Asiajin

The Osaka-based tech start-up Qript Inc. launched Friday its eccentric SNS called “Tsutsunuke [J]“, which has several features to avoid its user’s long silence to the service.

Note:  “Tsutsunuke” means a situation where the thin wall deprives you of any privacy, and you can hear the tone of your neighbor’s voice in a typical type of wooden lodges which were built here in Japan several decades ago.   But such an environment makes you easier to get on well with your neighbors if you live there, and the lodge matron is usually meddlesome.   It’s a typical way for university students living apart from their parents, and such a scene reminds Japanese of nostalgia.

“Tsutsunuke” is the SNS of a certain lodge fictionally locating in Osaka, and the matron takes care of you instead of questioning by the system.   She is fictionally 58 years old, wearing a leopard-printed jacket and speaking in Japan’s western dialect of “Kansai-ben“.

Note:  Wearing a leopard-printed jacket and having hair with tight curls is considered as the fashion of typical middle-aged women living in that region.

When you complete user registration with the SNS, you will be a resident in the lodge and be able to make a note in your diary to be shown to the neighbors.   When you log on, she introduces the neighbors and make a reply to your diary post.   If your diary post is not interesting, she warns you and asks you to improve it.

It is a very human approach powered by the system to vitalize a social service.

The picture above is quoted from Tsutsunuke’s user sign-up process.

Author Information  Masaru IKEDA has co-founded several system integration companies and consulting firms in Tokyo. He has been contributing serial columns to nationwide newspapers and IT periodicals, also he's currently serving as tech consultant for several web companies. See this for more bio. His private blog is here.

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