On June 29, one of Japan’s largest social network service Mixi introduced a change on a view of your My Mixi(also called Maimiku, = friends on Mixi). My Mixi list page [J, login required] now shows you your friends’ full names in parenthesis under their nick names.
Number of their friends were displayed in the parenthesis before the change.
The full name is not necessarily real name, which Facebook requires. That full name is what the user set on their registration of Mixi. It has been always visible if your friends visit your profile page. (Whether it was displayed to non-friends or friends-of-friends depend on how the profile owner limited its visibility) So it is not something Mixi tried to change the rule around registered name visibility. You could set pseudo name there, which could be same as their nickname.
However, by seeing their friends full names on the friends-list page, Mixi users who did not know that their “full name” was visible to their friends. Some might set there their real name, expecting only the nickname is shown to others. Those users got shocked and are blaming Mixi now.
Mixi turned off footprint function last month, and now made people more conscious of friends’ full name instead of nickname. Both changes make Mixi steps closer to its global rival Facebook.
See Also:
Mixi’s release [J]
