blogging tool.

The company’s name is ‘mixi’ too. Its former name was ‘e-mercury’ but the name was changed to ‘mixi’ after the huge success of the service. Initially, the company was founded as an Internet job agency. The job agency service, ‘find job’, is a quite profitable business too.

The founder Kenji Kasahara is a young quiet person. He looks like an introvert ‘Otaku’ kind of person. Probably he’s a much more acceptable role model for the younger Japanese generation than aggressive Livedoor or Rakuten founders.

See also: (in English)

  1. A Mashable article about mixi
  2. FY2007 Q1 Earnings Results Briefing Session(April-June 2007)
  3. A Financial Times article – September 14 2006

Mixi (as of Oct. 2007)

  • Type: Public (2121)
  • Founded: Jun. 3rd 1999
  • Went public: Sep. 14th 2006
  • Sales: 5.2 billion yen ($45 million)
  • Profit: 1.1 billion yen ($9.6 million)
  • Users: 11 million
  • Page views: 11.75 billion / month
  • People: CEO, Kenji Kasahara
  • People: CTO, Batara Eto (born 1979, formerly known as Batara Kesuma)

Note: Batara Eto will resign from the post in December 2007.

Shunichi Arai

Shunichi Arai is developing a product for his new stealth startup. Arai devotes his life to software business, reading, and salsa dancing. Arai also loves to learn other cultures and languages such as Korean.

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