Q&A: What is the Japanese equivalent of [Western web service]?

Posted on July 25th, 2008 by Serkan Toto

Here is a list of where Japanese users usually go on the web when they want to connect with their friends, buy something or get information. I feature “made-in-Japan” sites and software only (well, almost), knowing that i.e. Google, Amazon and Firefox are highly popular in this country as well.

Some of these Japanese sites are also available in English. I linked to the English versions whenever possible and marked them with [ENG].

Note: This list is highly subjective. If you have other ideas, please let us know in the comment section.

I) General web services

What is the Japanese equivalent of Google?
Yahoo! Japan.

Wikipedia?
Wikipedia Japan.

Facebook?
Mixi.

Flickr?
Yahoo! Japan Photos.

Digg?
Minna no Topics (Everyone’s topics).

LinkedIn?
No equivalent.

Twitter?
Twitter Japan.

Youtube?
Nico Nico Douga.

Amazon?
Rakuten.

delicio.us?
Hatena Bookmark. [ENG]

dooyoo (price comparison engine)?
Kakaku.com.

Netflix?
Posren.

Craigslist?
No equivalent.

imdb (Internet Movie Database)?
Nihon Eiga Database (Japan Movie Database).

Wall Street Journal Online?
Nikkei Online. [ENG]

monster.com?
Rikunavi.

Ebay?
Yahoo! Japan Auctions.

Alexa?
Pathtraq.

4chan?
2 channel (the original).

last.fm?
Mixi Music (registration required).

Technorati?
Kizasi.

Second Life?
Meet me.

Yahoo! Answers?
Oshiete!goo and Yahoo! Chiebukuro.

II) Blogs

What is the Japanese equivalent of Techcrunch?
Asiajin. [ENG]….Joke, people!

the Huffington Post?
No equivalent.

tmz.com?
Zakzak.

Boing Boing?
Zaeega.

Gizmodo?
Gizmodo Japan.

III) Web tools and software:

What is the Japanese equivalent of Gmail?
Yahoo! Japan Mail.

Blogger?
FC2.

the iTunes store?
iTunes Japan (Lismo for mobile downloads which accounted for 90% of all music downloads in 2007 in Japan).

BitTorrent?
Winny.

Opera?
Sleipnir [ENG] and Lunascape [ENG].

IV) Web Companies

What is the Japanese equivalent of Federated Media?
Agile Media Network. [ENG]

Sequoia Capital?
NGI Group. [ENG]

Admob?
Cirius. [ENG]

In case you want to know more, please add a comment.

Serkan Toto

Dr. Serkan Toto is a German based in Tokyo. Like us, he is passionate about introducing Japanese IT to the rest of the world. Full-time, Serkan works as an independent web industry consultant for hedge funds, venture capital companies and start-ups worldwide. He is also a writer for mega tech blog network TechCrunch, covering Japan-related technology and web trends. This is Serkan's website. Follow Serkan on Twitter here.

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