Asiajin

Facebook, which I think I do not need any explanation what it is to English web users, announced that they would open their Japanese arm in Tokyo early in 2010, ITMedia reports [J].

The branch, which is planned to be formed with developers from US and locally hired Japanese engineers and managers, will make a special version for Japanese cellphone, such like Twitter recently did for Japan market, and Japanese original features both for PC and cellphone.

Javier Oliván, International Manager at Facebook, told that Facebook overtaking the local No.1 like as they did in US, UK, Germany, Spain and Turkey, can be reproduced in Japan market against Mixi, Gree and Mobage-Town.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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Japan’s largest social networking website Mixi[J] launched a social app service for cellphone users called “Mixi Appli Mobile” on Tuesday.

The app service’s PC edition called “Mixi Appli” was introduced last August, which allows any Mixi users to choose their favorites from a showcase of the apps and to enjoy playing with their social friends online.

Mixi App Mobile presented as much as 104 titles as of its service release, including Bokujo Monogatari (A Story of Ranch) developed by Liveware[J] and Machitsuku (Developing a town) by Unoh.

Mixi App developers need to get their works examined by Mixi prior to presenting them to the users.   Once the examination is passed, the state given for the app will turn from “under development” to “in service”.

According to Mr. Akinori Harada, the head of Mixi service operations and the company’s managing director, mobile access to Mixi’s web-based services share almost 70% of all usages.   Social apps are more compatible with cellphone handsets in terms of the user’s convenience, Harada says.

In order to motivate potential developers to introduce their apps, the company supports them to monetize apps by distributing in-app ads.    The app developer can earn JPY0.01 (USD0.0001) per one impression when presenting in-app ads to the users.   In-app transaction API is to be introduced in early November, and it will allow users to pay money in the app by using Mixi’s user point system.   Corresponding to the amount of the point paid to the app, its developer will be able to get cash after deducting Mixi’s 20% handling charge.

via CNET Japan[J]

See Also:

• Mixi’s Press Release:  App Mobile Launched[J]

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Oct. 29th Update:

Due to the system’s heavy load that the rush of many new users has caused, users have been in technical difficulties to log in to Mixi App Mobile service during the last two days.   Machitsuku, one of the game apps mentioned above, is now ranked the 1st in the number of the app users, and has earned more than 600,000 users in just two days since its release.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Company, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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Mobile social gaming platform GREE’s CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka repeatedly said in the last weeks he wants every Japanese to use GREE eventually (yeah, right). He also said he wants to beat direct rival Mobage-town in terms of user base in six months, and Mixi in twelve months.

That was in September. And today, at the end of October, the Nikkei (Japan’s answer to the Wall Street Journal) reports Tanaka already reached the first goal. As of the end of September, GREE’s user base stood at 15.12 million after the mobile- and Japan-only social gaming platform added 750,000 new members in September.

In the same month, Mobage-town added just 190,000 new members but boosted its number of users to “just” 15.10 million.

So GREE’s aggressive marketing campaign in Japan works. The company has been advertising several games on billboards and on TV for the past couple of months (and spending $11 million per quarter in the process).

And GREE is aggressive in another field, too: Four weeks ago, it came to light that GREE is suing DeNA, the company behind Mobage-town, over copyrights related to a popular fishing game.

GREE also completely changed the concept of its PC offering, which isn’t really earth-shattering now but much, much better than before.

It will take a while to overtake Mixi, the Japan’s biggest social network (which sees about 60% of page views coming from mobile phones). Mixi last officially talked about its member base at the end of June, when it had 17.41 million people (at that point in time, GREE had just 12.6 million).

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subsription]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Following to one of the Big 3 social networking service Mixi’s clone Mixi Voice, which made Evan Williams “unpleasant”, another successful, probably now most vital among three, social networking Gree enters into microblog service (registration required for all Gree pages besides the top login page).

As once defeated a battle against Mixi on PC web, Gree shifted into mobile web with casual games and avatar, supported by the 2nd biggest cellphone carrier KDDI au. Currently Gree PC site only gets 1% of all users. Honestly speaking, no one are using the PC site.

current PC top page of Gree

That is why Gree CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka told “It is totally built from scratch. Please forget the current PC Gree site ever existed” with confidence at press conference [J].

The new top page, currently accessible in parallel with the old one, looks much simpler, reminding me both Twitter and Facebook.

Tanaka said the PC Gree will be real-time social service around the Hitokoto (one-phrase) feature, which allows user to exchange what they are doing in 140 letters. It also supports emoji so you may use emoji both on mobile and PC sites. Twitter Japan recently launched Japanese mobile site with Emoji support, but Twitter PC site (which is the same as worldwide version) cannot show/input Emoji.

Besides the Twitter-like feature, Gree ported and porting their successful elements from its mobile version. “Avatars” are shared between the original mobile and PC sites.

“News” and social comments are very similar Mixi provides. “Celebrities Blogs” seems to follow successful CyberAgent’s Ameblo blog.

The current Beta only supports Firefox 3.5, Safari 4 and Google Chrome. On the official release in November, they will support Internet Explorer. They will also provide “Twitter Sync” feature. Casual games will be put to PC version, too.

A dedicated iPhone site is also planned in future, on which user can register to and play on Gree, which is a good news for iPhone users who cannot register any of big 3 social networking at this point.

See Also:

Gree report on French TV [Fr]

Tags: Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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Mainland China’s 2nd largest social game maker Rekoo[C] launched a flash-based social game on Japan’s largest social network service Mixi[J], which earned more than two million users in less than two months since the launch, and it’s ranked the 1st in the number of Mixi app users.

The game is called Sunshine Ranch (click here for its Japanese edition requiring log-in to Mixi, or here for its Chinese edition requiring log-in to 51.com), and it allows you to grow crops and livestock virtually in a ranch, and you can share the state of your field of vegetables and flowers with your friends online.   Some users are truly addicted to enjoy it, and it seems they can’t help thinking about the game even during business hours.   The key factor to attract the users successfully is several “social” functions on the game.   If you invite someone to the game, you’ll get a reward item.   You can water and reap crops your friends have grown, and also add and remove harmful insects on their fields.

You need to wait several hours to harvest crops after sewing seeds, and the time left until harvest will be appeared accompanied with every crop you’re growing.  If you missed the chance to reap the field, your friends might have taken them away.

Sunshine Ranch on 51.com (Chinese Edition)

Sunshine Ranch on Mixi (Japanese Edition)

Meanwhile, another China-made social game called Everyone’s Farm (click here for its Japanese edition requiring log-in to Mixi, or here for its Chinese edition requiring log-in to renren.com) is also ranked so high, which is currently the third and has engaged 500,000 users.   This is a service of Rakoo[J] (not Rekoo of Sunshine Farm), a flash-based social game portal operated by Mainland China’s largest search portal for cellphone handsets Yicha[C].

Kaixin Farm on Renren.com (Chinese Edition)

Everyone’s Farm on Mixi (Japanese Edition)

In this last months, Japanese social network service users are so busy to cultivate the fields prepared by Chinese game developers.

Oct. 27th Update:

Sunshine Ranch is being accused of the following points by the users:

1. The game used to be absolutely free, but last week it started providing the users an option to buy virtual fertilizers by paying “REAL” cash with their credit cards.
2. The game uses the credit card processor who is known for being usually adopted by erotic sites.
3. For transferring the credit card number entered by the user to the processor from the game app, they seemed to embed it on a user session that could be seen on a browser’s URL window and it could be vulnerable against tapping his/her credit card number. (this vulnerability is already fixed)

Tags: China, Community, Company, Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
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