Japan's largest mobile marketing and advertising firm, D2 Communications (D2C), has acquired a 0.9% stake in Tokyo-based Ubiqituous Entertainment (UEI). D2C acquired a total of 400 UEI shares - other financial details of the deal, which was officially announced [JP] today, weren't disclosed.

In April last year, the two companies started a program called 9leap [JP] for young game smartphone game designers (our previous coverage).

With the capital partnership, D2C and UEI plan to continue the program, co-develop HTML5-based web services and mobile ad solutions, and use the latter company's knowhow in the gaming field to create new applications and content.

Founded in 2000, D2C is said to be not only Japan's largest but also oldest mobile advertising company. D2C's parent company is the country's biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo - other shareholders are Dentsu, Dentsu Digital, and NTT Advertsing.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Investment, Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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The smartphone location sharing service Foursquare has added the “Sakura Badge,” limited to the Tokyo area.  This is the first appearance of a limited badge from Foursquare in Japan.

The conditions for opening a “Sakura Badge” are to follow the “Sakura Badge List” [J] with 62 spots carefully selected by Foursquare within the capital, and then check in to 5 of these 62 spots.  By the way, last year Shibuya Station and Shinjuku Station were popular spots, ranking 2nd and 3rd in the world respectively for Foursquare check-ins.

Translation authorized by VSmedia

Tags: News by samueljlilly
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Twitter added more choices of cities on its trending keywords in Japan on February 2. There were only all-Japan and Tokyo rankings before.

6 cities, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kyoto, Fukuoka and Sendai are the new ones.

View Twitter Trends On New Japanese Cities in a full screen map

There are many bigger cities than Sendai, but most of them are satellite cities of the largest ones (Yokohama, Kawasaki, Saitama, Chiba for Tokyo, Kobe for Osaka) so they were probably selected to make geographic balance. Hiroshima, which has slightly more population than Sendai, could have been chosen though.

I am unsure if different cities will make much difference on trends. We will report if there are anything interesting observed.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Koei Tecmo [J] has made a contract with Taiwan’s Cayenne Entertainment Tchnology and have announced that they will develop their currently offered social game “Nobu-nyaga’s Ambition” for Yahoo! Mobage and Mobage in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao.

Koei Tecmo has also until now been developing joint service under management license contract for “Age of Discovery Online” and “Dynasty Warriors Online” with Cayenne in the same regions.  This time Cayenne will handle the management of “Nobu-nyaga’s Ambition” on location.  Already a Teaser Site [C] and a Facebook Page [C] have been opened, and the cat generals appearing in the game and game system are introduced.  Furthermore the Chinese version title of “Nobu-nyaga’s Ambition” has been adapted for language using Chinese characters only as “信猫之野望.”

Nobu-nayaga’s Ambition walkthrough guide Cat Book of Heraldry [J]

Translation authorized by VSmedia

Tags: China, News, Social game by Chiho Komoriya
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CyberAgent [J] announced on December 30th of 2011 that the number of users of their “Ameba” [J] community has topped 20 million.  To commemorate this momentous development of the “Ameba” service, they held the 20 Million Member Breakthrough! Thank You Campaign [J] between January 10th and 23rd.

Since the Ameba service opened in September of 2004, focused on blogs, they have expanded their various service develepment and features such as the virtual space “Ameba Pigg” and the miniblog “Ameba Nau,” and they have been steadily expanding their base of users.  Particularly their “Ameba Pigg” service, which opened in February of 2009, reached 10 million users in November of 2011.  Also in 2011 use from smartphones increased, and in one year, monthly page views grew by more than 10 times, continuing their rapid growth.

As for the “20 Million Member Breakthrough! Thank You Campaign,” plans in the works for various services offered by “Ameba” are being developed for PC, mobile and smartphone.  For “Ameba Pigg,” limited items are on sale for 20 Ame-Gold, and for 4 popular “Ameba Mobile” titles, each are giving away limited campaign items.  Also, during the campaign, 20 Million of the virtual currency “Ame-Gold” is being uniformly returned and distributed to all users who have purchased “Ame-Gold,” and various other plans are in effect.

Translation authorized by VSmedia

Tags: News by Chiho Komoriya
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