"Tell Your World ", the song which is used for Google Chrome Promotional campaign of livetune feat. Hatsune Mike (初音ミク) tops at iTunes Japan among all categories.
iTunes Japan chart at 19th January was following.
The song was released in 18th January on iTunes Japan and right after the release, ranked top 10. On next day, it ranked 1st.
Like US Google featuring Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, Google Japan chose the most popular singer on Japanese web, virtual singing tool Hatsune Miku, a 61 seconds video which praises all involved creators.
The playing count does not move up from 309, which might be from Japanese word-play 3(=Mi) 9(=ku). You may check the stats of the video and see it is played heavily now in Japan.
Unofficial home ground of Hatsune Miku movement Nico Nico Douga, from where most of videos really come, does not appear in the video, probably because YouTube is a competitor of Nico Nico Douga in Japan.
" Hatsune Miku " is a virtual singer who can sing any song that anybody composes.
It has made a massive impact on all creators through the web.
They, inspired by her songs, have published their original works
not only in the field of music, but in illustration, video,
CG, cosplay, live performance and dance.
Besides over 30,000 original tracks, many more works are
still being released over the web.
Feel the possibilities of the web through the social phenomenon caused by million craetors.
"Tell Your World" / livetune feat. Hatsune Miku
Lyrics・Music: kz
Grasp the phrase I happen to be humming
Spread secret words of the heart into the sky
I want to tell you
I want to give you
Nodes of feelings forms a link
Connecting everything. Connecting to everywhere
This film was created with the support of CRYPTON FUTURE MEDIA Inc,
SEGA, and many creators and fans from all around the world.
If you don't know AKB48, you don't live in Japan (or in fact, many other parts of Asia.) They are phenomenon that might be equivalent to the Beatles + American Idol + the Spice Girls + Justin Timberlake... They are a roster of more than 200 hand-selected performers who are the subject of huge media attention, and support from millions of devoted fans.
According to Google+ Ranking by UserLocal, top Japanese Google+ user by number of followers totally replaced with AKB48 girls. UserLocal also set up an AKB48-only followers ranking as it is the biggest interest on Japanese G+.
7 of the top 10(#2, #3 and #5-#9) are now AKB48 members who began Google+ yesterday. 20 AKBs are ranked in top 30. I was at around 25th before AKB but now at 67th after 42 AKBs
In compare to Twitter, where the top rankers boast million followers, the most followed Japanese user only has sub-40K followers. When you think the influence of TV, it is not strange and the ranking will be soon occupied all by AKB48, or other TV celebrities may ride the bandwagon from Twitter and Ameblo.
This Google+'s move with AKB48 definitely let many ordinal people know and join Google+, but I am not sure how much Google expected this beforehand.
5 languages translation
As reported, their messages on Google+ are being translated into 5 languages. It is done by a Google user AKB48 Translator to translating some (not all) of top AKB48 members' messages into 5 (or 6, as it seems to write both in Simplified and Traditional Chinese) languages like this.
Japan's popular girls idol corps AKB48 announces with Google that all of its members opened Google+ page today December 8. Google Japan cooperates to set up a special page you can browse all, or by AKB48 and its sister-groups.
[Update] Nikkei reports [J] that this is a collaboration project between AKB48 and U.S. Google. According to it, the contents will be translated into 5 languages, English, Chinese, Korean, Thai and Indonesian. Video chat sessions with fans will happen on Google+ Hangout. (though the special page only exists in Japanese, as far as I tried to find.)
AKB48 is one of very few successful music sellers under the current Japanese slump of music business, by selling many of the same CD to one fan in exchange of hand-shaking-rights and other prizes.
Tokyo-based AKB48, Osaka-based NMB48, Nagoya-based SKE48 members belong to sub-categories. There are new HKT48 from Kyushu, JKT48 in Jakarta, Indonesia and TPE48 in Taiwan. Each group also has some trainees and it is not known how many members totally exist in the whole group. Probably a few hundreds. [Update] about 260 girls! [J] (HT to @koyhoge)
The Google+ iPhone App's huge but only affected for some countries has been fixed after about 10 days.
As we reported on September 26, Japanese (Chinese and Korean as well) Google+ user who updated the app found that they were unable to put in their native language letters.
The new version 1.0.5.2346 has come on October 4 with changes;
Fixed bug with Chinese, Japanese and Korean
Re-enable autocomplete when composing a post
It was quite a show-stopper for East Asians. I hope they will have test item with Asian languages before shipment.
