Japan's biggest social network service Mixi [J, registration required], who had started in-service microblog Mixi Echo since last summer, renamed it with Mixi Voice and made it as an "official" service.

User's top page has Voice's messages just under profile icon.

"More" link takes you to the Voice page, which looks more familiar with Twitter users.

Let's compare Mixi Voice with Twitter.

Mixi can promote the Voice to its 17 million users and seems to do so at now, but as Mixi Music stopped recently, that does not always guarantee their success.

Mixi having slick mobile sites highly customized to three major carrier cellphones with full emoji(Japanese emoticon letters) is a great advantage if younger generation are interested in microblog. (Mixi has an age limit, over 15 y.o., but still.)

However, most of heavy PC web users and some celebrities and national brands are already using Twitter, even though the total number of Twitter users in Japanese is not much. I notice many of "voices" on my timeline are just the same friends' tweets imported from Twitter. I don't think I switch to Mixi Voice soon but many Mixi users may know microblogging by seeing Mixi Voice.

So the race will be a popularity contest between tech-savvy people and regular people. The similar turn-over happened 4-5 years ago when the everyone's friend Mixi passed over the heavy users' Gree quickly and became the No.1 social network (Gree came back later by finding mobile gaming supported by KDDI/au, but that is another story).

Twitter Japan finally decided to make Japanese cellphone version client and that is planned to launch this autumn. I don't know if the new mobile site supports emoji, and how much that will be Japanese cellphone friendly, but if that delays or fails, Japanese microblogging can be split into two different worlds between PC and mobile, old and young, web standards and closed cellphones.

See Also:

Mixi Voice Help [J, registration required]

mixi Voice and Twitter difference (Laboblog) [J]

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Amazon Japan v.s. Japan's local Rakuten battle was recently well covered on TechCrunch (by our buddy Serkan Toto, of course). Amazon is doing pretty good localization on their main part, books, but draining duel against Rakuten in many shopping categories.

Amazon Japan's shipping fee 300 yen (3.3 USD) has been waived if a customer purchases more than 1,500 yen (about 16 USD), which may requires 2-3 books as good amount of printed books in Japan are in "bunko" (handy books smaller than paperbacks) and "manga", both of whom prices are about $4 to $10.

Amazon Japan's sales occupies measurable amount in book sales in Japan, so sometimes publishers set the price of the books raised a bit over 1,500 yen, to expect customers purchase it without bothering to add another book for free shipping.

As resale price of books are maintained by law in Japan, no book stores can discount the books themselves. So shipping fee (and point system, which gives few-percent points for future purchase) tends to be differentiation method.

The one sparked the war was Rakuten, who started free shipping campaign on February 2nd for a month initially, extended the term couple of times until November 4th.

What Amazon Japan announced and started on September 11th is, free shipping campaign until the exact same day, November 4th.

Amazon Gift Cards available nationwide

This may sound old-fashioned when e-book reader Kindle is getting attention in US, Amazon Japan also announced that more chain convenience store now sell Amazon Gift Cards from September 14th. In addition to Lawson(the second biggest by number of shops), Family Mart (No. 3), Circle-K/Sankus(No. 4), it is now sold at Daily Yamazaki(No. 5), Mini-stop(No. 6) and Seiko Mart(unknown). Total number of all those stores is 27,000.

See Also:

Amazon gift cards at more convenience stores Nikkei Press Release

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Even Japan's Web Colossus Yahoo! Japan can easily fail if trying to force real name to Japanese users. The social business networking service Yahoo! CU, which launched November 2008 is announced to cease on October 19th, before its first anniversary.

CU encourages users to register their real name and organization name which they belong, to expect to form a network useful for peoples' business, like LinkedIn does in English countries. That was ambitious in Japan where people totally hide their identity (2 channel, NicoNico Douga) or use nickname and illustration/Avatar (Mixi, Gree, Mobage-Town).

According to CNET Japan, the number of registered users, all of whom were invited by other CU users (as it is invitation based), is only 6,500. It is so small as the whole Yahoo! Japan's monthly unique browser is 200 million [J] (it is bigger than Japan's population, but on person can use Yahoo! at office, home and on cellphone).

There have NEVER been a guide link from Yahoo!'s top page to CU. And I never noticed any substantial promotion were done by Yahoo! Japan. So the 6,500 might be just Yahoo! Japan employee in the CU team and their friends, who can be early adopters.

Yahoo! Japan also has another social network Yahoo! Days, which was renamed from Yahoo! 360°, originally started by US Yahoo.com. Yahoo! Days is more casual and supposed to compete against Mixi, but seems not successful, too.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Love Plus[J] is a virtual dating simulation game, which was developed by Konami for Nintendo DS and went on sale at the beginning of this month.   This game title attracts an enormous number of game geeks, especially among the "herbivorous"-typed boys, living around the country, and more than 47,000 packages were sold just in three days after its release.   It is the best hit for the game development industry for the first time in long years.

Unlike the other dating game titles ever introduced have been designed to entertain you by giving you a chance to seduce an avatar girl in the game, Love Plus is basically for experiencing events to be happened after being a couple with her.   In order to attract the players for long days, the game was intentionally designed as to make them enjoy daily routines with a virtual girlfriend, Konami says.

The player is set as a high school boy who just has moved to a city.   Then he will make friends with three scholar-athlete girls.   In synchronization with our "real" time of the day, the player will be allowed to enjoy daily events including dating with her.

A housewife posted a comment on a major newspaper's bulletin board website last week, she complained her husband got addicted to the game.   "He's always chatting with a virtual girl through a screen, as though he were dating with her.   As his wife, I can't stand it any more."   The game title is not specified in her post, but everybody supposes it must be Love Plus because of the date when it has been posted.

Some people says, they reply to an e-mail from an avatar girl of the game prior to doing so for their "real" girlfriends.   This game addict may accelerate the tendency to put off "real" marriage and cause lower birth rate in our "real" community.

Via: J-CAST News[J], Sankei Shimbun[J] and IT Media Gamez[J]

See Also:

• I'm confused since my husband is now so addicted to a dating game. (Yomiuri Shimbun Reader's Bulletin Board) [J]

• Love Plus by Konami Digital Entertainment[J]

Tags: Community, Company, Japan, News, Software, Trend by Masaru IKEDA
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On Thursday, Tokyo-based consulting firm for tech start-up ventures, Project Ocean LLP[J] launched a trilingual database of Japanese tech start-up companies, which is called Startups Japan.

Project Ocean LLP was founded by Mr. Tomoya Hayakawa[J] in 2006, and Mr. Hayakawa previously worked with Japanese major investment bank Daiwa Securities SMBC on IPO underwriting services for tech start-up companies.

Based on exclusive interviews with tech entrepreneurs and in-depth coverage on their development efforts, the company expects to put many sets of profile and background information of Japanese tech start-ups in Japanese, English and Chinese, basically for the purpose of letting potential investors know what they've developed and what they're doing.

So far only eight start-ups are listed on the website, and approximately 100 unlisted start-up companies are expected to be added on it in a year.

Tags: Company, Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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