Mochio Umeda lives in the Bay Area but he is very influential in Japan. His best selling book, ‘Web Shinkaron’, was excitedly accepted by business people. His word is straight-forward and impassioned. He describes what is Google, what is the Web 2.0, what is open source. Those things were not well understood by the Japanese… Continue reading Mochio Umeda – Japan’s leading web visionary
Rakuten: online shopping monopoly
Rakuten is a giant. Rakuten group has an Internet shopping mall ‘Rakuten‘, a hotel reservation site ‘Rakuten Travel’, ‘Rakuten Securities’, ‘Rakuten Credit Card’ and so on. Rakuten has $1.72 billion annual sales. The mall and the travel agent has the biggest share of their markets like Amazon did on the book market. Mikitani started his… Continue reading Rakuten: online shopping monopoly
Hatena: a web company with geekish tastes
Hatena started its business in 2001 with Jinriki Kensaku Hatena (similar to Yahoo! Answers). They have released 16 services so far (as of 2007) and became a famous role model of a geek company in Japan. As a private company, their financial statement is veiled. Their announced number of users reached 400,000+ in April 2006.… Continue reading Hatena: a web company with geekish tastes
Kakaku.com: a price comparison company
Kakaku.com started from a website which lists the retail prices of Akihabara, the Japanese electric market. It quickly became a famous site which shows the best deals of electrical products. Their revenue sources are through affiliate and advertisement. Now Kakaku.com is not specialized in electric products. Their business was expanded into travel, insuarance, and foreign… Continue reading Kakaku.com: a price comparison company
OKWave expressed its USA subsidiary opens November
OKWave, which has been providing the same name “OKWave(オーケーウェーブ)”, Yahoo! Answers like Q and A community service, expressed its new USA-office plan. The Q-and-A service OKWave started in 2000/1. It is the one of the biggest Q-and-A service in Japanese. OKWave also provides its system and user-bases to other players, such like NTT groups’ portal… Continue reading OKWave expressed its USA subsidiary opens November
Niconico-Douga expressed its Taiwan version begins next week
via CNET Japan Online Video sharing/comment services Niconico-Douga will upgrade October 10th 6:00 p.m. (JST) with access/visibility related enhancement, from the owner company Niwango’s release. The release also includes that they will open Taiwan localized version of Niconico-Douga on October 18th. Niwango’s main area is cellular phone contents, but their started Niconico-Douga got popular as… Continue reading Niconico-Douga expressed its Taiwan version begins next week
IE7 Auto Update unexpectedly released to Japanese users
via Impress Watch Microsoft IE Blog opens that the Internet Explorer browser is now available on Windows Update so Windows users with Automatic Update on are going to get IE7 upgraded. But that was not expected for Japan. Microsoft explained before that Japanese version of Windows will not have IE7 automatically until 2008. So this… Continue reading IE7 Auto Update unexpectedly released to Japanese users