Certain American startups do pretty well in Japan, if a report issued today by Nielsen Japan (NetRatings) is to be believed (as with all web statistics providers, take the following numbers with a grain of salt). The company investigated the traffic Dropbox and Evernote have seen in the past 12 months, and it appears the… Continue reading Nielsen: Evernote And Dropbox See Significant User Growth In Japan
June 2011 Japan IT Links (Part 2)
Continued from (Part 1). Middle part of June news which we did not write as a dedicated article. Continued to (Part 3) Referred pages are all in Japanese, unless otherwise stated. NTT Plala’s Twitter Promotion To Generate Your Own Anime CM Japan’s First Flash Coupon Site Piku Replaces Its Executives Kinokuniya/Sony/Panasonic/Rakuten To Interconnect Their e-Book… Continue reading June 2011 Japan IT Links (Part 2)
ex-Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie’s Last Nude! Before Imprisonment
ex-Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie, aka Horiemon, who had got over 2 years imprisonment, broadcasted his road to jail on Nico Nico Live(Namahousou), but his desire for exhibitionism seems beyond that. “Horiemon Rasuto Gurabia” (Rasuto=Last, Gurabia = photo sets came from gravure magazine) article was published in Weekly Playboy [J] issued today June 27. If you… Continue reading ex-Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie’s Last Nude! Before Imprisonment
Amazon Japan To Hire Japanese College Graduates For The 1st Time Next Spring
Rakuten is still the 800-pound gorilla in Japan’s e-commerce arena (70 million accounts are hard to beat), but Amazon Japan is doing pretty well, too, it seems (here’s a case study comparing the two companies). According to a recent report in business daily The Nikkei, big A plans to hire Japanese graduates coming straight out… Continue reading Amazon Japan To Hire Japanese College Graduates For The 1st Time Next Spring
Dentsu Releases Android Decorational Twitter Client Decotter
Dentsu, Japanese advertising colossus, released a new Android client with D2 Communications and Bijutsu Shuppan Networks Co., Ltd. The new client Decotter lets you tweet not only 140 characters text but also Deco Sozai(=decoration materials), colourful images and character letters. FYI, those “deco moji” are not emoji, which is now part of Unicode. With maximum… Continue reading Dentsu Releases Android Decorational Twitter Client Decotter
KDDI Buys 5% Stake In GPS Game Provider Colopl For US$6.2 Million
Launched in Japan as early as 2005, “Colopl”, a simulation in which cell phone users manage a virtual colony, is probably one of the earliest geo-aware games out there. The namesake company made “Coloni-na Seikatsu Plus” (Colony-like Life) available to subscribers of NTT Docomo, SoftBank Mobile, and KDDI au. In the game, players collect a… Continue reading KDDI Buys 5% Stake In GPS Game Provider Colopl For US$6.2 Million
ex-Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie Sells His Road To Prison Live
Takafumi Horie, ex-Livedoor CEO, who had challenged several Japanese traditional companies and thought as one of Japanese IT-industry icon, who recently got rejected his appeal of innocent by supreme court, unveiled on his personal blog that the day of imprisonment is today, around 13:00 June 20, 2011 [J]. He is planned to be in jail… Continue reading ex-Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie Sells His Road To Prison Live
Attempted Rapist Arrested By Browsing His Mixi Profile On The Victim’s Cellphone
Sankei reports [J] that Kanagawa prefectural police arrested a 19 yo university student in Yokohama on June 16 for attempted rape. The boy raided a flat of 20 years old victim, an university student, through an non-locked front door around 21:30. Just before waking her up to threat, he used the victim’s cellphone, logged-on Mixi… Continue reading Attempted Rapist Arrested By Browsing His Mixi Profile On The Victim’s Cellphone
Toyota Raves In Mad Social Campaign, Save The Car (And Us)!
Toyota Social App Award – Save The Car (Japanese/Chinese) is a social application contest run by the world largest automaker Toyota. The social applications applied are expected to deliver fun and job of car to people. To promote the contest, Toyota prepared an official cheering song and its choreography. They lined up about 30 of… Continue reading Toyota Raves In Mad Social Campaign, Save The Car (And Us)!
Groupon Japan Gives Away $50 PC Game For New Members
The market for daily coupon services in Japan has developed into a a two-horse race in the last few months: Groupon Japan is leading the market with an estimated $18.6 million in sales in April this year against Recruit’s Ponpare, which racked up $14.5 million in the same month (according to daily coupon search service… Continue reading Groupon Japan Gives Away $50 PC Game For New Members