Mixi Adds New Friends-Making Feature For Shy Japanese

mixi-logo

Mixi, Japan’s largest social network service, introduced a new feature around Mai-Miku(=My Mixi, my friends) management, called My List.

Your new “My List” is completely private for you, no one can see who is on it. You may add other Mixi users by random browsing, or from recommended users list. Without letting them notice, you can make a list of possible future friends.

Plus, you can mark “Mai-Miku O.K.”(It will be okay if s/he is my friend) to others on your list. If the other person marks you as a possible friend, you will become standard friends after an undetermined time span.

adding from suggested friends with pre-approved flag

adding from suggested friends with pre-approved flag

With this system, The Mixi release explains [J], that a shy Japanese person who thinks s/he can not ask others to become friends, and who feels it would be so embarrassing if their friend-request was rejected, will be able to make more friends on Mixi.

Sound very Japanese?

(proofread by Sean O’Hagan)

Bookmark and Share

Author Information  Akky Akimoto is one of the first pro-bloggers [J] in Japan. As an individual he writes for Asiajin and his own Japanese weblog. He also produces web services including IvRead.com and Narabe.com. Twitter @akky


One Response to “Mixi Adds New Friends-Making Feature For Shy Japanese”

  1. [...] Shyness—Mixi, a leading social network in Japan, added a special feature to make it easier for people to make friends. [...]

Discussion Area - Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes