Video sharing in Japan: Twitcasting and Vine prove popular among teenagers

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Vine is surprisingly popular with young people in Japan
Vine is surprisingly popular with young people in Japan

Japanese mobile marketing reserach company Livigen recently conducted a survey about video streaming and sharing services. The company used its own survey app Sumamoni (available on both Android and iOS) to collect responses from 500 participants [1].

When asked about which video sharing service they know of, almost all respondents – 96% to be precise – knew of YouTube. NicoNico Douga was the second most widely known at about 68%, with Twitcasting and Vine following at at 23% and 10% respectively.

Twitcasting is a Japanese live-streaming app that we have covered in the past. Launched early in 2010, it now has almost four million users.

videoapps-LIvigen

Although Youtube was well known among the respondents as a whole, some services were found to be more popular in certain age groups. For example, Niconico Douga the service most known by people in their 20s, whereas Twitcasting and Vine were the most acknowledged among young teenage kids.

Livigen’s survey also asked respondents to say what they found fun and interesting about these services. Some teens who prefer Twitcasting said things like:

  • “People I became friends with on Twitter come to see me on Twitcasting”
  • “It’s easier to use than Niconico Douga, and its a good way to kill time”
  • “All it takes is a mobile phone to broadcast.”

Meanwhile a teenage user on Vine said she loves that a six-second video can be easily made into a story, and another teenager responded that she enjoys to connect with people outside of Japan.

But as with most user-generated content services, most people access these products as viewers and do not actually post videos themselves. Out of all 500 respondents, only 0.8% had posted video on Vine, 4.6% on Twitcasting (pictured below), and even Youtube was relatively low at 18%.

Admittedly this is a small sample size, it’s a good indication that it might be a while longer before people in Japan to get used to casually sharing their videos.


  1. Ranging from teenagers to those in their 30s.  ↩