Booklap is a handy service that helps you find great books. It does so by presenting quotes from books that have that impressed other users. Tokyo-based Prosbee, the startup behind the initiative, recently announced it has partnered with the world’s second largest search engine, Baidu, to provide this quote presentation on the Japanese version of Hao123, a web directory from the Chinese search giant.
According to Alexa, Hao123 ranks as the 29th most popular global site, and 6th in Mainland China. This traffic volume is about equal to that of Google Japan, MSN, or Pinterest.
The site has a significant presence among users over 30. And with this partnership, the startup aims to make more middle-aged users aware of its service.
Booklap is presenting its content for Japanese users, but they have been aggressively participating in many startup competitions outside Japan. This leads us to believe that they’re interested in business expansion around the Asian region. We’ve asked Baidu about whether they plan to extend this collaboration beyond the Japanese language, but we have not yet received any comment on that.
In an entertainment industry crowded with various media formats, busy consumers everywhere want a service that recommends books they’ll like. So I expect the startup to start working on global expansions as soon as possible.
Hao123 was launched back in 1999 and was acquired by Baidu in 2004. The directory launched its Japanese version back in 2012, and has been gathering attractive content to establish a solid presence in the Japanese market. Prior to partnering with Booklap, the Chinese giant also started content syndication with Japanese entertainment wesite Bokete.jp.
Booklap raised 20 million yen (approximately $200,000) last month from Incubate Fund, Voyage Ventures, and Genuine Startups.
See the original story in Japanese. BearTail, a startup comprised mainly of graduates from Tsukuba University, today unveiled a cloud-based household accounting solution called Dr. Wallet. The service lets you do personal finance data entry by simply scanning your receipts. It was launched in beta back several months ago, and is now available for the Android platform. In Japan, there are more than a few competitors in this space. Since last year, we’ve seen more than 20 startups providing cloud-based accounting services for freelancers and SMEs. (See our previous article for more info.) In terms of differentiation from conventional services, Dr. Wallet does not use OCR (optical character recognition) but instead depends on human-powered data entry for ensuring accuracy. It also automatically sorts and classifies your purchases. With this human-powered processing, the startup could achieve data entry accuracy of up to 99.98%, likely enough to ease users’s concerns of erroneous inputs. But why is this startup providing the service for free when the back-end human component is likely so costly and time-consuming? We’re told that BearTail is exploring monetizing the accounting service with big data solutions. If they collect purchase histories from users, they establish some behavior models. For example,…
BearTail, a startup comprised mainly of graduates from Tsukuba University, today unveiled a cloud-based household accounting solution called Dr. Wallet. The service lets you do personal finance data entry by simply scanning your receipts. It was launched in beta back several months ago, and is now available for the Android platform.
In Japan, there are more than a few competitors in this space. Since last year, we’ve seen more than 20 startups providing cloud-based accounting services for freelancers and SMEs. (See our previous article for more info.)
In terms of differentiation from conventional services, Dr. Wallet does not use OCR (optical character recognition) but instead depends on human-powered data entry for ensuring accuracy. It also automatically sorts and classifies your purchases. With this human-powered processing, the startup could achieve data entry accuracy of up to 99.98%, likely enough to ease users’s concerns of erroneous inputs.
But why is this startup providing the service for free when the back-end human component is likely so costly and time-consuming? We’re told that BearTail is exploring monetizing the accounting service with big data solutions. If they collect purchase histories from users, they establish some behavior models. For example, if you find users who frequently stay at a certain hotel or use a beauty salon, you can give them a discount coupon that encourages them to pay with a specific brand of credit card.
This scheme calls to mind fellow Japanese startup Sansan, which operates a free CRM business card solution called Eight. Their strategy is also “Grow first, monetize later”, building a reputation and driving users to their high-end service Link Knowledge.
BearTail unveiled a subscription-based, e-commerce service called Amazon Gacha back in February, which randomly selects items from Amazon’s showcase and delivers them to users. But it was subsequently forced to shut down in order to avoid a possible infringement on Amazon’s trademark. But I believe its new service is well thought out in terms of a monetization, and it will be an interesting company to watch as it continues to grow.
For Japanese coverage of Line’s event, see here and here. Line Corporation held a press conference today in Tokyo where it revealed some information about its progress this far, as well as its plans for the near future. It was at this same ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ event last year that the company announced that it would expand from a chat application to a mobile platform. Now hosting everything from games to manga to news, Line is has become a mobile content portal that is wildly popular in Japan and quickly growing around the world. The company disclosed the most recent user numbers for its Line service, with 230 million registered users. Of those, 47 million come from Japan, 18 million from Thailand, 17 million from Taiwan, 15 million from Spain, and 14 million in Indonesia. Information with high public value can be disseminated faster and widely on Line in times of disaster There have been over 7 billion messages and 1 billion stickers sent as of August 2013. And as we previously mentioned, the company made 9.77 billion yen in Q2, a 66.9% increase over the same period last year. CEO Akira Morikawa took the stage to give some…
For Japanese coverage of Line’s event, see here and here.
Line Corporation held a press conference today in Tokyo where it revealed some information about its progress this far, as well as its plans for the near future.
It was at this same ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ event last year that the company announced that it would expand from a chat application to a mobile platform. Now hosting everything from games to manga to news, Line is has become a mobile content portal that is wildly popular in Japan and quickly growing around the world.
The company disclosed the most recent user numbers for its Line service, with 230 million registered users. Of those, 47 million come from Japan, 18 million from Thailand, 17 million from Taiwan, 15 million from Spain, and 14 million in Indonesia.
Information with high public value can be disseminated faster and widely on Line in times of disaster
There have been over 7 billion messages and 1 billion stickers sent as of August 2013. And as we previously mentioned, the company made 9.77 billion yen in Q2, a 66.9% increase over the same period last year.
CEO Akira Morikawa took the stage to give some brief updates about the service. He revealed that the app is seeing 63,000 new users every hour. And on Google Play, Line is one of the few apps to exceed 100 million users. He says that while it is a service born in Japan, it now has 80% of its users elsewhere. ¶
Morikawa also pointed out the usefulness of Line during disasters:
Information with high public value can be disseminated faster and more widely on Line in times of disaster. It is starting to become a sort of infrastructure. We’d like to turn like into a common language across the world, and our growth strategy is based on this.
Chief strategy and marketing officer, Jun Masuda
Jun Masuda, the company’s chief strategy and marketing officer, said that there have been 290 million downloads of Line’s family of apps. This includes 48 million for Line Camera, 14 million for Line Play, 13 million for Line Card, and 8 million for Line Brush. For some Japan-specific services, good progress has been seen too. Line Manga for example has 3 million downloads. ¶
As we have noted before, Line’s repertoire of games has been successful as well, with over 190 million downloads. It was also revealed for the first time today that Line Timeline has 73 million users around the world. It has grown by 330% says Masuda.
Masuda also disclosed that sticker sales, which are a huge part of the company’s business, now accounts for more than 1 billion yen per month (or more than $10 million). ¶
He spoke about the company’s merchandise licensing business, noting the sales of Line character goods already account for 4 billion yen in sales. He added that the company will be rebranding the character business as ‘Line Friends’, and they hope to accelerate that business in the future. ¶
Line’s director Takeshi Idezawa
He also explained that in some developing countries, many people would like to buy stickers and play games, but they can’t because of the credit card barriers. He explained that moving forward they will support Paypal and prepaid cards as well, the latter starting in Japan at major convenience stores like 7-eleven and Lawson. ¶
After Masuda, Line’s director Takeshi Idezawa took the stage to speak about the company’s marketing business. He explained that the nature of mobile messaging lets companies develop an emotional bond with their customers. He pointed to Lawson has a standout company using the platform, now with more than 10 million friends. 500,000 of these have used the company’s Line-distributed coupons in stores. ¶
Idezawa added that they also want to expand their marketing efforts to new regions across the globe, using it in other markets as they have thus far here in Japan. ¶
Masuda spoke about Line’s game platform, disclosing that they had 2.6 billion yen in monthly revenue in July 2013. Line Games are based on your real social graph, playing with your actual friends. And based on that idea their games have been casual and simple enough for anyone to start playing at any time. ‘Ease of start’ was important for any games they bring to their platform. He says that Line Pop now has 32 million downloads and 4.3 billion yen in total revenue. Line Bubble has 25 million downloads and 1.9 billion yen in total revenue.
Both Line Wind runner and Line Pokopang had 14 million downloads a piece to date, the latter being particularly successful having just launched in May.
Line Games now aspires to go global, after experiencing success in Japan and around Asia. To that end, they will be rolling out a new lineup of games, including Sonic Dash through coorperation with Sega. ¶
Our next target is to turn Line into a universal language.
CEO Morikawa said that Line is the fastest growing globalized service, supporting a 17 languages starting this month, with more to come. They are trying to be the top instant message brand in each country, and to do this they need more locally relevant content, and they have processes in place for that. He provided the examples of Thailand and Spain where they have been moving up while competitor What’s App has not been doing quite as well.
They also have involved local celebrities to help promote Line in different regions like Indonesia, India, and Mexico. Line is now targeting 300 million by the end of this year, and they will be active in the US and Europe to reach that goal. When asked about North America in the Q&A session, Morikawa says that we can expect to see some activity near the end of this year. He added “Our next target is to turn Line into a universal language.” ¶
Masuda again took the stage to explain that the company’s new 3C plan, focusing on communication, contents, and commerce. He introduced a few new upcoming services, first announcing video calls. This is not entirely surprising, given the recent trend of companies jumping into mobile video.
He also revealed that Line Music will be rolled out soon, not a separate app but rather included in Line’s basic functions. Masuda said that you’ll be able to listen and share with friends too, although it will be curious to see how many music labels are on board with this when it launches. The service will not be just for Japan, but outside the country as well.
The third new service announced will be Line Mall. The idea here, says Masuda, will be to create a new shopping experience on Line.
Development of these new services are being finalized and they are coming in the fall of 2013.
For more information on the growth of Line and its vast repertoire of apps, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011.
Many games have tried to replicate the success of Japan’s mobile smash hit Puzzle & Dragons, but there aren’t many that have really made an impact. But few weeks back EA teased a game that has maybe just as much hit potential. That title is Tetris Monsters and it just launched in the Japanese App Store today. Like Puzzle & Dragons, this is a puzzle/RPG hybrid, but of course the puzzle component here is Tetris. I should note that the iconic puzzle game has been changed a lot, with a just a few controls: Block position indicators at the bottom of the puzzle area. You simply tap where you want your block to fall. A cycle button on the right where you you can adjust the block’s orientation. A ‘hold’ button on the right to take a pass on a block you don’t want. As for the RPG portion of the game, when you complete lines or series of lines, you make a strike against your enemy. And as you win and collect more monsters, you become stronger and better equipped for future battles. The artwork looks solid, and of course Tetris’s icon music is every bit as awesome as…
Many games have tried to replicate the success of Japan’s mobile smash hit Puzzle & Dragons, but there aren’t many that have really made an impact. But few weeks back EA teased a game that has maybe just as much hit potential. That title is Tetris Monsters and it just launched in the Japanese App Store today.
Like Puzzle & Dragons, this is a puzzle/RPG hybrid, but of course the puzzle component here is Tetris. I should note that the iconic puzzle game has been changed a lot, with a just a few controls:
Block position indicators at the bottom of the puzzle area. You simply tap where you want your block to fall.
A cycle button on the right where you you can adjust the block’s orientation.
A ‘hold’ button on the right to take a pass on a block you don’t want.
As for the RPG portion of the game, when you complete lines or series of lines, you make a strike against your enemy. And as you win and collect more monsters, you become stronger and better equipped for future battles. The artwork looks solid, and of course Tetris’s icon music is every bit as awesome as it used to be. I’ve only played it for a short time so far, but I look forward to checking it out some more.
To learn more about the game, check out our quick video demo above. For folks here in Japan who would like to learn more, there will be a Tetris Monsters event coming up this Saturday at the Apple Store in Ginza.
In the past year or two, there’s been a lot of hype around the subscription commerce market, and the Japan market is no exception. There is Sakelife, which delivers you nice Japanese sake every month, or Coffee365, which delivers fresh coffee beans right to your door. But Japan has more than just those two. There is also a fun subscription service that brings you a new cosplay costume every month. Haco is a line of fashion items by a mega commerce company Felissimo. Felissimo launched its ecommerce service back in 1994 and since then have focused on a monthly subscription model which they call ‘Collection’. On its website, there are different product lines such as ‘anone’ for kids clothes, ‘Couturier’ for hand-made items, and ‘Flufeel’ for underwear. The aforementioned cosplay costume are all inspired by fairy tales, letting girls to dress up as princesses or fairies. The costume subscription is available for a monthly fee of 9,800 yen (or about $100). You can see some pictures of these costumes below. The company has both printed catalogues and a website, and according to an article over on Markezine, the ratio of orders coming in from the website was 53% back in…
In the past year or two, there’s been a lot of hype around the subscription commerce market, and the Japan market is no exception. There is Sakelife, which delivers you nice Japanese sake every month, or Coffee365, which delivers fresh coffee beans right to your door. But Japan has more than just those two.
There is also a fun subscription service that brings you a new cosplay costume every month. Haco is a line of fashion items by a mega commerce company Felissimo. Felissimo launched its ecommerce service back in 1994 and since then have focused on a monthly subscription model which they call ‘Collection’. On its website, there are different product lines such as ‘anone’ for kids clothes, ‘Couturier’ for hand-made items, and ‘Flufeel’ for underwear. The aforementioned cosplay costume are all inspired by fairy tales, letting girls to dress up as princesses or fairies. The costume subscription is available for a monthly fee of 9,800 yen (or about $100). You can see some pictures of these costumes below.
The company has both printed catalogues and a website, and according to an article over on Markezine, the ratio of orders coming in from the website was 53% back in 2010. But we can assume this number to be far higher now. Back then, the site had 2.5 million monthly visitors, over 80 million page views per month, and the total number of subscribers (number of households) exceeded 1.5 million.
The subscription model is very simple, users can buy a subscription of their choice, and after the product arrives every month, they can decide whether to continue the subcription, end it, or switch to another subscritpion. Users can select the category of the items they receive, but the details or colors of the products are not known until they actually arrive. 90% of Fellissimo’s users are women in their 30s, and often are decision-makers when it comes to purchasing in many households.
Many of Felissimo’s products are very much affordable, and they give people something to look forward to each month. The company covers everything from decorative sheets for mirrors for 950 yen a month, pancake mix for 1,600 yen, and nail stickers for 1,000 yen.
The company frequently engages with its customers as well. One good example of this being the ‘design a packaging box’ campaign where it collected 50 package box designs subsequently used to send out products to customers. The company operates its own social good projects as well, such as the ‘Peace by Peace Cotton Project’. These fashion items use organic cotton harvested in India and have designs drawn by children in the country.
Felissimo’s long-established subscrition commerce business can serve as a model for up-and-coming startups looking to break into the sector.
Here’s another unusual mobile game from Japan that sort of fits in the genre of ‘disgustingly cute’, like Battle Cats or Nameco. In fact Fermented Soybeans Factory, or Natto Koubou as it’s called in Japanese, looks like it’s trying to replicate many aspects the highly successful Nameco franchise from Bandai Namco, with the little brown beans sort of resembling Nameco mushrooms, and the pulling up motion much like Bandai’s. It’s hard to believe that anyone made a game about natto, Japan’s famously bad-tasting fermented beans [1]. But that’s exactly what game developer Qooga has done. Players are challenged with pulling out the bad beans and pushing down the good ones, all within the given 30 second time limit. If you do it well enough, you’ll make it to the next level, and hopefully collect some rare natto characters on the way. If you’d like to see how it works, check my brief demo above. It’s really tricky to target the right beans when the spring up so fast. So while it’s certainly a casual title, it has a bit of a furious pace for the brief time that you play it. If you’d like to try it out for yourself,…
Here’s another unusual mobile game from Japan that sort of fits in the genre of ‘disgustingly cute’, like Battle Cats or Nameco. In fact Fermented Soybeans Factory, or Natto Koubou as it’s called in Japanese, looks like it’s trying to replicate many aspects the highly successful Nameco franchise from Bandai Namco, with the little brown beans sort of resembling Nameco mushrooms, and the pulling up motion much like Bandai’s.
It’s hard to believe that anyone made a game about natto, Japan’s famously bad-tasting fermented beans [1]. But that’s exactly what game developer Qooga has done.
Players are challenged with pulling out the bad beans and pushing down the good ones, all within the given 30 second time limit. If you do it well enough, you’ll make it to the next level, and hopefully collect some rare natto characters on the way.
If you’d like to see how it works, check my brief demo above. It’s really tricky to target the right beans when the spring up so fast. So while it’s certainly a casual title, it has a bit of a furious pace for the brief time that you play it.
If you’d like to try it out for yourself, it’s available as a free download for iOS or Android.
Masaru Ikeda
Rick Martin
Yukari Mitsuhashi
