Shake-up in Japan’s mobile web: Mixi, MySpace, Mobage, Yahoo, Dwango and SoftBank Mobile collaborate
The mobile web is huge in Japan, meaning the alliance between Japanese Internet powerhouses Dwango, Mixi, MySpace Japan, Mobage-town, Yahoo and telecommunications company SoftBank Mobile announced on Thursday has to be taken very seriously.
Details are rather scarce at this point but SoftBank, for example, says [J] Dwango will provide content from its super-successful video portal Nico Nico Douga and that additional partnerships are currently being considered.
To kick off the alliance, SoftBank is organizing a widget coding contest [J] and will start accepting applications later this month. The winner will be announced in May next year and gets 2 Mio. Yen (20.000 USD, 16.000 Euros).
I am not really sure if this alliance will really change anything at all for users and the web industry itself but if Japan’s No 1, 2, 4, 7 and 19 (Yahoo, Softbank, DeNA/Mobage-town, Mixi and Dwango) in the list of the most valuable web companies participate something interesting might come out of it.
Although the initiative is limited to the mobile web, an alliance between giants like that is unheard of outside Japan or am I mistaken?
Author Information Serkan is a German based in Tokyo. Like us, he is passionate about introducing Japanese IT to the rest of the world.
Serkan is an author for mega tech blog network TechCrunch, covering Japan-related technology and web trends.
Follow Serkan on Twitter here. One Response to “Shake-up in Japan’s mobile web: Mixi, MySpace, Mobage, Yahoo, Dwango and SoftBank Mobile collaborate”
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Facebook Mobile is now probably bigger than the entire userbase of Mixi, Japan’s leading social network and a site that is very frequently accessed by mobile. Last week 6 leading Japanese social networks, including Mixi, MySpace Japan, Yahoo and others,announced that the companies are forming a mysterious alliancethat could include content and widget sharing across their mobile sites. We’re curious how that kind of strategy will work compared to Facebook’s strategy of building up a huge siloed web based social network and then creating a simple but extremely
is now probably bigger than the entire userbase of Mixi, Japan’s leading social network and a site that is very frequently accessed by mobile. Last week 6 leading Japanese social networks, including Mixi, MySpace Japan, Yahoo and others, announced that the companies are forming a mysterious alliance that could include content and widget sharing across their mobile sites. We’re curious how that kind of strategy will work compared to Facebook’s strategy of building up a huge siloed web based social network and then creating a simple but
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