Asiajin

Kyoto-based tech start-up running Japan’s largest social bookmarking service Hatena[J] (meaning a question mark in Japanese) set up a new entrance specifically designed for the iPhone/iPod touch[J] today.

Hatena Bookmark has a Digg-like feature allowing you to record the links of the websites that you have browsed and to share them with the other users.   It can also count how many users have browsed by using each of the links, which makes you learn what topics are the most popular every minute in this country.

The service’s new interface allows you to do the actions mentioned above just by simply rotating the iPhone 90 degree from the default position.   Now you may share your favorite webpages with holding onto a strap on a crowded commute train.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Company, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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Hatena, Kyoto-based web startup known by their geek users, the most popular social bookmark service Hatena Bookmark, and recent collaboration with Nintendo DS on Ugomemo Hatena (Flipnote Hatena for oversea), announces that they are running closed-beta test of their microblog service Hatena Haiku’s new version Hatena Haiku2 [J] (currently shows error page).

Initially 1,000, currently 3,000 Hatena users have been invited and playing on the Haiku2.

Hatena Haiku is a microblog service which has a handwriting feature on Flash and keyword pages such like hashtag (search results) page give to Twitter users.

According to their release, Haiku2 is,

• invitation based (like Mixi)
• messages are private within your friends by default
• “Imakoko”(I’m here) GPS integration (from cellphone)
• “Tegaki”(handwriting) handwriting Flash (from PC)
• “Room” page where messages gathered by the same theme
• “Bunshin”(alter ego) to have different networks with different users (planned feature)

See Also:

Hatena Haiku [J]

Hatena Haiku2 Official Blog [J]

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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Following to the LLTV(annual Lightweight Language Conference in Tokyo) and PHP Conference Japan 2009 (Asiajin’s cover), another sub-1000 attendees class web developer conference YAPC::Asia 2009 is being held at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

In 2008, LL(Lightweight Languages, which mean scripting languages for web development such like Perl/PHP/Python/Ruby), Ruby, PHP, Perl events were held monthly pace from early summer to autumn, but this year, three of them are set in 3 weeks consecutively. But still, motivated geeks buy and attend any of, for some all of those events and all three conference tickets are sold out.

Perl, which might sound old name in some other countries, still is the one of the coolest programming languages in Japan. Many top-notch Japanese geeks stays with Perl instead of moving PHP/Python or Japan made Ruby.

I myself am not a Perl user but always enjoy attending YAPC::Asia. Although my understanding to Perl is pretty poor, they seem to utilize Perl language’s flexibility greatly and there are no reason to look down someone by his/her using Perl in Japan (more likely s/he is an expert).

Inevitably, Japan’s Perl conference seems to be more important relatively in the world (if compare with other languages). YAPC::Asia has 3 session tracks this year and one of them are in English, which makes YAPC::Asia more international with more foreign speakers and attendees.

Many web services holding No.1 in each categories mainly use Perl, like the biggest social network Mixi, the biggest mobile social network Mobage-Town(DeNA), the biggest social bookmarks Hatena Bookmark (they also allied with Nintendo for their Nintendo DS community service), etc.

Unfortunately, unlike last year, live streaming is not provided on YAPC::Asia this year, but you may follow attendees’ reports and tweets by the official hashtag ‘yapcasia2009′.

Tags: Event Report, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Hatena, known by a million geekiest loyal users and the most popular social bookmarks service in Japanese [J], announced that their joint project with console game giant Nintendo “Flipnote Hatena” launches in North America on 12th, in Europe on 14th August (both in local time).

Flipnote Hatena is a CGM service on where users draw and share flipbook-like animations. Asiajin covered its first Japanese release before.

Worldwide Challenge

Although Hatena did make English version of few their services, this is their first challenge for other European languages and regions. FLipnote Hatena site has 6 language selections (English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Japanese) and 4 regional choices (Japan, Americas, Europe and Oceania and All).

If you chose “All(Worldwide)”, you see a lot of Japanese created and starred (=voted) over thousands flipnotes at the top, some includes Japanese languages, but if you filter by America or Europe, there are already many flipnote animations drawn by local users.

See Also:

Hatene’s release for North America

Hatena’s release for Europe

Tags: Europe, Japan, New Service, USA by Akky Akimoto
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24th night at Roppongi Hills, the third Monetize Hacks meeting was held by some web directors from Livedoor and Hatena by welcoming 120 web directors and entrepreneurs in and around Tokyo.

The first monetize Hacks [J] was called for web directors greeting and exchanging ideas around 15 people, the second one [J] was a group competition style with 30 people, now the third one with seminar style is with 120 web people who are keening on how to maximize website monetization in Japanese websphere.

The main theme is “User Billing”. Seven Japanese popular web services directors/leaders made presentations.

1. Yahoo! Japan Research [J] (Asiajin articles)

Researcher of Yahoo! Japan Research Masao Kakihara gave a general view of service monetization strategy.

2. Pixiv (Asiajin articles)

Takanori Katagiri told Pixiv and its monetizing experiences.

Pixiv is now getting a million users, 0.7 bilion page views/month and 15,000 new illustrations per day. 140 servers supports it.

Currently not so profitable (yet). They combine banner ads, contents match(Overture), Amazon affiliate, membership fee (525yen/month).

He also talked how to increase affiliate income by pushing well-sold items heavily.

3. Unoh

Unoh is a 15 people company which is running Photozou(photo sharing), NeoAd(mobile ad), Machi-Tsuku (mobile game). CEO Shintaro Yamada’s talk was about their new mobile geo-location game Machi-Tsuku monetization. How fixed-rate billing and item-sales systems make difference on sales and user behaviour.

He pointed out how avatar/item charging services (like Gree) are designed carefully not to exchange money and virtual points directly, which is often done in social game sites in west, which seem less successful on profit-wise.

4. Kayac (Asiajin articles)

Yui Tamada, director, Kayac said “No one can predict what service takes off. Small start, get user feedbacks.” They impose themselves to create 99 new services in one year, which results making one service every 2-3 days.

Combination of web application consulting and a lot of original services for selling brand works effectively as free advertising/technology-showcase.

Success stories: Wonderfl (online Flash builder), Koe-bu (voice social network community), Pocket Friend Conti (mobile avatar)

“Make things first, monetization comes later.” “Originality is important.”

(continued to the part 2)

Tags: Event Report, Japan by Akky Akimoto
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