Social Networks Wars In Japan
Akky Akimoto(秋元裕樹)
Asiajin.com / etc.
Agenda
- What Social Networks Do Japanese use?
- American Invasion
- Latest Topics
- Gedankenexperiment
What Social Networks Do Japanese use?
By number of users. From Asiajin
Non-"Facebooked" countries
China, Russia, Korea, Brazil and... Japan
from Vincos.it
Three Major Japanese Social Networks
Gree
If Zynga has own social network on mobile...
- began in Feb. 2004
- Six Degree of Separations
- ex-Rakuten guy's hobby project - more Facebook-ish
- Lost once against Mixi, comes back on mobile since 2006
- KDDI support. Han-game-alike on cellphone
Gree (cont)
- Now PC 1%, mobile 99%
- Fishing game, virtual pet, other freemium games, simple games, avatar
- diary, photo, communities
- heavy TV commercial films 1, 2, 3 4
- opening platform for third-party games
Mixi
- mix + i(people)
- Japanese version of Facebook
- opened in Feb. 2004
- social graph, OpenSocial(Mixi App), groups(community), photo, microblog(Voice), geo-location, like button, calendar
- diary, footprint, news, closed(no search indexed), nickname/anime-icon (once tried real name)
over 3 million communities
Mixi history http://homepage1.nifty.com/silabel/net/mixi_history.html
Mixi (cont)
- in July 2007, cellphone traffic passed PC's one
- business model - advertising
- opened apps platform
- allied with Renren and CyWorld
Mobage Town(DeNA)
- DeNA(dee-enn-aye) had been running auction service mainly on mobile
- started in Feb. 2006 - 2 years late
- Mobairu Ge-mu Town
- UGC and game-centric mobile social network
- simple game, freemium and heavy TV commercial 1, 2, 3
Mobage Town(DeNA) (cont)
- opening platform for third-party games
- There was a PC version made since July 2008
- Shook hands with Yahoo! Japan. Cooperate with Mixi
Gree - Mobage Town head to head on games
- Gree sued DeNA on fishing game copyright infringement(2009/9)
- DeNA was said to tell third party developers not to provide for Gree (2010/8)
- 2 million yen prize for developers newly hired(2010/8)
- Mobage approaches Yahoo! Japan and Mixi
Gree - Mixi head to head on social graphs
Both announced Facebook Like-like social button
American Invasion - Twitter
- First translated language
- 18% Tweets are from Japan
- over 100 books, TV drama
- Supported by local company(Digital Garage)
more successful than other countries.
American Invasion - Facebook
- Facebook Japan Office Lead by ex-Y!J
- Japanese interface(2008), Japanese cellphone verison (2010)
- "smartphone" friendly
- "real name" policy
Latest news
- Is Facebook coming in Japan?
- EMA and cost of filtering
- Yahoo! Mobage
- Mixi Phone
Facebook may be cool
You know. Cool people always tried to find the next cool place. (See what's happening on Digg now.)
- Like when some Mixi users started saying "Twitter is cool"
- Some influential net users @amachang, @hamachiya2, @holygrail triggered "Facebook Matsuri" on Wednesday
- フェイスブックがはじまりそうな件 got popular on Hatena Bookmarks. Some people commented "if friends are there, Facebook is not such a boring place we felt 2 years ago"
- Facebook Online Meeting gathers over 400 popular bloggers/Twitter users on 15th
Facebook Japan has to create an atmosphere that FB is the next cool thing.
The key is English and globalization. Japanese have been obsessed, ambivalent feeling to English.
EMA, cost of filtering and Int'l players
- Content Evaluation and Monitoring Association(EMA)
- Self-regulated organization to watch unsafe contents for kids
- DeNA holds 350 people in Niigata and Tokyo. Gree let a dedicated team to watch all messages.
- Gree CEO Tanaka complained that they spent over a billion yen, while Twitter/Facebook are free from it.
http://internet.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/news/2008/02/18/18492.html
Yahoo! Mobage
- Japan's Largest Portal Yahoo! Japan
- Leading Mobile Game Networks DeNA
- Yahoo! Mobage Officially Launched Thursday
- Although its Beta had troubles, begins with 100 titles
Mixi Phone
- Prototype Made Only One, Given to a loyal developer
Can Facebook buy them?
All 3 are IPO-ed on Tokyo Stock Exchange(TSE) so technically yes. How much are they?
- FB is worth $11.5 billion
- Mobage Town(DeNA): $4.4 billion TSE
- Gree: $3.48 billion TSE
- Mixi: $0.79 billion TSE
(cont)Can Facebook buy them?
| Company | Market Value(billion) | Users(million) | ARPU(yen) |
|---|
| Gree | $3.48 | 21.3 | 177 |
|---|
| Mixi | $0.79 | 21.0 | 61 |
|---|
| DeNA | $4.4 | 20.5 | 344 |
|---|
| Facebook | $11.5 | 500 | 21(2009) |
|---|
- I don't think FB would exchange their 1/3 stocks against DeNA/Gree
- Mixi has many features FB has.
Only Facebook's number is active users, counted more strictly
Technology
| Company | Programming Language |
|---|
| Gree | PHP |
|---|
| Mixi | Perl |
|---|
| DeNA | Perl |
|---|
| Facebook | PHP |
|---|
note: Zynga recently bought Unoh(Zynga Japan), both uses PHP
CEO/Founder
| Company | Age | Education | Background | Ownership |
|---|
| Gree | 33 | Nihon Univ.(Politics) | Rakuten | 49.39% |
|---|
| Mixi | 34 | Univ. of Tokyo(Economy) | N/A | 58.69% |
|---|
| DeNA | 48 | Harvard MBA | McKinsey | 15.2%(#1) |
|---|
| Facebook | 26 | Harvard | N/A | 24% |
|---|
Oversea
- Mixi China, Mixi-Renren-CyWorld alliance
- DeNA USA(MiniNation, IceBreaker, Aurora Feint, Gameview Studios, Astro Ape), China(天下網)
- Gree interests in smartphone
Mixi directly faces off against Facebook, but other two may not.
Any Questions?
Thank you
- Asiajin.com
- @asiajin / @akky
- information at asiajin period com
