On February 9th, Mixi enhanced their Mixi Check (service like Facebook Like) and Mixi Check-in (like Foursquare) to NFC(Near Field Communication) compliant. The word "Real" is attached to these two service enhancements.

By that, now you can show your fondness for NFC embedded items on Mixi Real Check, in addition to likes on web pages. You can check-in on Mixi Real Check-in on any NFC enabled objects even if your GPS is out of service, like in building, underground, etc.

Kyosuke Inoue, who worked for Mixi but individually developed Taglet, one of the first Android NFC app last month, extended it and connected with Mixi Real Check and Mixi Real Check-in.

Inoue demonstrated how you can check(like) a book having NFC tag,

You can, for example, assign location on the name plate in venue, to realize more segmented locations even in a single room, which cannot be done with GPS.

Sticker-type NFC tag is available around 50 cents or less, and expected to be cheaper in near future. Shops, events can set several tags on sections, posters on wall, whatever. For example, rewards program promotion can be designed with those detailed locations.

Interestingly, Mixi Real Check and Check-in currently supports only Google Nexus S, which has not been sold in Japan. We were explained that Mixi development team imported about 60 of them and has been playing around.

Their release said that Japan is the most advanced country on Near Field Communication applications, like on train ticker and e-money, with knowledge on them, Mixi can widen its web services to connect real world items and locations.

See Also:

Mixi's release [J]

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »

KDDI, Japan's second largest cellphone carrier, announced [J] their new agreement with New York based location based service Foursquare, to collaborate on promotion and customer support of their business in Japan.

There are no announcement from Foursquare yet. On KDDI's release, Foursquare's Interim CEO Dennis Crowley told, "As seen on Tokyo is the second most checked-in city around the world, Foursquare is getting popular in Japan. In such market, we are hoping to gain more recognition on our service by co-working with KDDI to provide easier access opportunities to customers, starting with providing shortcut to the application. By these, Japanese customers will get new experiences and share this service with their friends".

As in Crowley's comment, KDDI will ship their new Android handsets IS04 and coming IS05 with shortcut to Foursquare app.

KDDI announced an alliance with Skype in October 2010. (Skype Japan release[J], KDDI release [J])

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »

Weekly Diamond, Japanese business magazine featured Facebook for over 30 pages.

Weekly Diamond 2011-01-29

As you see, the magazine cover has a lot of Facebook icons which were asked on Facebook by the editors. The first page shows applied readers' Facebook icons, too.

The sections are "What is Facebook?", "Facebook Guide to start today" and "How you individual/company should use Facebook".

How they feature the service, and make icon covers, are exact replay of what they did for Twitter one year ago.

Weekly Diamond 2010-01-23

The rival magazine Weekly Economist took up Facebook as main, similar articles structure with little less pages.

Weekly Economist 2011-02-01

Both magazine have comments from Taro Kodama, Facebook Japan country manager and Kenji Kasahara, Mixi CEO.

According to Socialbakers, the number of Japanese active users on Facebook showed better increase rate this year than before.

"The Social Network", the Facebook movie released in Japan in January, took a bitter start, but topped at the second week (then 3rd ranked last week), so the movie and these media coverage may affect well.

See Also:

Asiajin » Facebook will possibly fail in Japan

Asiajin » Facebook Sudden Surge In Japan By Notable Web Users - On the chart above, you see 100,000 users increase in October on the chart, but this one did not continue.

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
2 Comments »

Today February 8, some Japanese web users who are influential in tech communities like Hatena and Twitter, started reporting they were locked out from Facebook. After trying to log in, they were taken to the form, which title is "Complaints against a ban of your account, identity demanded".

On the form, following information are asked to provide,

• contact mail address
• name
• date of birth
• mail address for log in if you can use it
• scanned image of your identification paper - keep full name, date of birth and photo clear, you may hide other information

Some of the banned users reported it on Twitter, which are listed on Togetter [J]. There are names including an A-list blogger, popular Hatena users, web users who write not only blogs/tweets but also books and articles under their nickname.

Banning pseudo name users seem not Japan only (thanks Dominic), but many of 'active' social network users are using pseudo name and icon in Japan, so it may have a chilling effect on the recent Facebook boom by its movie and media coverages.

Facebook and its Japanese branch show their service's principle. It seems to tell "If you do not like it Japan, you do not need to use Facebook".

See Also:

Woman called Yoda blocked from Facebook - Telegraph in 2008

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
9 Comments »

AKB360[J], is it a new group derived from popular J-pop girl band AKB48? Consisting of so many as 360 teen girls? Not at all.

That's the name of a web-based virtual metaverse that Akihabara-based web development company DON[J] (pronounced as "De-Oh-En") has introduced last week, and it focuses on allowing you to experience the town by walking inside buildings or on streets as if you were.

It allows you to not only virtually walk along the streets such as Google StreetView, but also get inside 18 maid cafes in the town. In a couple of months, another 30 maid cafes will be added, and you really can learn how those look like before you check in. The company wants an illustrated mascot for promoting the service, and its entries are accepted through February 28th.

Tags: Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
No Comments »