January 25, two of Japan’s largest social networking service companies, DeNA(who runs Mobage) and Mixi announced their new alliance on social commerce.
On the release, it is said that “Mixi, who holds networks of close friends” and “DeNA, who has plenty of knowledge on e-commerce and has been running Bidders (mobile shopping service)” are going to construct a new social commerce service in this growing sector.
Planned in late March, a mall-type social commerce service will be opened in Mixi. There are already some major companies, including Lawson HMV Entertainment, Sanrio(=Hello Kitty) and Cecil McBee decided to have their shops. Other companies are encouraged to contact them to join.
Whilst Gree, the rest of the big three, has been competing severely against DeNA’s Mobage on social game platform (1, 2), Mixi and DeNA seemed to have friendly relationship by using phrases co-existence of “social graph” and “virtual graph”.
But still, they are common in having social games on their own open platforms. The release does not have single word of “Mobage”.
See Also:
Mixi’s release [J]
DeNA’s release [J]
