Twitter is Japan country. Just take these stats: it’s estimated that currently around 10 million Japanese are registered and that 16.3% of all web users in this country tweet (considerably more than the 9.8% in the US). 14% of all tweets out there are in Japanese, more than Portuguese (9%) or Spanish (4%).

But what Twitter clients are the Japanese using? According to news site MarkeZine, the web version is top of the list, followed by the official mobile client. But in Japan, Twitter.com is not popular a destination as it is elsewhere (see below for another list).

Here’s are the top 20 of Twitter clients used in Japan (quite a lot are homegrown):

TechCrunch just recently blogged a top 10 of clients “worldwide”, which showed the same top 2. For comparison, here’s that list (from Twitter.com’s company blog):

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A first of its kind event is being held in San Francisco featuring Japanese Entrepreneurs on October 13, 2010.  This event named SFNewTech Japan Night is the vision of Brandon K. Hill, President/CEO of btrax, Inc – a San Francisco based digital consultancy agency.  “I wanted to help Japanese Entrepreneurs extend their market outside of Japan and broaden their market reach.  It is important for Japanese companies to have this kind of forum here in the US.  I have attended many SFNewTech events and decided to approach the organizers to collaborate on this event.  I am very happy to help partner with SFNewTech on this event” said Brandon K. Hill.

About six or so Internet venture companies from Japan will be presenting and discussing their web/mobile services or hardware in front of over 500 people. Which include venture capitalists, investors, entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts.  The following Japanese startups will be presenting at the event:

• MyGengo (Social Translation Service)
• SpySee (People Search Service)
• GazoPa (Image Search Engine)
• Drrop (Open SNS Platform)
• Lang-8 (Social Language Translation Platform)
• Yubizo (iPhone / iPad development Platform)

This event will be broadcasted live by justin.tv, and updated in real-time from the audience by tweeting out messages from the event using the hash tag #sfjn or #sfnewtech. Media coverage includes NY Times and Mashable.

We are looking for sponsors to help these entrepreneurs offset some of their costs.  If you are willing to sponsor please contact us.
SFNewTech Japan Night is going to be a great chance for Japanese companies that want to expand their business abroad, to gain the necessary visibility in our local tech community. Why don’t you mark your calendar and join us?

Send inquires to sfjapannight@btrax.com

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Virtual world Ameba Pico (Ameba Pigu in Japan) is a success story. The service was launched by Tokyo-based web powerhouse CyberAgent in February 2009 and went on attracting four million members [PDF] in Japan.

CyberAgent announced an English version in November 2009, which went online in March 2010. And if The Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business daily, is to be believed, that overseas version now has two million users (the Ameba Pico Facebook app boasts nearly 790,000 active users).

So it appears that CyberAgent has managed to replicate the success story overseas, which doesn’t happen too often in Japan’s web industry. But now The Nikkei reports that the Japanese Internet company has given the rights to market Ameba Pico to Silicon Valley-based Mochi Media.

Mochi Media (which was bought by Chinese gaming company Shanda earlier this year) will monetize and distribute CyberAgent’s platform outside Japan from now on. According to the Nikkei, CyberAgent hopes to attract 5 million non-Japanese Ameba Pico members by year-end under a revenue share deal.

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With “Check”, Mixi copied Facebook’s “Like” function today, and while they were at it, Japan’s biggest social network copied Facebook’s location-based function, “Places”, as well. It’s just that on Mixi, “Places” is called “Check In”. So historically speaking, it took Mixi two years to follow Facebook’s Apps platform, half a year for “Like” and now three weeks for Places. They’re getting better.

As to be expected, Mixi Check-In allows users to let their friends know where they are and lets them share points of interests (Mixi calls these “spots”). All that users need to do is press the “Check In” button on Mixi Mobile, the site’s cell phone version.

Here’s how a list of spots looks on Mixi Mobile (choose one and check in):

You can “check in” by pressing the grey button on top and decide who to share your location with in the drop-down menu:

And this shot shows the latest locations your friends checked in at:

For Mixi, Check-in is far more important than Places is for Facebook, at least at this point. Mixi currently sees 30 billion PVs per month, and a staggering 24.5 billion of those come from cell phones. And in Japan, most of these are equipped with a GPS module, meaning they are theoretically ready for use with Check-In.

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Facebook announced (and rolled it out) earlier this year, and now Japan’s biggest social network, Mixi, announced it, too: A function to share what you “like” on external sites with your friends. On Mixi, that function is called “Check”. As you can see on the screenshot of my Mixi profile below, Mixi Check is now featured quite prominently on the top menu (which Mixi almost never changes).

Click to enlarge:

By clicking on that button, you can see what your friends (and yourself) have checked on the web (on the sites that feature a Mixi Check button, that is) and on Mixi itself in list form.

Sure, it’s just a copy of one of Facebook’s functions, but provided the “Check” button spreads on the web (and it probably will), the new feature can mean a significant boost in traffic for Mixi. It worked well for Facebook, at least.

For Check, Mixi has scored partnerships with a a handful of services already. Japan’s biggest price comparison site, Kakaku.com, for example, already features the “Check” button on all of its product pages (see screen grab below for a video game page).

Click to enlarge:

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