This morning column 2011: The year when Japan went global over social networking on The Japan Times, both on paper and online, Japanese English-language newspaper is a monthly tech column brought by Asiajin.

As it is for newspaper, there are not enough space to show the references. I leave the links here from my writing memo for who would like to research deeper.

Mixi vs Facebook

• Nielsen/NetRatings report (revised after Mixi’s statement. The original November 18 version seemed removed, unreachable)
• Mixi’s counter-argument

Besides that, Nielsen/NetRatings also revised its terminology from “users” to “visitors”. “To avoid misunderstandings”, it is going to use “visitors” instead of “users” from now on.

Mixi is basically a closed network, however, Facebook, though which also started as a closed network, gradually increased open pages for the Internet. “visitors” include people who happen to visit Facebook page once in the month even if they are not a Facebook member. I googled how many of Mixi and Facebook pages are indexed on Google, 7 billion Facebook pages are viewable from Google Search, but only 200,000 Mixi pages are there.

Twitter Barusu

Castle in the Sky

• Twitter’s official @twittercomms said it’s the record
• Twitter’s 2011 Year in review
• Wikipedia on Castle in the Sky, 13 reruns on TV
• Nippon Television Network organizes 30 local TV stations nationwide (channel 4 in Kanto)
• 2-channel live forum was down around the timing

Another anime line on TV which lets Japanese user chant is “No, he stole something quite precious. Your heart.” by Inspector Zenigata in The Castle of Cagliostro, another Hayao Miyazaki’s movie. But “Barusu” is much simpler so attract more attendees.

Google+ and AKB48

We reported this on their release day and the next day on Asiajin.

• Google+-AKB48 official page
• Google+-AKB48 press conference
• Google product VP Bradley Horowitz introduces this alliance to non-Japan users in English
• Google+ most followed users in Japan by UserLocal

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Taito [J] has released the Android social game “特工大戦” (SPY WARS), for the smartphone “Tencent Wireless Open Platform for Community” through business partnership with GREE [J] and the Chinese internet portal Tencent.

“特工大戦” is the first segment of a social game in China for the “Tencent Wireless Open Platform for Community.”  It’s a Chinese language version of the popular social spy game offered in Japanese as “SPY WARS,” where players become an intelligence organization’s agent.  To save the world from a series of crises, they must join with partners to carry out various missions; to prevent conspiracies laid out by enemies, players order subordinate intelligence operatives, execute missions from their organization, and challenge foreign agents to battle in order to snatch their confidential information carried undercover.

Since Tencent and GREE’s business partnership in January of this year, they have been offering business support and localization as a collaborative development of each other’s platforms .

Translation authorized by VSMedia

Tags: News, Social game by Chiho Komoriya
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