Something pretty rare happened today in Japan’s web industry: a big Internet company acquired a smaller one. In this case, Yahoo Japan (the nation’s biggest website) snatched up all shares of location-based mobile advertising company Cirius Technologies. Cirius is headquartered in Tokyo and also operates Cirius Technologies, Inc. in San Francisco (more info on the… Continue reading Yahoo Japan Buys Location-Based Mobile Advertising Company Cirius
Category: Japan
KDDI Promotes Brand New Products And Collects User-Generated Parody Songs
Japan’s second largest mobile operator KDDI’s au introduced several new lineups for their design-oriented feature phone series last month, and they have been running a promotion campaign collecting user-generated parody songs via Twitter. When you post a set of lyrics consisting of five-seven-five syllables (which has a similar rhythm to Haiku or Senryu) via Twitter… Continue reading KDDI Promotes Brand New Products And Collects User-Generated Parody Songs
What Are Japan’s Top 5 Social Services? Here’s A Quick Overview.
Following yesterday’s news that Japan’s mobile social gaming giant GREE now hit 21.25 million users, our very own Akky Akimoto has done some research and created the graph you can see above for his Japanese blog. And as you can see, in Japan’s “social services” realm, Mixi (“Japan’s Facebook”), GREE and Mobage-town (another huge mobile… Continue reading What Are Japan’s Top 5 Social Services? Here’s A Quick Overview.
BREAKING: GREE’s Financial Report Suggests It’s Japan’s Biggest Social Network Now
Japan’s mobile gaming giant GREE just released [PDF] their financial report for the April-June quarter, and it seems the company is running from one record to the next. Year-on-year, all relevant financial numbers have gone up, as did the number of page views and, more importantly, registered members. Here’s a summary of GREE’s financial report,… Continue reading BREAKING: GREE’s Financial Report Suggests It’s Japan’s Biggest Social Network Now
Twitter Time Signal Bot To Draw Lines On Your Timeline
@kiti_tori (which means “cutting off” in Japanese) is a super simple Twitter bot gives you only one function, drawing time signal on your timeline, made by @okihuran, @icconico and @d3gk. By following this, when you scroll down your Twitter time line, you can easily recognize how old tweets you are seeing back without calculating small… Continue reading Twitter Time Signal Bot To Draw Lines On Your Timeline
Google Maps Throws Off “Beta” In Japan On Its 5th Anniversary
Google Japan cerebrated the 5th anniversary of Google Maps with bloggers event and the special logo, which may be the first time custom logo for Google Maps. The event was held at the Roppongi Hills, to where Google Japan moved from Shibuya recently. At the event, Google Maps developers made presentations how Google Maps team… Continue reading Google Maps Throws Off “Beta” In Japan On Its 5th Anniversary
Daily Deal Service For Movie Watching To Be Launched Next Monday
Bluem[J], the Tokyo-based tech start-up which have been founded by the person who worked formerly with Japan’s second largest ad agency, expects to launch a Groupon-like daily deal service for cinemas next Monday, which is called Drepass[J]. First of all, a cinema puts a special programming notice on their website and broadcasts it on Twitter. … Continue reading Daily Deal Service For Movie Watching To Be Launched Next Monday
Vending Machines Get More Intelligent, They Recommend You What To Drink
Wherever you go in Japan, vending machines are serving drinks and beverages at every corner of the country. We’re experiencing the hottest summer for the first time in a long time, which devotes to almost 50% increase in beverage sales at vending machines compared to their average sales revenue. A subsidiary of a public transport… Continue reading Vending Machines Get More Intelligent, They Recommend You What To Drink
Gree Releases Beta Version Of iPhone Page
Gree, a Japanese social network service competing the No.1 position with Mixi and Mobage-Town around 20-million-users-line, released its iPhone site as a beta version today. Their release tells that they developed iPhone version of Gree as “the new third version”, different from both PC and mobile(Japanese feature phones) version, especially for touch panel interface. The… Continue reading Gree Releases Beta Version Of iPhone Page
BREAKING: Facebook Rolls Out Special Mobile Version For Japanese Feature Phones
Facebook, which opened a Tokyo office back in February this year, has just pushed out the long-awaited “optimized” version for Japanese “feature phones”. Well, kind of, as the company itself isn’t too sure about the result and is quite cautious in the wording of the announcement (see screenshot below). The site can be accessed through… Continue reading BREAKING: Facebook Rolls Out Special Mobile Version For Japanese Feature Phones