Asiajin

The mobile web is huge in Japan, meaning the alliance between Japanese Internet powerhouses Dwango, Mixi, MySpace Japan, Mobage-town, Yahoo and telecommunications company SoftBank Mobile announced on Thursday has to be taken very seriously.

Details are rather scarce at this point but SoftBank, for example, says [J] Dwango will provide content from its super-successful video portal Nico Nico Douga and that additional partnerships are currently being considered.

To kick off the alliance, SoftBank is organizing a widget coding contest [J] and will start accepting applications later this month. The winner will be announced in May next year and gets 2 Mio. Yen (20.000 USD, 16.000 Euros).

I am not really sure if this alliance will really change anything at all for users and the web industry itself but if Japan’s No 1, 2, 4, 7 and 19 (Yahoo, Softbank, DeNA/Mobage-town, Mixi and Dwango) in the list of the most valuable web companies participate something interesting might come out of it.

Although the initiative is limited to the mobile web, an alliance between giants like that is unheard of outside Japan or am I mistaken?

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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DeNA Global, 100% subsidiary of DeNA, who runs Mobage Town, the Japan’s biggest mobile social networking site with casual games, started its global service MobaMingle .

DeNA Global is located in California, USA, but the MobaMingle can be accessed from 70 countries, including UK, France, Germany on cellular phone.

Access from Japan is blocked so we cannot see how it is. CNET Japan took some screenshots by finding missed block setting, but now it is mended (inaccessible).

If you can use it at http://mbmgl.com/ from your cellphone, please let us know how it is, and if you think that mobile social gaming network would be welcomed in your country.

See Also:

DeNA Press Release [J]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, New Service by Akky Akimoto
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Mobage Town, the Japan’s largest mobile social networking service(SNS) launched their “PC version” website on July 24th 2008.

Mobage Town has made a totally new field “Cellularphone Social Network based on free games” and that success called many followers like GREE mobile, Puchige(Petit Game) Friends, Daishugou NEO, etc.

PC SNS leader Mixi, has been providing their mobile version for years, and now gives favorable treatment to mobile phone users for easier registration process by utilizing traceable subscriber ID given to each cellularphone. Now two giants are ready to make inroads into each other’s main field.

Their PC version has very strange design unless you are familiar with its original cellular phone version. Even on PC browser, it is trying to keep the same style, proportion with its mobile vesion. Your PC browser is taller so less scroll needed, but basically they look same.

Here is the Mobage Town PC’s top page,

Original menus, icons, emoji (graphical letters) are reproduced. It is like a cellularphone emulator. Some features are not available, such like news, ringertone and the biggest one, Flash games. At this point, the PC site is provided for communication - to read (ketai-novels, friends’ diaries, bbs) and write the same contents with mobile. Not all Mobage-Town users are mobile-only, nor mobile-preferred, this PC site will help older generation who likes PC keyboard more to use the service.

See Also:

DeNA’s announcement for PC site closed-beta on July 2nd 2008 [J, pdf]

Official Launch announcement on Mobage Town PC [J]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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If people writes novel (ketai shosetsu) and graduation thesis (*1) on cell phone, some people must be really patient with small display and small keypad. This is another new service which was not supposed to do on cell phone, editing movie.

Softbank Creative, DeNA and Ubiquitous Entertainment launched a new service on DeNA’s huge cellular phone social network Mobage Town, named Dekodooga (Decorated Movie).

Like Decomail (Decorated Mail) makes you decorate HTML mail with texts and images, this service provides video authoring on cellular phone. Mobage Town users can cut and mix their uploading movies, photos and music. Subtext can be added, too. The edited video are posted on your diary page.

(*1) news on tabloid paper, not really confirmed

See Also:

DeNA Press Release [J]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, Video by Akky Akimoto
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The Japanese government is planning to legislate regulations of “harmful” Internet content. Now, Liberal Democratic Party’s Sanae Takaichi is preparing to pass an Internet censorship law.

Now several groups are acting against the legislation.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Rakuten, DeNA, and NetStar made an official statement against the legislation. One of the leaders of this action is Masanori Kusunoki (@masanork or mkusunok at hatena, both in JP), a deputy CTO of Microsoft KK.

MiAU (JP) (Movement for the Internet Active Users) is a vocal political NPO acting against the abuse of copyrights and Internet censorship. They are acting against the law too.

WIDE project made a statement in English too. WIDE is a leading Internet research group in Japan.

Tags: Community, Japan by Shunichi Arai
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January 18th, Tokyo - DeNA, a company which runs Mobage town, will establish a subsidiary in the states. “DeNA Global,Inc.” will be located in California, supposedly San Francisco Bayarea. They will launch a US version of their very profitable mobile business there.

Also they revised upward their net profit forecast from 4.5 billion to 6.3 billion. The revenue and operating profit forcased was revised from 25.5 billion to 29.0 billion yen, and 9.0 billion to 12.5 billion yen, respectively.

See Also:

1. Our Mobage Article

Tags: Company, Japan, News by Shunichi Arai
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Mobage town, a social network and gaming site for mobile phones, is now in deep crisis.

From December 10th, the Japanese government has requested mobiles phone companies to filter web content for minors. The filtering policy is very strict. It prohibits minors from accessing web sites in ‘communication’ criterion. ‘communication’ means all web sites with forum, chat, comment, or social network feature. So, Mobage falls into that criterion.

50% of Mobage users are minors. It will hurt DeNA, the operator of Mobage. Nomura securities, Japan’s leading stockbroker, downgraded DeNA’s rating. DeNA’s stock price fell 30 percent.

Nobuo Sakiyama, a social activist, criticized the fact that mobile phone companies are filtering web sites with gay and lesbian, political or religional topics.

See Also: (in English)

1. DeNA’s stock quote

Tags: Japan, News by Shunichi Arai
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Mobage town has been started in 2006 by Tomoko Namba, a Mckinsey alumna. “Mobage town” is short for “mobile game town”. So, Mobage provides numerous small games and a social network service for mobile phone users. Essentially users are using Mobage as a social network service.

The service has 7.4 million registered users and 13 billion page views per month. 47% of users are teenagers. 37% of users are in their twenties.

Mobage has a very clever growth/revenue model. Each user has an avatar. Avatar needs to be clothed. Clothings can be bought with a virtual money called ‘Mobagold’. Users can obtain Mobagold by registering to adviterser’s services. Its business model is similar to Korean network game site ‘Han game’.

Namba started a company ‘DeNA’ in 1999 as an Internet auction service company. Soon, Yahoo! Japan became a clear winner in Japanese Internet auction market. Her company experienced a long slump. In 2005, DeNA gained a certain success with mobile commerce services, and successfully IPOed to Tokyo stock market.

Mobage’s huge success boosted the company’s profit. DeNA’s revenue reached 14 billion yen, and a profit is 2.5 billion yen.

See also:

1. Company’s site (in English)
2. Mobage town article with screen shots (in Japanese)

DeNA:

• Type: public (JP:2432)
• Founded: Mar. 1999
• Went public: Feb. 2005
• Sales: 14 billion yen ($129 million)
• Profit: 2.5 billion yen ($23 million)
• Employee: 415
• People: CEO, Tomoko Namba

Tags: Japan, Service by Shunichi Arai
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