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Aviary to host its Photo Hack Day in Tokyo, registration now open

Rick Martin 2014.02.10

A few months back we wrote about New York-based Aviary, which at the time was making an effort to establish itself in Japan. And now this month, an upcoming event will be a big part of that effort, as Aviary’s recently announced hackathon, Photo Hack Day, is set to take place on the weekend of February 22/23. As we have noted previously, Japan is perhaps the most enthusiastic mobile photography nation, and we have covered an incredible amount of great photo applications that have been produced here. It’s not unlikely that many more fun apps will be created at this Japan version of Photo Hack Day, so if you are a developer that would like to participate, you can check out the Photo Hack Day site for more information on how to do that. Aviary’s previous Photo Hack Day took place at Facebook’s San Francisco headquarters, with over 300 developers and designers producing 63 mobile apps. The Japan event will take place at Mixi headquarters in Tokyo, with 300,000 yen as the first place award (about $3,000, out of $15,000 total in prizes). There are a number of API sponsors on board, with API demos taking place on the morning…

A few months back we wrote about New York-based Aviary, which at the time was making an effort to establish itself in Japan. And now this month, an upcoming event will be a big part of that effort, as Aviary’s recently announced hackathon, Photo Hack Day, is set to take place on the weekend of February 22/23.

As we have noted previously, Japan is perhaps the most enthusiastic mobile photography nation, and we have covered an incredible amount of great photo applications that have been produced here. It’s not unlikely that many more fun apps will be created at this Japan version of Photo Hack Day, so if you are a developer that would like to participate, you can check out the Photo Hack Day site for more information on how to do that.

Aviary’s previous Photo Hack Day took place at Facebook’s San Francisco headquarters, with over 300 developers and designers producing 63 mobile apps. The Japan event will take place at Mixi headquarters in Tokyo, with 300,000 yen as the first place award (about $3,000, out of $15,000 total in prizes).

There are a number of API sponsors on board, with API demos taking place on the morning of the 22nd before the actual hacking kicks off at 11:30am [1]. So if you’re a developer or designer who would like to get involved in what looks to be very interesting, and very focused hackathon, do drop over to the website for more information, or register here on Peatix.

Our readers may recall that Aviary recently launched the first international edition of its photo editor in Japan back in November. We briefly spoke with their CEO Tobais Peggs at that time, who gives a brief intro to his service in the video below.

I should also note that I’ve agreed to volunteer at the event as one of the judges in an effort to help out. So if you’re in attendance, do come say hello! ↩

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Facebook unlikely to dethrone Line in Japan anytime soon

Rick Martin 2014.02.10

With over 340 million registered users around the world, Line’s success as a mobile platform is difficult to ignore. Over 9.2 billion messages are sent daily, and thanks to games and stickers Line brought in 12.2 billion yen in the last quarter [1]. Line’s home market of Japan is an interesting one to examine, given that 50 million of its registered users are based there [2]. As far back as a year ago, we declared here that ‘Line is the Japanese Facebook’, a comparison referring primarily to its dominance rather than any similarity in features. But how does the social internet landscape look in Japan in 2014? Let’s take a look at a couple of recent surveys that shed some light on this. Japanese market research site Fast-Ask recently polled a group of 680 people (ranging from teenages to those in their 40s) and asked them a barrage of questions. The most interesting question perhaps was (roughly translated) “Out of Facebook, Twitter, and Line, which would present the most trouble if it were suddenly taken away from you?” Almost half of respondents (49.0%) chose Line as their most essential service, with the rest of the respondents split between Twitter, Facebook,…

With over 340 million registered users around the world, Line’s success as a mobile platform is difficult to ignore. Over 9.2 billion messages are sent daily, and thanks to games and stickers Line brought in 12.2 billion yen in the last quarter [1].

Line’s home market of Japan is an interesting one to examine, given that 50 million of its registered users are based there [2]. As far back as a year ago, we declared here that ‘Line is the Japanese Facebook’, a comparison referring primarily to its dominance rather than any similarity in features. But how does the social internet landscape look in Japan in 2014? Let’s take a look at a couple of recent surveys that shed some light on this.

Japanese market research site Fast-Ask recently polled a group of 680 people (ranging from teenages to those in their 40s) and asked them a barrage of questions. The most interesting question perhaps was (roughly translated) “Out of Facebook, Twitter, and Line, which would present the most trouble if it were suddenly taken away from you?” Almost half of respondents (49.0%) chose Line as their most essential service, with the rest of the respondents split between Twitter, Facebook, and “I don’t know.”

Similarly, when asked “Which service on average do you use most?”, 40.4% of respondents said it was Line, with Twitter and Facebook polling at 32.6% and 23.5% respectively.

One of the reasons that Line has done so well is that it has managed to attract female users as well as male. The cute characters have helped its popularity in Thailand and Taiwan especially, where the service has 22 million and 17 million registered users respectively. A number of other ‘kawaii’ Japanese apps , including CocoPPa and Snapeee have won some attention in those regions as well, where made-in-Japan cuteness appears to be popular.

Here in Japan, Line is especially popular with the ladies, as another recent survey of over 2000 young mothers showed (average age 31.4 years old). In this poll, participants were asked which internet service they use at least once a week. Overwhelmingly, 70.4% say they use line at that frequency, up more than 20% on the previous year’s survey (see chart below).

In comparison, both Facebook and Twitter were also more popular than previous years in this survey, but their growth was not nearly as sharp as Line’s over the past year. If Facebook gets its mobile act together, it could make some further progress in Japan. But I think that if anyone is going to dethrone Line in its home market, it would have to be a service born on mobile. And that isn’t Facebook [3].

This according to Line, as of January 23, 2014. ↩
As of January 23, there are 22 million in Thailand, 17 million in each of Taiwan and Indonesia, 16 million in India, and 15 million in Spain. ↩
Facebook had about 21 million users in Japan when we last checked in. ↩

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Japanese mobile developer Cinnamon raises $1.5 million, launching new photo app

Masaru Ikeda 2014.02.10

See the original story in Japanese. Spicy Cinnamon (Cinnamon for short), the startup behind the photo sharing app Seconds, announced today that it has raised 150 million yen (approximately $1.47 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, TBS Innovation Partners [1], Incubate Fund, and Golden Gate Ventures. Coinciding with this funding, the company has launched a new iOS app today called PicChat. [2] An Android version will follow soon. Cinnamon was launched back in 2012, led by Miku Hirano who previously work with Naked Technology, which was acquired by Mixi in 2011. The company securing seed funding from CyberAgent Ventures and several angel investors. Our readers may recall that the company pitched its Seconds app at Startup Asia Jakarta last April. The app appears to be doing well with over 200,000 downloads across the Asia region, including Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore, so I’m curious why they are moving on to a new app. I had a chance to speak with the company’s co-founder and CEO Miku Hirano to find out more. We’ve been looking at our Seconds users for almost an year since launch, and we’ve learned how they typically behave. We target women around the age of 25 in the South East…

See the original story in Japanese.

Spicy Cinnamon (Cinnamon for short), the startup behind the photo sharing app Seconds, announced today that it has raised 150 million yen (approximately $1.47 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, TBS Innovation Partners ^[1], Incubate Fund, and Golden Gate Ventures. Coinciding with this funding, the company has launched a new iOS app today called PicChat. ^[2] An Android version will follow soon.

Cinnamon was launched back in 2012, led by Miku Hirano who previously work with Naked Technology, which was acquired by Mixi in 2011. The company securing seed funding from CyberAgent Ventures and several angel investors. Our readers may recall that the company pitched its Seconds app at Startup Asia Jakarta last April.

The app appears to be doing well with over 200,000 downloads across the Asia region, including Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore, so I’m curious why they are moving on to a new app. I had a chance to speak with the company’s co-founder and CEO Miku Hirano to find out more.

Cinnamon CEO Miku Hirano

We’ve been looking at our Seconds users for almost an year since launch, and we’ve learned how they typically behave. We target women around the age of 25 in the South East Asian region, and we found that they are using our app not for saving memories in photos, but rather for real-time communication. For them, they can’t be bothered to key in texts when uploading a photo, so our new app allows you to add a short audio clip with the app. That’s PicChat.

I thought the Seconds app was a completed product to share photos among intimate friends. But it seems that Cinnamon has been treating it as a test marketing process for the next step. Considering the Seconds app has acquired more than 200,000 users to date, we can expect the new app to have a more rapid user expansion since based on user feedback.

In this space, I think Vietnam and Korea saturated by Korean apps like Kakao Talk. So we expect to take over Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand with the new app. To help in user acquisition, we hired a number of students from top Asian universities as interns. We believe in their potential in terms of their viral marketing skills.

As we’ve learned from China’s ClassBox, which reached 1 million downloads its first month, a viral effect can happen in a student network. It could be interesting to see if Cinnamon can win the interest of the younger generation in this way.

Cinnamon will shut down the Seconds app in the future and shift all their resources to their PicChat app. We understand that they will keep focusing on user acquisition this year, and will start monetization by selling stickers and ads after 2015.

The investment arm of Tokyo Broadcasting System. ↩
The company has bases in Tokyo and Hanoi, but is registered in Singapore. ↩

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Japanese crowdsourcing platform for video production raises $3M

Takeshi Hirano 2014.02.08

See the original article in Japanese Viibar, startup which operates a crowdsourcing platform specializing in video production raised approximately 300 million yen in total ($3 million) from Globis Capital Partners and GREE Ventures. Further details were not disclosed. Viibar was founded in April of 2013, with the aim of offering high-quality video for affordable prices, matching creators (like video directors and videographers) with clients. According to Viibar CEO, Yuta Kamisaka, a few hundred creators have been already registered on Viibar. Since last year, the company has utilized crowdsourcing to outsource work from a number of clients, including Rakuten and Mixi. The short video below was created for Mixi. Kamisaka started his first career at a video-production company that makes TV and video ads. He gained some experience in video production, worked on the marketing team at Rakuten, and then he founded Viibar. He participated Open Network Lab’s incubation program as part of its seventh batch, where Viibar won The Best Team Award on demo day. Shogo Kawada, a co-founder of DeNA and an angel investor, has also joined the team. Currently Japan’s crowdsourcing platforms can be roughly divided into two types. One type has all processes completed within the platform…

See the original article in Japanese

Viibar, startup which operates a crowdsourcing platform specializing in video production raised approximately 300 million yen in total ($3 million) from Globis Capital Partners and GREE Ventures. Further details were not disclosed.

Viibar was founded in April of 2013, with the aim of offering high-quality video for affordable prices, matching creators (like video directors and videographers) with clients. According to Viibar CEO, Yuta Kamisaka, a few hundred creators have been already registered on Viibar. Since last year, the company has utilized crowdsourcing to outsource work from a number of clients, including Rakuten and Mixi. The short video below was created for Mixi.

Kamisaka started his first career at a video-production company that makes TV and video ads. He gained some experience in video production, worked on the marketing team at Rakuten, and then he founded Viibar.

He participated Open Network Lab’s incubation program as part of its seventh batch, where Viibar won The Best Team Award on demo day. Shogo Kawada, a co-founder of DeNA and an angel investor, has also joined the team.

Currently Japan’s crowdsourcing platforms can be roughly divided into two types. One type has all processes completed within the platform – such as with Lancers and Crowdworks. The other type has the company more actively involved in the process, as with Mugenup or Kaizen. Viibar’s position is closer to the latter.

We spoke to Kamisaka about how the company handles video production.

ーーThe process is usually so complicated that it would be difficult leaving everything up to just the client and the creator. Mugenup solved the problem by dividing a whole process into small parts. How will Viibar take on the problem?

First, we ask clients to present an outline of the video. After signing a non-disclosure agreement, video directors on our platform who are interested in joining the project participate in the assignment and pitch their work. After creators are selected, we build a production platform on cloud.

On the website, clients can see profiles and past work of video directors and select one based on that information.

ーーIsn’t it difficult to work on a project when there is just direct communication between a client and a creator?

Right. So we also have product managers who help facilitate the process. A client’s expectation of quality is usually pretty high, and sometimes the creator has to do some processes again. By as we learn with every project, that will be reflected in our operations and systems.

ーーHow many members do you have on the team?

We have three part-time product managers. We expect one manager can support 10 to 20 clients.

The video market is growing fast, as YouTube’s business expands. There is great potential for Viibar to grow.

ーーWhat type of order do you get the most? And how much does it usually cost?

For animation videos, around 300,000 yen ($3000), and for live-action video, 600,000 yen ($6000) would be the most common price. The types of video are wide-rangng, but YouTube ads and short video ads for companies’ websites that introduce their product or service are increasing.

Videomaking has typically been a high-cost service. But with more video consumtion online, the need for affordable video clips is going up. On my own personal project dropout, almost 90 percent of the users watch the videos on their smartphone. This device shift is significant.

If it costs a few thousands dollars to make a video, it won’t be affordable for most people. But what if that price drops to a few hundreds dollars? Then it could drive an expansion of quality video media. To that end, I think there’s much potential to be found in video-crowdsourcing.

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How Puzzle & Dragons connects with Japan’s commuters

Rick Martin 2014.02.06

People often look at GungHo Online Entertainment’s hit game Puzzle & Dragons and wonder why it’s such a strong mobile title. I’ve already written much about exactly why I like it personally, but there are some other reasons that I think have really contributed to its success here in Japan. I started thinking about this recently when I saw someone complaining about Dungeon Keeper on Twitter, and how it kicks you out of the game when you lose a connection [1]. Lots of games require persistent connections, and that’s certainly fine provided your day doesn’t take you through a maze of underground subway tunnels like many of us who live in urban centers such as Tokyo. But it really got me thinking about Puzzle & Dragons, and how and where I have been playing it over the past year or so. What’s remarkable about the game is not just that it doesn’t require a persistent connection, but that it only really requires a sporadic connection. During my own subway commute here in Tokyo, there are certain blind spots on my route where I usually can’t get a network connection. And because I’ve traveled that route so often, I can usually…

People often look at GungHo Online Entertainment’s hit game Puzzle & Dragons and wonder why it’s such a strong mobile title. I’ve already written much about exactly why I like it personally, but there are some other reasons that I think have really contributed to its success here in Japan.

I started thinking about this recently when I saw someone complaining about Dungeon Keeper on Twitter, and how it kicks you out of the game when you lose a connection [1]. Lots of games require persistent connections, and that’s certainly fine provided your day doesn’t take you through a maze of underground subway tunnels like many of us who live in urban centers such as Tokyo.

But it really got me thinking about Puzzle & Dragons, and how and where I have been playing it over the past year or so. What’s remarkable about the game is not just that it doesn’t require a persistent connection, but that it only really requires a sporadic connection.

During my own subway commute here in Tokyo, there are certain blind spots on my route where I usually can’t get a network connection. And because I’ve traveled that route so often, I can usually anticipate when I’ll lose my connection and when I’ll get it back [2]. P&D will always handle these drops like a champ. The actual dungeons (or rounds/levels) don’t need a connection at connection at all. So if you suddenly go offline, you won’t even realize it until you finish the level and the data tries to sync. So in reality, the game only really needs a connection during times when it phones home to sync data, such as:

The initial start screen
Entering or exiting a dungeon
Powering up or evolving a monster

If you happen to run into network issues during those times, you’ll typically see a ‘Connecting’ message, followed by either a ‘retry’ option or an error message (see below).

So very often I’ll find myself beginning a dungeon before going through a long underground stretch that has no signal, just so that I have something to do during that blacked out period. You’ve no doubt done something similar at some point, perhaps downloading all your podcasts or syncing an RSS reader before a flight.

The end result for P&D is a pretty frustration-free gaming experience, far removed from the likes of Dungeon Keeper mentioned above. And of course, a game that does not need a persistent connection is not unique to by any means, but I think the lesson to be learned here is that you want to make a game that’s a mainstream hit in the Japan market (or for a similar urban population with developed public transport), you need to make sure it doesn’t frustrate users when they suddenly lose a connection.

Thumbs up, but no more than necessary

I probably don’t need to point out that in addition to handling sporadic connections really well, P&D is a really easy game to play with one hand – again, a great advantage for Japan’s legions of train commuters who stand hanging one-armed from a strap during rush hours. You only really need your thumb to play, and since all the puzzle movement is in the lower half of the screen, you never find yourself reaching uncomfortably to the top half during gameplay (see lower left). No fingers necessary!

When Apple rolled out Control Center with iOS 7, it did lead to some unexpected problems for P&D players however (and probably many other games too). If you’ve played the game for any length of time, you’ll notice that sometimes when you try to bring an orb up from the very bottom row, you will sometimes inadvertently launch Command Center. It’s a huge annoyance (see lower right), and as much as I love the convenience of Command Center, I’m sure the folks at GungHo we’re not too pleased when it came out.

But overall, Puzzle & Dragons is still a pretty amazing little mobile game, one that I regularly see people playing during their commute – provided that I don’t have my head down playing it myself.

puzzle-dragons-thumb — Command Center sometimes gets in the way :(

I have not confirmed whether the game actually does this or not, but given that it came from Richard Gaywood, a super smart dude from TUAW (where I once briefly blogged), I’m taking this as a certainty. ↩
Usually my network ‘blind spot’ is between Omotesando and Futakotamagawa. Coverage has improved much over the years, thankfully. I should also point out that this is also a great game if you’re annoyed by the tunnels on the bullet train! ↩

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Japan’s Adways invests in Gumi, looks to conquer Asia mobile app market

Adways
Gumi

Junya Mori 2014.02.06

See the original story in Japanese. Japanese internet company Adways (TSE:2489) announced yesterday that it has invested in mobile gaming developer Gumi (also from Japan), taking a 1.0% stake. Adways provides a reward-based ad platform for mobile app developers (in Japan and around the world) called AppDriver. Gumi is seeing good results in user acquisition, not only for its own game titles but also with Brave Frontier, a game developed by its subsidiary Alim. It is said that the app has acquired more than 2 million users in Japan as well as a million users from around the rest of the world. Through this investment, Adways expects to create a synergy with Gumi to expand its business in global mobile markets. Adways also recently announced it has partnered with InMovi Japan and five Japanese startups providing crowdsourcing services, helping AppDriver users improve and promote their apps using these services for free or at discounted rates.

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese internet company Adways (TSE:2489) announced yesterday that it has invested in mobile gaming developer Gumi (also from Japan), taking a 1.0% stake.

Adways provides a reward-based ad platform for mobile app developers (in Japan and around the world) called AppDriver. Gumi is seeing good results in user acquisition, not only for its own game titles but also with Brave Frontier, a game developed by its subsidiary Alim. It is said that the app has acquired more than 2 million users in Japan as well as a million users from around the rest of the world. Through this investment, Adways expects to create a synergy with Gumi to expand its business in global mobile markets.

Adways also recently announced it has partnered with InMovi Japan and five Japanese startups providing crowdsourcing services, helping AppDriver users improve and promote their apps using these services for free or at discounted rates.

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Japanese online printing startup Raksul fundraises $14.3 million

Masaru Ikeda 2014.02.06

Raksul, a Tokyo-based startup providing online printing services, announced today that it has raised 1.45 billion yen (approximately $14.3 million) from WiL (World Innovation Lab), Global Brain, Itochu Technology Ventures, Plus (an office stationary company), GMO Venture Partners, and Mixi. Raksul is a fabless company that provides printing services in partnership with more than 1,600 printing facilities across Japan (as of November of 2013). Users can place printing orders at affordable rates because the company takes advantage of downtime at participating printers to complete those orders. According to Nikkei Business, Raksul will use the funds raised this time to prepare for global service operations, and to launch a new service that allows merchants to distribute their flyers via newspapers to consumers for affordable rates. By making the most of the internet and removing middleman costs, their flyer distribution service gives local merchants a better chance to promote their services for less than 10% of the price usually seen in this sector. Raksul was founded in 2009 and raised a total of 230 million yen ($2.4 million) during the last year from Nissay Capital, Yahoo Japan, and Anri.

Raksul, a Tokyo-based startup providing online printing services, announced today that it has raised 1.45 billion yen (approximately $14.3 million) from WiL (World Innovation Lab), Global Brain, Itochu Technology Ventures, Plus (an office stationary company), GMO Venture Partners, and Mixi.

Raksul is a fabless company that provides printing services in partnership with more than 1,600 printing facilities across Japan (as of November of 2013). Users can place printing orders at affordable rates because the company takes advantage of downtime at participating printers to complete those orders.

According to Nikkei Business, Raksul will use the funds raised this time to prepare for global service operations, and to launch a new service that allows merchants to distribute their flyers via newspapers to consumers for affordable rates. By making the most of the internet and removing middleman costs, their flyer distribution service gives local merchants a better chance to promote their services for less than 10% of the price usually seen in this sector.

Raksul was founded in 2009 and raised a total of 230 million yen ($2.4 million) during the last year from Nissay Capital, Yahoo Japan, and Anri.

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Sekai Lab: Crowdsourcing platform lets Japanese companies find developer teams around Asia

Junya Mori 2014.02.05

See the original article in Japanese Sekai Lab, a company under Singapore-based music/game company Monstar Lab, has launched a crowdsourcing platform. It lets companies in Japan find engineers from all around the world, but still using Japanese. With the rapid spread of smartphones in Japan, more and more app developers are needed these days. Sekai Lab COO Ikkei Okuma thought that the company could provide a solution to match Japanese companies with skilled engineers in Asian countries such as China and Vietnam. Okuma explains: There are many great engineers in Asia. But there is no platform in Japanese to match them with companies in Japan, making it very difficult for companies to outsource their work. Workers registered on most crowdsourcing platforms are individuals, which makes it hard to outsource a big project using crowdsourcing platforms. Sekai Lab aims to address these issues. The cost of human resources on Sekai Lab are relatively low. And by providing Asian engineers with high skill sets, the company hopes to alleviate the shortage of engineers currently plaguing Japan. So how does it work? Development processes are executed through communication between the developer team and the company that outsourced the work. And depending on the…

See the original article in Japanese

Sekai Lab, a company under Singapore-based music/game company Monstar Lab, has launched a crowdsourcing platform. It lets companies in Japan find engineers from all around the world, but still using Japanese.

With the rapid spread of smartphones in Japan, more and more app developers are needed these days. Sekai Lab COO Ikkei Okuma thought that the company could provide a solution to match Japanese companies with skilled engineers in Asian countries such as China and Vietnam. Okuma explains:

There are many great engineers in Asia. But there is no platform in Japanese to match them with companies in Japan, making it very difficult for companies to outsource their work. Workers registered on most crowdsourcing platforms are individuals, which makes it hard to outsource a big project using crowdsourcing platforms. Sekai Lab aims to address these issues.

The cost of human resources on Sekai Lab are relatively low. And by providing Asian engineers with high skill sets, the company hopes to alleviate the shortage of engineers currently plaguing Japan.

So how does it work? Development processes are executed through communication between the developer team and the company that outsourced the work. And depending on the project, Monstar Lab can provide support as well.

On the Sekai Lab website, you can find engineers across many different categories, such as the type of app required, cost, and the past experience of the team.

Okuma also told us a little about how they screen teams for registration.

For the time being, we only register companies who have an office in Japan, in addition to their developer base outside Japan. We meet the team face-to-face and confirm their past experience. We gather information about the team leader and put it on our website.

In Japan, crowdsourcing service is getting lots of attention these days, with Lancers and Crowdworks showing remarkable growth. Can crowdsourcing beyond Japan’s borders be successful as well? We’ll keep watching Sekai Lab, so stay tuned.

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Mechika Boola: Mobile video editing app from Japan makes boring clips beautiful

SCORE 1,694

Rick Martin 2014.02.04

I previously wrote about Honda’s RoadMovies, a very clever little app that lets you compose short 24-second montage videos by stringing together smaller bite-size clips. I confess, I rarely get excited about mobile video apps, and I’ve yet to bother much with platforms like Vine or any others. But I do like the RoadMovies creation process. It’s one of the few mobile video services that I think offers real value, for me at least. So I was pleased when I heard about Mechika Boola, a new app released just last week on iOS and Android that offers a very similar video composition process – but with a number of notable differences. The first oddity is the name, which I thought sounded a little familiar for some reason, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Kazuhiro Naya, the CEO of Glue-th Inc [1], the company that makes the app, explained it to me: The name comes from the Cinderella story (link). It is a magic spell to turn a miserable girl into a beautiful princess. Each shot recorded by this app may not be so beautiful. But the 15-second-movie edited by this app is always beautiful. This app is to…

I previously wrote about Honda’s RoadMovies, a very clever little app that lets you compose short 24-second montage videos by stringing together smaller bite-size clips. I confess, I rarely get excited about mobile video apps, and I’ve yet to bother much with platforms like Vine or any others. But I do like the RoadMovies creation process. It’s one of the few mobile video services that I think offers real value, for me at least.

So I was pleased when I heard about Mechika Boola, a new app released just last week on iOS and Android that offers a very similar video composition process – but with a number of notable differences. The first oddity is the name, which I thought sounded a little familiar for some reason, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Kazuhiro Naya, the CEO of Glue-th Inc [1], the company that makes the app, explained it to me:

The name comes from the Cinderella story (link). It is a magic spell to turn a miserable girl into a beautiful princess. Each shot recorded by this app may not be so beautiful. But the 15-second-movie edited by this app is always beautiful. This app is to turn your ordinary life into an extraordinary one, like Cinderella magic!

Like RoadMovies, you assemble short video clips to make longer compositions. In this case you stitch together six two-second clips to make a 15 second movie. The advantage over RoadMovies here is clear, with drag-and-drop clip re-arrangement possible if you need it, an action that resembles the icon rearrangement in iOS.

There’s also a handy feature that lets you customize the fade-to-black end title screen with a short text-based message. This improves on a big annoyance that I experienced with RoadMovies, which just tacks on the date automatically to movies.

You can also add visual filters and music as you can in RoadMovies, but here the selection of music is wider with 50 original songs to choose from and plans to add 10 to 20 more every month. I confess, I still like the high quality of the music available in RoadMovies, so I don’t really see that as an area where Honda’s app is lacking. But the variety in Mechika Boola is good to see.

Where Mechika Boola really stands out, however, is in its use of stamps/stickers. Stickers have been primarily a mobile photo trend to date, so it’s really interesting to see them used for video in a manner that does not suck. Because each ‘sub-clip’ is just two seconds long, you have a clearly pre-defined time period that your sticker will be on screen, so you don’t have to bother with start and end points for when your sticker is visible in the video. Stickers can be resized and repositioned too, but the delete sticker ‘x’ button is not always the easiest to execute (or at least, me and my fat fingers had difficulty with it).

There are more than 200 stickers currently available to use in the app, giving you lots of fun options to play with.

I’m told that the company will be focusing on user growth for its first two years, but one aspect of their business model will eventually be to sell premium stickers and music. Given the success that Line has seen with that model, and the fact that consumers in Japan are accustomed to such purchases, this makes a lot of sense.

So far my own experience with Mechika Boola has been largely positive, but given that it’s such a young app, there are still a few wrinkles that need to be ironed out in my view. There are a lot of default settings that are set to favor the company instead of the user. For example, Facebook sharing is on by default, ‘share to public timeline’ is on by default [2], and ‘save video in high quality’ is turned off by default. Overall the experience shows a disregard for first-time users that is very unsettling to me. But once you figure out where the hazards lie, you can easily navigate around them. Thankfully, when speaking to Kazu about my own concerns, he was pretty considerate and noted that they’re actively listening to user feedback in these early days.

A surprisingly quick start

For an app that has been online for such a short time, I was really surprised to see how active the platform was. Some of the users on Mechika Boola have over 6000 followers, and that really puzzled me. How did they get so many users so fast? Kazu attributes the apps fast growth to a partnership his company has with Asahi Broadcasting Corporation to feature their app in a weekly late-night television show called Gya Movie Sharing. The show will broadcast until the end of March, and so far it has really given the app a boost, says Kazu:

It has dramatically helped Mechika Boola grow so fast and the daily downloaded number is more than 15,000 and the number has been increasing day by day. […] More than 2,000 videos have been daily created and the number has been increasing day by day.

Those are impressive figures, but it remains to be seen whether the app can sustain its growth beyond the span of this television feature and eventually make a profit for the company. The limited video app offerings on both iOS and Android will likely ensure that it remains at least somewhat visible in the ‘Photo & Video’ category on iOS and in the ‘Media & Video’ category on Google Play. But we’ll have to wait and see how it fares.

Glue-th is currently a ten-person team, and I understand they will be looking to raise funds this April. If you’d like to try their app out for yourself, you can pick up Mechika Boola for free over on the App Store or on Google Play.

Another odd alphabet-soupy Japanese company name. ↩
I was startled and disappointed to see my own video shared to the public timeline when that was not my intention. ↩

news

Japanese loyalty program startup Hyper8 raises $510,000

Masaru Ikeda 2014.02.04

See the original article in Japanese Tokyo-based Hyper8 Inc., the startup that operates Mespo, a loyalty program platform for restaurants and retail stores, recently announced that it has raised 51 million yen ($510,000) from MID Venture Capital, East Ventures, and two individual investors. Restaurants and retailers who implement Mespo can use the platform for 980 yen ($9.80) per month. When users make a purchase, they can earn points and collect them using their smartphones. A tablet device that incorporates the platform is distributed to each store, with an LTE connection as well since some stores don’t have wi-fi. At checkout, customers can collect the points by scanning a QR code displayed on the tablet. Until now over 300 establishments, including restaurants, massage salons and hair salons, have been using the platform. The company aims to tie up with publicly-listed companies who may already have a large network of retailers. There are already some similar services in Japan, including Gurunavi touch and Recruit point. We spoke to the CEO of Hyper8, Keiji Isogimi, about how his company can differentiate from the competitors. The loyalty programs provided by Gurunavi and Recruit add points common among member stores. The system doesn’t motivate each…

See the original article in Japanese

Tokyo-based Hyper8 Inc., the startup that operates Mespo, a loyalty program platform for restaurants and retail stores, recently announced that it has raised 51 million yen ($510,000) from MID Venture Capital, East Ventures, and two individual investors.

Restaurants and retailers who implement Mespo can use the platform for 980 yen ($9.80) per month. When users make a purchase, they can earn points and collect them using their smartphones. A tablet device that incorporates the platform is distributed to each store, with an LTE connection as well since some stores don’t have wi-fi. At checkout, customers can collect the points by scanning a QR code displayed on the tablet.

Until now over 300 establishments, including restaurants, massage salons and hair salons, have been using the platform. The company aims to tie up with publicly-listed companies who may already have a large network of retailers.

There are already some similar services in Japan, including Gurunavi touch and Recruit point. We spoke to the CEO of Hyper8, Keiji Isogimi, about how his company can differentiate from the competitors.

The loyalty programs provided by Gurunavi and Recruit add points common among member stores. The system doesn’t motivate each store to recommend a loyalty program to customers. That’s one reason why Gurunavi touch is not widely recognized even though its member stores amounts to over 8000 in total.

But with Mespo, each store can offer customers their own points, specific to that store. Of course, if a store is part of a chain, it can use the same points. There are smart features in the app, like a feature to update users in real time about how busy a store is, and send push-notifications of special offers. Those features add motivation for stores to use Mespo.

Given that retailers can borrow the LTE tablet for free, the monthly rate of 980 yen is incredibly low. I can’t help but wonder if Hyper8 could really make a profit from this. Isogimi told us:

We are now focusing on increasing our total member stores. Currently the tablet devices are not on lease. We purchase them and lend them to stores. So most of the funds we raised this time will be used to buy tablet devices.

We aren’t thinking of growing our sales only through Mespo. We noticed that the IT literacy of workers in restaurants and retail stores is getting higher. So we want to add more services based on the network we will build through Mespo, making the business more profitable in that way.

From Left: CEO Keiji Isogimi, board member Shota Morikawa

Until now Hyper8 has been expanding Mespo through profits earned by operating social events. In addition to this fundraising, Shota Morikawa from East Ventures will join the company’s board, aiming to strengthen the team.

The company will relocate Startup Dojo, an incubation space run by Movida Japan in Shibuya. It is said that growing e-commerce platform, Base, will have an office there too.

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