Mixi [JP], Japan’s largest social network (17.4 million members at the end of June), yesterday announced [JP, PDF] they acquired a 20% stake in Pikkle, a Tokyo-based social gaming company that was founded in 2005. What’s particularly interesting about this deal is that Pikkle was founded by David “DC” Collier, a veteran in the videogaming sector and a British national.

Mixi bought 385 Pikkle shares and paid 144 million Yen (1.58 million USD/1.06 million Euro), which means Pikkle’s valuation currently stands at 7.9 million USD. Not bad for a 7-man start-up.

The money comes from the so-called “Mixi fund” the company started back in April and which is supposed to support Mixi application developers (background on Mixi’s application platform). Pikkle is the third company getting money from that fund.

Pikkle’s first Mixi app is called Dance Unit [JP] and was started on the platform [Mixi membership required] August 25. Here are some screenshots. I tried the app, it’s pretty hard but fun.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Japan’s best-known LBS (location-based service) app 30min.[J] (pronounced “san-zero minutes”) allocated new shares to Mitsui Ventures (MVC), and Mr. Yohei Nishikubo joined the company as the managing director today.   Mr. Nishikubo is a venture partner of MVC and formerly served as the president of search ad agency and SEO (search engine optimization) consultancy J Listing[J].

30min. provides regional information services for PC, iPhone and Android handsets, and it shows you the listing of restaurants, shopping malls and must-see places located near you, based on a bunch of information collected from the blogosphere.   The company has 830,000 unique PC users, and the accumulated number of downloading the iPhone app marks 110,000.   By using the fund newly raised, the company plans to develop an app for non-smartphone cellphone handsets.

The company fundraised approx. USD275,000, and now its capital net worth is USD330,000.   The company’s CEO Motoaki Tanigo[J](@tanigox) says, he wants to gain the software development workforce of the company, and to add new features to the app soon.

In addition to the company’s CTO Noriyuki Nonomura[J](@nonomura) who has been solely managing technical stuffs on the service, Mr. Noriyoshi Nambo[J](@nambon), who’s well known for having developed an iPhone app that shows you a list of the earthquakes happened in the day[J], also joined the company as a developer lead this month.

Via: CNET Japan[J] and Venture Now[J]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Company, Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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When I reported Amazon Japan’s Same Day Delivery at the beginning of this month, I thought it would only be possible in a small dense country like Japan. I was wrong. Amazon US announced its same day service on October 15th in the following 7 cities,

• New York City – Order as late as 10 a.m.
• Philadelphia – Order as late as 10 a.m.
• Boston – Order as late as 10:30 a.m.
• Washington D.C. – Order as late as 10:30 a.m.
• Baltimore – Order as late as 10:30 a.m.
• Las Vegas – Order as late as 11 a.m.
• Seattle – Order as late as 1 p.m.

Whereas Amazon Japan seems to provide its deadlines dynamically on each product page, the US service sets clear times city by city.

The price for this option is $5.99, which is close to Amazon Japan’s price, at about $5.50.

(proofread by Sean O’Hagan)

Tags: Japan, USA by Akky Akimoto
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