{"id":3524,"date":"2009-05-12T01:06:51","date_gmt":"2009-05-11T16:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/?p=3524"},"modified":"2009-05-12T01:06:51","modified_gmt":"2009-05-11T16:06:51","slug":"white-elephant-from-the-internet-bubble-seven-yo-avatar-sns-is-shut-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/white-elephant-from-the-internet-bubble-seven-yo-avatar-sns-is-shut-down\/","title":{"rendered":"White Elephant From The Internet Bubble?   Seven-yo Avatar SNS Is Shut Down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3526\" title=\"MCJ's Logo\" src=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mcj_logo.gif\" alt=\"MCJ's Logo\" width=\"87\" height=\"41\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3527\" title=\"Cafesta's Logo\" src=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/cafesta_logo.gif\" alt=\"Cafesta's Logo\" width=\"118\" height=\"43\" \/><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3528\" title=\"GCrest's Logo\" src=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/gcrest_logo.gif\" alt=\"GCrest's Logo\" width=\"132\" height=\"34\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3529\" title=\"@game's Logo\" src=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/atgames_logo.gif\" alt=\"@game's Logo\" width=\"164\" height=\"39\" \/><br \/>\nA Tokyo-based conglomerate of PC manufacturing and e-commerce retailing, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcj.jp\/profile\/index_e.html\">MCJ(Mouse Computer Japan)<\/a> announced it would shut down the company&#8217;s avatar SNS service <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafesta.com\">Cafesta[J]<\/a> at the end of this month.   The service earns 600,000 unique users and 80 million pageviews in a month.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3530\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" title=\"Cafesta's Website\" src=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/cafesta_website.jpg\" alt=\"Cafesta's Website\" width=\"476\" height=\"467\" \/><br \/>\nCafesta was launched by Powered.com (merged to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kddi.com\/english\/\">KDDI<\/a> in 2006), an ISP and a subsidiary of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tepco.co.jp\/en\/index-e.html\">Tokyo Electric Power<\/a> in 2002.  Then its ownership was handed over to a joint venture of Powered.com and Korea&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/info.daum.net\/DaumEng\/\">Daum Communications<\/a>, and last April MCJ purchased the service for obtaining possible users who are likely to use WiMax service that the company intended to start.<br \/>\nBut after purchasing the service, MCJ learned it engaged no possible WiMax user but had middle-aged female users who are willing to post their luncheon images everyday.<br \/>\nAs for this time&#8217;s closing, MCJ arranged a campaign program allowing all Cafesta users to switch their memberships to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atgames.jp\">@games[J]<\/a> which is an avatar-based online game service provided by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gcrest.com\/index_e.html\">GCrest<\/a>, a subsidiary of <a href=\"http:\/\/ir.cyberagent.co.jp\/ir_e\/\">CyberAgent<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.systempro.co.jp\/eng\/\">SystemPro<\/a>, and it requires no additional subscription fee.<br \/>\nMCJ used to be requesting each of the users to have a paid subscription or to buy an avatar to earn revenue enough to cover the maintenance cost.    However the company has been suffering from decline in its principal business of PC retail sales, and it decided to leave the service that would not contribute to the principal business.   MCJ&#8217;s president <em>Kaoru Uesawa<\/em> said, ad revenue based web business seemed like a white elephant from the Internet bubble economy.<br \/>\nIn similar cases, the illustration SNS <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pixiv.net\/\">Pixiv[J]<\/a> temporarily interrupted new user sign-up for the lack of infrastructure capability to meet the user&#8217;s emerging access needs, which made Pixiv users worried if the service continues thereafter.   Some of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nicovideo.jp\/\">Nico Nico Douga[J]<\/a> users call themselves for switching their membership states from free to paid subscription in order to get the service owner out from the red ink.   <a href=\"http:\/\/mixi.jp\">Mixi[J]<\/a> users also had a meet-up to talk about how to bring more profit to the service&#8217;s provider.<br \/>\nDoes it mean ad revenue based social site business breaks up?   Should the business model be proposed not by the service provider&#8217;s employees but by the service users?<br \/>\nVia <a href=\"http:\/\/www.itmedia.co.jp\/news\/articles\/0905\/08\/news064.html\">IT Media News [J]<\/a><br \/>\n<strong>See Also:<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafesta.com\/notice\/close\/\">Notice: Cafesta plans to shut down its service and encourage the users to switch their memberships to @games. [J]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Tokyo-based conglomerate of PC manufacturing and e-commerce retailing, MCJ(Mouse Computer Japan) announced it would shut down the company&#8217;s avatar SNS service Cafesta[J] at the end of this month. The service earns 600,000 unique users and 80 million pageviews in a month. Cafesta was launched by Powered.com (merged to KDDI in 2006), an ISP and&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/white-elephant-from-the-internet-bubble-seven-yo-avatar-sns-is-shut-down\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">White Elephant From The Internet Bubble?   Seven-yo Avatar SNS Is Shut Down<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,24],"tags":[83,546,1329,2254],"class_list":["post-3524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-news","tag-games","tag-cafesta","tag-gcrest","tag-mcj","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}