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.

Tags: Japan, News, USA by Serkan Toto
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Japanese outplacement firm Intelligence [J] released their research of what companies people want to join next [J], done on 5,000 of office workers between age 25 to 34.

On the ranking, Google jumped up from 2009′s third position because of good feeling to their “innovation” and “potential”.

# Oriental Land is a company who runs Tokyo Disney Land/Sea.

Another software/web companies

The top listed 10 did not change, but at 11th, Apple Japan is ranked up from 2009′s 33rd, which is likely by a lot of iPhone/iPad exposure on news and ads by Softbank.

As you notice, Yahoo! Japan, which is much stronger than Google Japan here, is quite unpopular as a working place in compare. Amazon Japan also gets distanced from its rival Rakuten from the point of view of potential workers’ popularity.

See Also:

Press release [J]

Tags: Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
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The Japanese and Chinese web industries keep getting closer together. Yesterday Tokyo-based Internet behemoth CyberAgent (currently listed at the Tokyo Stock Exchange with a $1 billion market cap) announced it will take a 20% stake in mAPPn, an Android development firm with offices in China, Taiwan and the US (the press release in Japanese is here).

Financial details of the deal, which was handled by CyberAgent’s investment arm, weren’t disclosed. But CyberAgent says the agreement is aimed at marketing Android services and apps made in Japan to Chinese customers.

Established just in February last year, mAPPn Wireless has so far managed to churn out a Chinese-language Android OS, an app marketplace and a Chinese Android fan community (next to a number of self-developed apps).

CyberAgent claims that mAPPn OS has been installed on some 60% of all Android handsets in China and expects rapid growth in the future. mAPPn is also releasing apps for the iPhone.

The current tensions between Google and the Chinese government haven’t made a big impact on Android’s future in China so far, and even Google CFO Patrick Pichette still sees huge potential in that country. We’ll keep you posted on CyberAgent’s and mAPPn’s cooperation.

Tags: Cellular Phone, China, Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Shoko Nakagawa (aka Shokotan), one of the most successful Japanese celebrity bloggers, finally started Twitter (@shokonakagawa) on February 24th with a tweet “I begin to chirp…” [J].

This could have been a milestone for Japanese Twitter to show the centre of the celebrity blogging moving from regular blog to microblog. However, after posting 15 tweets sparsely in 2 months, she posted that she “gave up doing both blog and Twitter” [J].

Her blogging style, which make her very unique among celebrities her early days to become popular, is to post a lot of one line entries and/or photos taken by her cellphone, sometimes makes 50 posts per day. You may see those numbers on the left sidebar’s monthly archives. Her style made a lot of followers of Japanese celebrity bloggers.

In the end, what she did on blog platforms (she has been switched her blog hosting twice) is “microblogging on blog”, and if so, she could not find any advantage on Twitter, which does not have built-in photo upload/show features and the Japanese cellphone version of which has room to be improved.

CyberAgent‘s Ameba blog, which holds over thousand celebrity bloggers including Shokotan, has been running its own Twitter clone Ameba Now, to hope to keep their bloggers within the Ameba sites. And this incident may be a hint that they can lean on and extend their clone, as Twitter will not be able to enhance its functionalities only for Japanese celebrity market.

Tags: Japan, Person by Akky Akimoto
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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]

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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