Asiajin

Japanese “social illustration site” Pixiv continues to amaze. The site, which lets users present self-made drawings to other users and offers a number of basic social networking functionalities, now counts a whopping 1.5 million members [JP]. Not bad for a completely domestic site that’s only available in Japanese (although  some foreigners exhibit their works on it as well).

Here’s how a typical page looks like:

Let’s crunch some numbers: The service was established in September 2007. Pixiv’s user base stood at 100,000 in March 2008. In June 2009, the site had 1 million members, meaning it added half a million people in about six months. It took 838 days to go from zero to 1.5 million members.

More impressive stats:
Pixiv now racks up 1 billion page views per month (up from 720 million monthly half a year ago). Members post 18,000 drawings per day.

There are more social drawing services in Japan, but no other site can stack up to Pixiv in popularity.

The eponymous, Tokyo-based company has 20 employees.  If you want to know more, Wikipedia offers a great English entry on Pixiv.

Tags: Company, Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Pixiv [JP], a Japanese-only “social illustration” network (Asiajin articles), today welcomed its one millionth member. The site boasts a healthy growth rate, as the user base stood at 100,000 in March 2008.

Pixiv claims the site sees 720 million page views monthly and that users submit 15,000 illustrations daily. It’s not hard to believe. Look at this pretty impressive Google Trends graph (especially after April 2009):

The idea behind Pixiv is to provide talented amateur artists with a platform to present their drawings to other people. Registered users can rate these drawings, write comments on them, bookmark them etc.  The usual social network features are in place, too: befriending, profiles, messaging etc.

Here is a typical image (click for a larger view):

Premium members pay $6 a month to get a badge on their profile and some other benefits (judging from what I heard, Pixiv also attracts quite a few gaijin who can’t talk Japanese but somehow fight their way through the registration process).

Look here for a list of other social drawing services from Japan.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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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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Since Tsuyoshi Kusanagi stepped down from the role promoting digital terrestrial TV service (see this for more details), NAB,  the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan, were forced to introduce a new promoter, which is Chide-jika[J], punning the words of digital TV and deer.

In opposition to the deer’s activity, users of Japan’s largest Internet forum 2 channel[J] together created an anthropomorphic bear character in parody, named Analoguma[J], and a number of geeks following the boom launched sites introducing his profile and fight song all around Japanese blogosphere.

NAB announced it would accuse fan-art reproduction without permission to the prosecutor as violating the original’s copyright, which caused an ironic burst in popularity of the deer promoting a new broadcast system and his tough opponent who wants to conserve the current system.

Some people composed a fight song for the bear, containing vocal made by the singing synthesizer Hatsune Miku(pdf), and those were uploaded and introduced on Japan’s CGM-based video sharing site “Nico Nico Douga[J]“.

The embeded video shown below is quoted from YouTube, since its original stored on Nico Nico Douga is prohibited to be quoted.

The other people launched a parody site having the domain name of “chidejika.jp”, which takes you to a set of many fan-art drawings on the illustration SNS pixiv[J].

via IT Media News [J]

See Also:

• Chide-jika Official Website (by NAB) [J]
• Chide-jika Parody Website [J]
• Analoguma Parody Website [J]

Tags: Community, Japan, Joke, News, Trend by Masaru IKEDA
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On the day when all we are permitted to wag the dog, many companies devoted themselves to create attractive pranks on their websites.    I wrapped up what had happened on Japanese web scene.

For pursuing the journalist’s perspective to be honest on the facts, we Asiajin report no prank nor joke, but do the fact covering what people have made.    We appreciate your understanding.

Company / Website	Main Business	Pranks & Jokes
Tsuburaya Production	A well-known movie production for its special effects, and the father of Ultra-Man	Kanegon or coin monster, which is appeared in Tsuburaya’s TV serials, restarted blogging.
Impress Watch	Japan’s oldest e-mail newsletter covering IT business matters	The company started publishing a daily newsletter called “Cat Watch” that day.
Daily Portal Z	The editorial team introduces useful tips for our daily life on the country’s popular portal site every day.	The editorial team investigated the following supervisions.- A mermaid can be seen when you have the eyes opened in bath water.- In order to receive the appropriate signal from the radio station far from you, and to listen to your favourite program more clearly, how do you assume a pose to use your body as an antenna?
Irem Software Engineering	A famous pachinko game developer	The secret society called “Black Irem” jacked the company’s website.
Google	Unnecessary to explain	A senryu or a humorous Japanese poem may be inserted to some search results.  The popular children’s TV program characters, Gachapin and Mukku were invited to GoogleMap advisory board[J].
Six Apart	The world’s famous blog platform developer	It showed an interview with Yaruo, the ASCII art character born on the “2ch” BBS, and asked him the reason why he had upgraded his blog platform to Movable Type 4.
Mag Mag	Japan’s largest e-mail newsletter distribution platform provider	The website’s top page turned to be a Google-like.
YouTube	Unnecessary to explain	Some videos are seen upside down.
Nico Nico Douga	Japan’s popular video sharing site	Subtitles overwrapped on the video run through much faster than usual.  President Obama will join the program.
Kokuban.in (blackboard in)	Draw a picture on the virtual blackboard with your mouse, and share it with the other users on the illustration SNS	The title has been changed to Sukebu.in, meaning “sketchbook in”.
Pixiv	An online illustration community for artists	The company’s office is registered in Tokyo, but their data center facility is reportedly located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which causes reponse delay for browsing the website.
Yahoo! JAPAN	Japan’s most famous search engine and directory service	Planning on-the-spot filming of Evangelion drama movie, which is originally known as an animation.
Hatena	Japan’s most popular social bookmark site	Hatena has the service allowing its users to give rewards to interesting blog post, which is called “star”. Inspired by the supplementary income payments that Japanese government distributes to the national, the company also distribute “star” to all the Hatena users as to give it to their favorites.
Kayac	Developing a number of entertaining and weird websites and projects	As the substitute to the supplementary income payments, Japanese government will distribute Kayac’s product encouraging your fidgeting.
Interlink	ISP, web hosting provider and domain registrar	President Obama applied for “.obama (dot obama)” domain.
Himote SNS	An internet forum for unpopular people, in response to the torment caused by St. Valentine’s Day	The forum founder Ega-chan got his girlfriend finally, and he shut the website.
Vector	Japan’s largest library having shareware and freeware applications	More than 100,000 software titles are available for free of charge.
eiga.com	The portal site introducing new movie lineups	The top page shows you no listing of movie titles, but a bunch of stupid news.
Lolipop	A famous website hosting provider	Their business has been changed to an Indian curry restaurant.
Web-kare	A role playing game on the website, for having dates with your virtual boyfriend	Web-kare (web boyfriend) has been changed to the e-commerce shop selling curry (web curry).
Good Smile Company	The company making and selling a number of cartoon character clay works.	It shows you the preview of a movie titled Nendoroid Deka, a story about the detective girl with a clay doll.
MyNet Japan	Running a “Digg”-like social news site and mobile site integration.	Their power source turned to naturally generated type, and the employees need pedaling bikes to keep their servers running.

Web-kare sold a fake product of “web curry” retort pouch on the website.

Good Smile Company made a fake announcement that they intend to release a movie of the detective girl with a clay doll.

MyNet Japan CEO & employees couldn’t stop pedaling bikes for generating power to feed their mission-critical servers.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Event Report, Japan, Joke, News by Masaru IKEDA
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