THE BRIDGE

tag photo apps

Japan’s Mixi unveils a mobile photo sharing app — but what’s so special about it?

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Japanese social networking giant Mixi recently unveiled a mobile photo sharing app called Plannah. It is available for iOS in Japanese, English, and Korean, and an Android version will follow soon. The app is the forth production from the company’s innovation initiative, which has previously developed mobile app testing environment DeployGate and photobook printing service Nohana. Plannah allows you to share photos with your friends as albums. It shows you photos on calendar and helps you remember where and what you are doing and with whom. When I heard about the app for the first time, I had many questions – not about how to use the app or its concept, but rather, why bring out the app now when there are so many established alternatives? Our readers may recall a similar mobile photo app called my365. It allows you to see photos in a calendar view, but there’s no feature for sharing photos with friends. Beyond Japan, New York-based startup Kaptur has acquired 250 million photos from 60 million users and fundraised $2 million — but it is still figuring out how to monetize. Other similar apps include Linea, Albumatic, Familio and Cluster…

The Plannah development team at Mixi's Innovation Center
The Plannah development team at Mixi’s Innovation Center

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese social networking giant Mixi recently unveiled a mobile photo sharing app called Plannah. It is available for iOS in Japanese, English, and Korean, and an Android version will follow soon. The app is the forth production from the company’s innovation initiative, which has previously developed mobile app testing environment DeployGate and photobook printing service Nohana.

Plannah allows you to share photos with your friends as albums. It shows you photos on calendar and helps you remember where and what you are doing and with whom.

When I heard about the app for the first time, I had many questions – not about how to use the app or its concept, but rather, why bring out the app now when there are so many established alternatives?

Our readers may recall a similar mobile photo app called my365. It allows you to see photos in a calendar view, but there’s no feature for sharing photos with friends. Beyond Japan, New York-based startup Kaptur has acquired 250 million photos from 60 million users and fundraised $2 million — but it is still figuring out how to monetize. Other similar apps include Linea, Albumatic, Familio and Cluster — but none of these seem to be particularly hot according to my own research.

The team’s hypothesis is that the smartphone shift has reached not only tech-savvy users but the average consumer. One team member explained:

Since smartphones are now wide spread in the Japanese market, users now have more chances to shoot casual photos. But they are typically forced to use various apps for multiple purposes.

Some smartphone users these days have thousands of photos stores on their smartphones. For Mixi, if it can provide a service very much focused on sharing photos, it might cause a market disruption since the space currently has no dominant app right now.

We’re curious to see how they will fare moving forward. The team understands that the business model will be hard to nail down, but the key factor will be how long the app can ride the smartphone wave.

plannah_screenshot1

plannah_screenshot2

LINE continues to be the perfect app distributor, as its photo app hits 40M downloads

SHARE:

Line Corporation has announced today that that its photo decoration and effects app Line Camera has surpassed the 40 million downloads mark. That’s a pretty significant accomplishment, although one wonders how many of those 40 million have stuck with the app given the abundance of alternatives available in Line’s home market of Japan [1]. I was curious to look at the pace of Line Camera’s growth, given that I hadn’t checked in on the app in over a year (see chart below). After its initial launch in April of 2012, the app picked up 5 million downloads in its first month, and went on to snag 20 million just after New Years. With 40 million announced today, it’s likely that Line Camera’s growth will continue to be completely dependent on how fast the Line chat platform – which is how it is distributed – can grow. Still, there are lots of photo apps that didn’t have such an effective distribution platform as Line, most notably services like Papelook (said to have been downloaded by half of Japan’s young girls who own iPhones), or FX Camera, which had 25 million users as of this past March. For more information on the…

line-camera-40-million-campaign

Line Corporation has announced today that that its photo decoration and effects app Line Camera has surpassed the 40 million downloads mark. That’s a pretty significant accomplishment, although one wonders how many of those 40 million have stuck with the app given the abundance of alternatives available in Line’s home market of Japan [1].

I was curious to look at the pace of Line Camera’s growth, given that I hadn’t checked in on the app in over a year (see chart below). After its initial launch in April of 2012, the app picked up 5 million downloads in its first month, and went on to snag 20 million just after New Years. With 40 million announced today, it’s likely that Line Camera’s growth will continue to be completely dependent on how fast the Line chat platform – which is how it is distributed – can grow.

Still, there are lots of photo apps that didn’t have such an effective distribution platform as Line, most notably services like Papelook (said to have been downloaded by half of Japan’s young girls who own iPhones), or FX Camera, which had 25 million users as of this past March.

For more information on the growth of Line and its vast repertoire of apps, including Line Play, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

line-camera


  1. I was one of the early downloaders, and I’m no longer using it. Although admittedly, it probably would have been weird for me to keep doing so.  ↩

Mixi’s photobook service gets the TV bump, is now Japan’s top app

SHARE:

I’ve been pretty fascinated with Mixi’s efforts this year, in particular with those of its internal innovation team. This is the team that developed the Nohana photobook creation app, which initially launched back in February. Interestingly it has just become the number one free iOS app in Japan. I was curious this morning to know exactly why Nohana saw this sudden surge. Some quick Twitter research shows that the application received a big boost last night when it was featured on popular television show ‘A deep, life-changing story in one minute‘. Although it has been said before, this really underscores the value that television represents to any app or game in Japan [1]. Coincidentally, I had a Nohana photobook order delivered to me just yesterday, and the package included a handy little growth chart about the services first few months which you can see below. So far over 40,000 photobooks have been ordered, with 9860 printed in June. I’m still unsure as to whether Nohana can turn a profit with its “your first book is free, the second one is paid” model. But given Japan’s aging demographic, I’m sure that there are lots of customers who send second and third…

nohana-wide

I’ve been pretty fascinated with Mixi’s efforts this year, in particular with those of its internal innovation team. This is the team that developed the Nohana photobook creation app, which initially launched back in February. Interestingly it has just become the number one free iOS app in Japan.

I was curious this morning to know exactly why Nohana saw this sudden surge. Some quick Twitter research shows that the application received a big boost last night when it was featured on popular television show ‘A deep, life-changing story in one minute‘. Although it has been said before, this really underscores the value that television represents to any app or game in Japan [1].

Coincidentally, I had a Nohana photobook order delivered to me just yesterday, and the package included a handy little growth chart about the services first few months which you can see below. So far over 40,000 photobooks have been ordered, with 9860 printed in June.

I’m still unsure as to whether Nohana can turn a profit with its “your first book is free, the second one is paid” model. But given Japan’s aging demographic, I’m sure that there are lots of customers who send second and third copies directly to grandparents when they place an order [2].

Nohana also launched on Android earlier this month, so ostensibly that’s a sign that things are still going well enough to continue its efforts.

If you live in Japan and you still haven’t tried Nohana, do give it a try.

nohana-photo-books-sold
Photobooks sold, February to June

  1. For example, it played a huge part in the early success of Line, as well as popular games like Rage of Bahamut and Puzzle & Dragons. Serkan Toto explored this a little further in a post last year, specific to the social gaming industry.  ↩

  2. The app lets you save multiple addresses, making the process of sending a book to other family members very easy.  ↩

New Japanese collage app off to a hot start, passes 500K downloads in its first month

SHARE:

Back in June, yet another cute Japanese photo app, Cameran Collage, joined an already crowded market. And now it has just been announced that the app has reached 500,000 downloads not yet a month after its initial release. Cameran Collage is seeing users not only here in Japan, but from other Asian countries like Taiwan and Hong Kong. Nowadays collage-making is sort of a default feature in many photo apps, even on ‘purikura’ machines or physical photo booths. What differentiates Cameran Collage from other apps is that its decorative items are created in collaboration with popular fashion brands or magazines — its most recent collaboration is in partnership with Anteprima. The app also allows users to easily share photos on Line, Twitter, and Facebook. Even if you’ve never made a collage before, the app provides handy templates to make any collage look cute. The total number of decorative items exceeds 300, and there are over 44 fonts and 26 clipping patterns available too. This seems like an overwhelming number of items to choose from, but according to the app’s art director, Miki Kitazawa, there is no such thing as ‘too much’ when it comes to ways of making something more…

Cameran-Collage-website

Back in June, yet another cute Japanese photo app, Cameran Collage, joined an already crowded market. And now it has just been announced that the app has reached 500,000 downloads not yet a month after its initial release. Cameran Collage is seeing users not only here in Japan, but from other Asian countries like Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Nowadays collage-making is sort of a default feature in many photo apps, even on ‘purikura’ machines or physical photo booths. What differentiates Cameran Collage from other apps is that its decorative items are created in collaboration with popular fashion brands or magazines — its most recent collaboration is in partnership with Anteprima. The app also allows users to easily share photos on Line, Twitter, and Facebook.

Even if you’ve never made a collage before, the app provides handy templates to make any collage look cute. The total number of decorative items exceeds 300, and there are over 44 fonts and 26 clipping patterns available too. This seems like an overwhelming number of items to choose from, but according to the app’s art director, Miki Kitazawa, there is no such thing as ‘too much’ when it comes to ways of making something more ‘kawaii’. She explains:

Girls use different apps for different purposes, adding filters with Instagram, clipping with Papelook, and using Decopic for stamps. For these girls, there is no such thing as too much effort in making something kawaii. Cameran Collage has every feature they need all in one app.

The process of ‘app stacking’ is a pretty common phenomenon for smartphone photographers, and applications like this Cameran Collage that put everything in one place will likely continue to be well received as long as they save users time and trouble.

The company behind this popular collage app is Media Technology Lab, an experimental laboratory operated under Recruit. Media Technology Lab has released a series of apps in the past, which you can check out over on its official website.

Cameran Collage is available for download on the app store, and an Android version is expected to be released soon. You can check out how the app works in the video below.

Mixi’s Nohana photobook service now available on Android

SHARE:

Over the past year Japan’s Mixi has offered up a few interesting services coming from its innovation team, including its mobile photobook printing service Nohana. I’ve used the service a few times, and the books always turn out well [1]. And now the service, which initially launched on iOS back in February, is available for Android. Nohana lets you upload photos from your smartphone, creating a photobook which is then printed and sent to your doorstep. Or if you prefer, it could be sent another family member far away, like a grandparent for example. Users get to print one booklet (of 20 pictures) each month for free, paying a minimal shipping fee of 90 yen (almost a dollar). Subsequent orders cost 500 yen. According to Gamebiz.jp, over 40,000 users have uploaded more than 1.3 million photos to date, publishing 46,000 photobooks. And reportedly 12,000 people pre-registered for the Android app, which is certainly promising. The Android app went online quietly late last week, and is gradually climbing the photo app charts. It will be interesting to see if Nohana can afford to keep offering one free book per month if it becomes more popular later. But for now, I think…

nohana_photobook

Over the past year Japan’s Mixi has offered up a few interesting services coming from its innovation team, including its mobile photobook printing service Nohana. I’ve used the service a few times, and the books always turn out well [1]. And now the service, which initially launched on iOS back in February, is available for Android.

Nohana lets you upload photos from your smartphone, creating a photobook which is then printed and sent to your doorstep. Or if you prefer, it could be sent another family member far away, like a grandparent for example. Users get to print one booklet (of 20 pictures) each month for free, paying a minimal shipping fee of 90 yen (almost a dollar). Subsequent orders cost 500 yen.

According to Gamebiz.jp, over 40,000 users have uploaded more than 1.3 million photos to date, publishing 46,000 photobooks. And reportedly 12,000 people pre-registered for the Android app, which is certainly promising.

The Android app went online quietly late last week, and is gradually climbing the photo app charts. It will be interesting to see if Nohana can afford to keep offering one free book per month if it becomes more popular later. But for now, I think it’s still under the radar, so if you’re in Japan and you take lots of smartphone photos, it’s a pretty sweet deal and I recommend trying it out.

For now it appears as if the company is trying to grow a very targeted user base, even reaching out to local kindergarden schools back in May to promote its services, donating some Nohana credit to selected schools who can then use it to order books.


  1. As long as your photos are of a decent quality, your books will be about as good.  ↩

Yesterscape app augments your present reality with photos of your past

SHARE:

Yesterscape is sort of a time-machine app developed by Kyoto-based startup QOOQ. As the app name suggests, Yesterscape allows users to save and leave photos to specific locations. For example, you can leave an archive of family photos of your during an annual trip, and then enjoy them the next time you visit the location. Users can sign up for Yesterscape using Facebook or Google credentials. The app uses your mobile phone’s GPS, accelerometer and gyro sensor to obtain location data, as well as the angle or tilt of a photo. All of this information is saved with the photo in the cloud along with a time stamp. By holding your mobile phone to a given location, the app overlays photos from your past with the current scene. Displayed photos can be filtered by time or distance. There is a private share setting for photos too, so that you can share photos exclusively with family members, friends, or significant others. These photos can be shared on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, giving users a way notify friends of their post. You can check out how the app works in the video below. Yesterscape is available on iOS as…

Yesterscape-app

Yesterscape is sort of a time-machine app developed by Kyoto-based startup QOOQ. As the app name suggests, Yesterscape allows users to save and leave photos to specific locations. For example, you can leave an archive of family photos of your during an annual trip, and then enjoy them the next time you visit the location.

Users can sign up for Yesterscape using Facebook or Google credentials. The app uses your mobile phone’s GPS, accelerometer and gyro sensor to obtain location data, as well as the angle or tilt of a photo. All of this information is saved with the photo in the cloud along with a time stamp. By holding your mobile phone to a given location, the app overlays photos from your past with the current scene.

Displayed photos can be filtered by time or distance. There is a private share setting for photos too, so that you can share photos exclusively with family members, friends, or significant others. These photos can be shared on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, giving users a way notify friends of their post.

You can check out how the app works in the video below. Yesterscape is available on iOS as a free download.

Trendy Japanese photo app Cameran expands to become a social network

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Some of our readers may have heard a little about a mobile camera app from Japan called Cameran. It has a variety of filter effects, and is available for iOS and Android in 10 different languages. To date the app has recorded an impressive 3.6 million downloads worldwide since its launch back in October, 2012. The app was created by Media Technology Lab, the research arm of Japanese human resource company Recruit. And today the group announced that it has added a photo sharing feature, effectively expanding the photo app into a brand new social network. The company feature user accounts of celebrity guest users such as Mika Ninagawa, the Japanese film director who supervised the creation of the app. According to the app’s developer lead Tetsuya Oshiro, this change is based on feedback from users. Personally, I think that the strategy of building a user base and then adding social features is a smart choice in terms of marketing. There is no shortage of quality photo apps in Japan, making the market extremely competitive right now. One source told us that the Cameran app is not yet in the money-making phase, but they’re…

fc2946dec5a81929632b632c6b9fea92

See the original story in Japanese.

Some of our readers may have heard a little about a mobile camera app from Japan called Cameran. It has a variety of filter effects, and is available for iOS and Android in 10 different languages. To date the app has recorded an impressive 3.6 million downloads worldwide since its launch back in October, 2012.

The app was created by Media Technology Lab, the research arm of Japanese human resource company Recruit. And today the group announced that it has added a photo sharing feature, effectively expanding the photo app into a brand new social network. The company feature user accounts of celebrity guest users such as Mika Ninagawa, the Japanese film director who supervised the creation of the app.

According to the app’s developer lead Tetsuya Oshiro, this change is based on feedback from users. Personally, I think that the strategy of building a user base and then adding social features is a smart choice in terms of marketing. There is no shortage of quality photo apps in Japan, making the market extremely competitive right now.

One source told us that the Cameran app is not yet in the money-making phase, but they’re still pushing to increase the user base.

Even in such a saturated space, there’s still some rooms for unqiue apps like this one to win over users. We’ve never seen photo apps using celebrities for marketing efforts, so it will be interesting to see how this tactic affects user acquisition.

c9a219902804aac0bf0642f84803b5da d97c50263c64191b4a87e849b78211fe

Aviary knows photos are big in Japan

SHARE:

Read a Japanese translation of this piece here Last week we heard that Aviary, an image editing platform provider, would be making its first international expansion by coming to Japan. The company has already seen significant success, especially in recent months, with over 50 million monthly active users in May [1]. The company now boasts more than 4600 partners that have integrated Aviary into their systems. Mixi is perhaps the most prominent ones (that we know of) in Japan, as Aviary has has helped them created and implement their own custom stickers for their app (pictured right). I had a chance to meet with Aviary representative Archie Archibong this week to find out a little more about the why the company is here in Japan. He explained: The demand we were getting from Japan, we get a lot of people reaching out to us asking how they can best leverage our product. And it became very evident that we should put a presence here. Archie noted the importance of meeting partners face-to-face, and trying to find out what kind of things they need. In this way, he explains, it helps Aviary figure out its own roadmap as well. So far…

aviary_archie_small
Aviary’s Japan rep Archie Archibong

Read a Japanese translation of this piece here

Last week we heard that Aviary, an image editing platform provider, would be making its first international expansion by coming to Japan. The company has already seen significant success, especially in recent months, with over 50 million monthly active users in May [1].

The company now boasts more than 4600 partners that have integrated Aviary into their systems. Mixi is perhaps the most prominent ones (that we know of) in Japan, as Aviary has has helped them created and implement their own custom stickers for their app (pictured right).

mixiscreens

I had a chance to meet with Aviary representative Archie Archibong this week to find out a little more about the why the company is here in Japan. He explained:

The demand we were getting from Japan, we get a lot of people reaching out to us asking how they can best leverage our product. And it became very evident that we should put a presence here.

Archie noted the importance of meeting partners face-to-face, and trying to find out what kind of things they need. In this way, he explains, it helps Aviary figure out its own roadmap as well. So far meetings in Tokyo tend to result in further introductions and further meetings, and that’s the sort of thing that you just don’t get conducting business from afar over email or Skype, he adds.

The company is planning to hold its fifth Photo Hack Day in Tokyo in the fall, which should be a great event for the community, especially for the many startups involved in photo app development [2]. That kind of event not only helps local developers, but it also raises Aviary’s profile in terms of spreading awareness of the sort of services they offer.

Establishing a presence in the country is a smart move for Aviary, given the abundance of quality photo apps in Japan. A recent report from Flurry Analytics indicated that Japanese mobile users are more likely than any other country to use photo apps, both on iOS and Android (see chart below). If that’s the case, we expect Aviary will find lots of opportunities here.

flurry-japan-photography


  1. That figure was announced by Aviary on May 28th, referring to “the last 30 days”. So we can say approximately May.  ↩

  2. The previous event (Photo Hack Day 4) was held at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park back in April. At that event, Archie – who has a computer science background – even made his own iOS app.  ↩

CyberAgent rolls out another cute mobile app, this time for baby photos

SHARE:

This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii’ success stories emerging from Japan’s mobile space. We’ve looked at quite a few cute Japanese apps recently, but it’s hard to get any cuter than a deco-pic app for sharing pictures of babies. CyberAgent’s BabyDays app is exactly that, delivering a ‘kawaii’ overload in both presentation and content. Like most photo decoration apps these days, BabyDays comes with an assortment of frames, decorative texts and stickers. You can like pictures submitted by other users, voting them up if they are especially cute. This is a pretty smart feature, letting parents enjoy the feeling if having scores of people complement their baby all at once [1]. BabyDays also has heavy social integration, with Ameba authentication and the ability to share your pictures to Facebook, Twitter, and Mixi if you choose. You also have the option of viewing your photos in a calendar presentation as well. While the app has been around since late last year, it surged to become Japan’s top iOS photo app back on May 24th after a new version was released. Currently there is a promotion ongoing that gave the app a kick…

babydays

This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii’ success stories emerging from Japan’s mobile space.

We’ve looked at quite a few cute Japanese apps recently, but it’s hard to get any cuter than a deco-pic app for sharing pictures of babies. CyberAgent’s BabyDays app is exactly that, delivering a ‘kawaii’ overload in both presentation and content.

Like most photo decoration apps these days, BabyDays comes with an assortment of frames, decorative texts and stickers. You can like pictures submitted by other users, voting them up if they are especially cute. This is a pretty smart feature, letting parents enjoy the feeling if having scores of people complement their baby all at once [1]. BabyDays also has heavy social integration, with Ameba authentication and the ability to share your pictures to Facebook, Twitter, and Mixi if you choose. You also have the option of viewing your photos in a calendar presentation as well.

babydays2

While the app has been around since late last year, it surged to become Japan’s top iOS photo app back on May 24th after a new version was released. Currently there is a promotion ongoing that gave the app a kick start too, whereby if users decorate their baby pics with special Miki House frames, the have a chance to have their baby become a model for the famous baby brand. This promotion extends to the BabyDays Facebook page, where one baby’s picture will be featured each day.

In addition to CyberAgent’s popular Ameba Pigg virtual world, the company has produced a number of very ‘cute’ apps in the past, including its Decolink chat app, and just recently Girls Pic Plus. We think this is a pretty smart space to be in these days, and they should probably consider offering BabyDays in traditional Chinese for Greater China, and then maybe in English too.

If you’d like to try the app out for yourself, you can pick it up over on the App Store or on Google Play. Or if you’re in the market for other fun baby apps, check out another Japan-made product, Kiddy, or my own personal favorite, Notabli.

babydays
BabyDays progress, on App Annie

  1. As a new father, I confess I take a lot of pleasure in this part.  ↩

Cute Japanese photo app ‘StickerMe’ is a hit in Greater China

SHARE:

This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii‘ success stories emerging from Japan’s mobile space. About a month ago we wrote about StickerMe, a fun iPhone app from Japan that lets you create stickers for use in your mobile chats. As you surely know by now, stickers are big business in the Asian mobile space in particular, with companies like Line leading the way, and even international giants like Path and Facebook have followed. StickerMe, developed by Tokyo-based development studio Motion Portrait, has capitalized on the widespread public interest in stickers, achieving great success in the Asia region especially since its release. Currently it is the top free iOS app in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, and number three in Malaysia. It’s doing fairly well in China, where it is ranked third in the entertainment category. Update, May 30: StickerMe has announced that it has passed 1 million downloads. That’s pretty impressive for an app which has just been released for a little over a month. (Motion Portrait via VS Media) The app’s success in the greater China region is especially remarkable because to my knowledge its interface has not yet been localized…

This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii‘ success stories emerging from Japan’s mobile space.

sticker-me

About a month ago we wrote about StickerMe, a fun iPhone app from Japan that lets you create stickers for use in your mobile chats. As you surely know by now, stickers are big business in the Asian mobile space in particular, with companies like Line leading the way, and even international giants like Path and Facebook have followed.

StickerMe, developed by Tokyo-based development studio Motion Portrait, has capitalized on the widespread public interest in stickers, achieving great success in the Asia region especially since its release. Currently it is the top free iOS app in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, and number three in Malaysia. It’s doing fairly well in China, where it is ranked third in the entertainment category.

Update, May 30: StickerMe has announced that it has passed 1 million downloads. That’s pretty impressive for an app which has just been released for a little over a month. (Motion Portrait via VS Media)

The app’s success in the greater China region is especially remarkable because to my knowledge its interface has not yet been localized for simplified or traditional Chinese.

This is just the latest example of a cute Japanese photo app proving itself to be a successful export. Other notable apps that have achieved similar popularity overseas include Snapeee and Decopic to name just a few.

To learn more about StickerMe, check out our video walk-through of the app below.