Entries Tagged as 'News'

ex-Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie Got Compulsory Seizure Of 3,600 USD

On March 10th, Tokyo District Court broke into a flat of ex-Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie, a fallen IT entrepreneur star whose arrest caused so-called “Livedoor Shock” in 2006, distrain upon his golf bag, wine cellar appliance, television and shamisen(Japanese guiter) by valued them as 330,000 yen ($3646) in total.

Takafumi Horie, in 2005 from Wikipedia by Sat666

Horie is appealing his alleged securities fraud to the higher court. After bailed out, he publicly said that he won’t get back to web business, and rather chase his space development business. He moved his popular blog to Ameblo blog hosting, which is run by his close ally Susumu Fujita’s CyberAgent. He also gets huge number of twitter followers, and is writing some articles on magazines.

Blog, Twitter and recently started paid newsletter are frequently updated with thoughts, including politics and his court case. Probably because of disbelief to mass media who bashed him, he has been building up those direct channels. Although English Wikipedia on Horie seems to stop update for years, he still keeps influences on Japanese websphere.

On his blog, he wrote that those irreconcilable plaintiffs (1700 of 3300, Mainichi reports), who can get money by reconciling from Livedoor Holdings, to whom Horie had agreed to pay 20.8 billion yen($230 million), are just harassing him by law abuse.

He pointed out that the plaintiffs thinks he lives in luxury, as this time’s claims 8 million yen shows, which image is manipulated by mass media. However, it turned out that 330,000 yen seizure unexpectedly revealed his simple lifestyle.

He also wrote that his recently purchased Shamisen, which was evaluated as 100,000 yen ($1000) by bailiff, was just 19,800 yen, by showing link to an online shop.

Livedoor Shock, which directly lowered whole stock market and Livedoor’s stock price, discouraged IT entrepreneurship (which was already far weaker than the one in US) a lot in Japan, which is blamed by both pro- and anti-Horie.

See Also:

Tokyo Broadcasting System Television(TBS)’s movie report by taking Horie’s back from lunch without knowing his flat was intruded [J] – The TV station Horie tried to take over in 2005 was Fuji TV, TBS is the one escaped from Rakuten takeover. It is not unknown yet how TBS became to knew this happened.

Naver Japan Starts Another Microblogging Service “Pick”

Naver Japan, a bridgehead of Korean search giant Naver, who is challenging Japanese market second time since 2009, released their new (Tumblr-like) multimedia clipping microblog “Pick” [J].

On Pick, user can post text, image, movie and geolocation. It also encourages users to clip others’ post by 1-click “pick” button so “anyone can join the pick community even if you do not write/upload anything. you do not need writing talent” (on release note).

The above point is exactly where Tumblr is getting success in Japanese. Now Tumblr is seeking to gear up for Japan by hiring Japanese consultant, but localization has not been done yet. Naver Japan has possibility to compete as it is not only all in Japanese UI, but also providing cellphone sites covers 3 major cellphone carriers. iPhone application is also planned, they says.

Another twist is “Yuumeijin no Hitokoto”(Celebrities’ phrases) page, which aggregates 6,000 celebrities’ official blogs and twitter messages as a material for users “pick”.

As the popularity of CyberAgent Ameba blog hosting was driven by holding thousand of those well-known people as bloggers, Japanese websphere is fond of TV stars more than in English. The page seems to just reuse RSS feeds, but may attract some web users.

See Also:

Press release [J]

CyberAgent Exports Social Avatar Community To English, Ameba Pico

As pre-announced last November, CyberAgent Inc., a Japanese big web media/advertising company, launched their popular social avatar community, constructed on Flash technology, Ameba Pigu’s English version Ameba Pico.

Based on Ameba Pigu’s avatar cloths-changing, communication chatrooms and casual games, English Pico provided more avatar items for oversea cultures, adds gift and message boards features which do not exist in Japanese version.

Ameba Pico is also connected with Facebook to hope to attract its 400 million users.

See Also:

Press Release [J] (No English release is on their company site yet.)

February 2010 Japan-IT Links (Part 2)

Latter half of February news which we did not write as a dedicated article. (Part 1)

Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated.

If you want to know any specific news more, but unable to find them in other English blog/media, please let us know.

Yahoo! Auction Releases iPhone App

Yahoo! Auction, Japan No.1 auction website who had defeated eBay in 2002 (eBay now collaborates with Yahoo! Auction), expands [J] its frontend into growing smartphone segment with a free iPhone application which name is “Yahuoku”.

“Yahuoku” is Japanese abbreviation form of Yahoo! Auction (such like “Super Mario” becomes “Su-mari” and “Pocket Monster” to “Pokemon”) and many people call and search it “Yahuoku”, which means this app is the flagship one on iPhone.

Although the app name shows their enthusiasm, the first version does not provide seller’s management features. i.e. You can only search and bid auctions, which seems to make many Yahoo! Auction/iPhone users disappointed with low user ratings on iPhone app store.

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