UPDATE August, 30:
WISH 2010 is over, Akky covered the event here, and I changed the article below accordingly.
I was very impressed with WISH 2009, a startup demo event organized last year by Tokyo-based online marketing and advertising company Agile Media Network (basically Japan’s version of Federated Media); here‘s my full report over on TechCrunch. And now, one year later, it’s time for WISH 2010.
You can register for the event (to be held on August 28 in Tokyo) now. Agile Media Network has shortlisted a total of 32 startups that might get the chance to demo at the event, and you can vote for your favorite one here (disclaimer: Asiajin is one of these). Another ten companies, which are not part of the contest, are to present at WISH 2010, too.
The list is in Japanese, which is why I decided to compile one in English that covers all 32 WISH 2010 hopefuls (plus the ten that are sure to present), along with a short description. Also think of it as a good cross-selection of startups that are currently cropping up in this market.
The list shows how absolutely nuts this country is for Twitter, too.
I added “[ENG]” to the companies that provide their service or any kind of information in English, but there aren’t too many of those.
The ten companies that will present at WISH 2010 (not part of the vote list)
- AQUSH, a social lending service [info in English]
- garaponTV, a remote control app for electronic devices
- Decomoji, a tool that lets you add special fonts to websites
- Cacoo [ENG], an online drawing tool
- Cerevo, a “social camera” maker
- Loctouch, an LBS app for the iPhone
- Lifepalette, a health social network
- Orihime, an online shop for self-designed PC bags and cases
- Puboo, a publishing platform for e-books
- Calil, a service that lets users search through all of Japan’s public libraries
The 32 companies that you can vote for to demo at WISH 2010
Again, you can vote for your favorite companiy here. Here’s the full list, along with a short description in English:
UPDATE:
These five companies made the cut:
- TwiTraq, a Twitter analysis tool
- Togetter, a Twitter-based content aggregation site
- TwitNovels [ENG], a community for creating crowdsourced novels (based on Twitter)
- Tabereko, an iPhone app that aggregates information from printed food magazines
- Conyac [ENG], a social translation service
These companies didn’t:
- Q&A Now, a Twitter-based Q&A service
- Talknote, a “micro social communication” service
- FollowA, a Twitter-based “affiliate network” that’s yet to launch
- MANGAROO, a social manga service
- Tsuduketer, a Twitter-based content aggregation site
- Povie [ENG], a service that makes your videos “cute”
- Multi-Color Video Search, a service that retrieves relevant keywords after a user searches for a specific video
- MobileApps, a cloud-based mobile CMS service
- AM6 Station, a content aggregation app for the iPad
- TweetGirls, a Twitter-based “web magazine” for women that’s to be launched in September
- Sapota, a Twitter-based service that aims at motivating users to cope with “tough tasks” (i.e. long diets, studying etc.)
- Histy, a social network whose users aggregate and arrange “historical” information along time lines
- Asiajin
- iUniv [ENG], a video-based social learning platform
- mindia, a Wikipedia-like “encyclopedia of your mind” with a social networking slant
- feedpath Calender, an online scheduling solution for enterprises
- ASP-MART, an ASP platform that’s yet to launch
- koukouTV, a photo album and slide show maker for various platforms and devices
- TokyoGirls, an augmented reality-powered, “real-time social guide book” that’s yet to be released
- hornet, a social media-based ASP platform
- Kioku Hakkasouchi (tentative name), a lifelog service that’s yet to be launched
- ramblin, an LBS app for the iPhone that pulls information from Twitter
- Yomu Memo, a service that lets you store quick notes from books (Twitter-based)
- Price map for Apple, an price comparison app (for the iPad) for Apple products
- Tweetmile, a Twitter-based promotion tool
- SEIHA, a framework for PC- and mobile-based LBS
- zenback, a blog widget provider
Serkan Toto