[Update] The group has announced that UK-based play performance group Whole Hog Theatre will conduct a Japan tour of Princess Mononoke in April and May in partnership with the Studio Ghibli animation studio. Dwango’s CEO is currently working at the studio as a ‘trainee’ to explore a possible collaboration.
Dwango, a Tokyo-based ringtone distributor and the parent company of Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga, announced today that Japanese publishing giant Kadokawa Group and Nippon Television Network would take a major stake of its shares. The company’s largest shareholder prior to this announcement, music company Avex Group, will now be the third largest shareholder.
Dwango has been partnered with Avex for seven years, but it has been exploring other partnerships in different businesses to diversify its service portfolio. Kagokawa also recently acquired Skyscraper Inc. from Dwango, a company which primarily handles ads for the Nico Nico Douga video service.
A group of ten companies [1] including Dwango and Nippon TV Network will unveil a major joint project of some kind on Tuesday afternoon. The press briefing will be broadcast live on the web on Nico Nico Douga starting at 2pm Tuesday, Japan Time.
Tokyo-based VC Incubate Fund recently announced that it had established a new 2 billion yen fund (about $21.4 million), with the aim of investing in seed startups and young venture capitalists. Specifically, the firm expects to invest in 100 startups within the next three years. To establish the fund, the firm fundraised from Infocom Corporation (the publisher of a bilingual news blog on Japan-made Android apps), Sega, SME Support, D2C (a joint venture of Dentsu and NTT Docomo), Nissay Capital (an investment arm of Japan’s second largest life insurance company), Mixi, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. Until now, the firm has been known for investing in a number of notable Japanese startups including game companies Gumi, Pokelabo, Aiming, and Axel Mark; as well as San San, who runs a business card-based CRM solution. In the past several months, the firm has been expanding its scope beyond gaming startups, investing in seed and early startups like Coffee Meeting (people-to-people matchmaking on a chat over coffee), Storys.jp, Designclue, Voip, and Booklap.
Tokyo-based VC Incubate Fund recently announced that it had established a new 2 billion yen fund (about $21.4 million), with the aim of investing in seed startups and young venture capitalists. Specifically, the firm expects to invest in 100 startups within the next three years.
To establish the fund, the firm fundraised from Infocom Corporation (the publisher of a bilingual news blog on Japan-made Android apps), Sega, SME Support, D2C (a joint venture of Dentsu and NTT Docomo), Nissay Capital (an investment arm of Japan’s second largest life insurance company), Mixi, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.
Until now, the firm has been known for investing in a number of notable Japanese startups including game companies Gumi, Pokelabo, Aiming, and Axel Mark; as well as San San, who runs a business card-based CRM solution. In the past several months, the firm has been expanding its scope beyond gaming startups, investing in seed and early startups like Coffee Meeting (people-to-people matchmaking on a chat over coffee), Storys.jp, Designclue, Voip, and Booklap.
Japanese social network Mixi (TYO:2121) doesn’t often do business beyond its home market, so I was pretty intrigued recently to get a preview of a relatively new project from its innovation team that is making an effort to go after global users. DeployGate initially launched last year, promising an easier way to distribute test versions of Android applications as part of the development process, all without an SDK. That service is getting an update today, one which expands its focus past just developers, placing more emphasis on the users. With this shift, it moves in on the territory of Test Flight, although its focus is still heavily on the development process. DeployGate initially came about as a result of the Mixi in-house developers scratching their own itch. As the were developing Mixi Android clients they often ran into problems, finding they had a need for easier deployment of apps to test users. DeployGate is the solution they came up with, eventually becoming a product that The Mixi innovation team would ship as a product, spun off from the Mixi development team. The process looks simple enough from a developer’s point of view. Your app is uploaded, and then you can…
L to R: Kenta Imai, Yuki Fujisaki, Kyosuke Inoue
Japanese social network Mixi (TYO:2121) doesn’t often do business beyond its home market, so I was pretty intrigued recently to get a preview of a relatively new project from its innovation team that is making an effort to go after global users. DeployGate initially launched last year, promising an easier way to distribute test versions of Android applications as part of the development process, all without an SDK. That service is getting an update today, one which expands its focus past just developers, placing more emphasis on the users. With this shift, it moves in on the territory of Test Flight, although its focus is still heavily on the development process.
DeployGate initially came about as a result of the Mixi in-house developers scratching their own itch. As the were developing Mixi Android clients they often ran into problems, finding they had a need for easier deployment of apps to test users. DeployGate is the solution they came up with, eventually becoming a product that The Mixi innovation team would ship as a product, spun off from the Mixi development team.
The process looks simple enough from a developer’s point of view. Your app is uploaded, and then you can create a unique deployment page (or distribution panel) for that iteration which can then be circulated to whomever you wish, typically via email. It can be password protected too if you like. The amount of users you can reach depends on your payment plan. After deployment over-the-air, a developer can then monitor error and crash reports from the web dashboard (pictured below), push updates, debug remotely, or even cancel privileges remotely if they choose.
The ability to deploy different app versions to different groups means that the newer version of DeployGate makes AB testing a little easier than before.
The new version of DeployGate has a number of new features, most notably a new pricing plan that makes it more accessible to more people. The pricing plans are listed below. As you can see, the new version follows a freemium model, although paid plans are reasonably priced.
With this new version, the hope is that developers and marketers will use the free plan and want to do more, eventually upgrading to paid plans. So far the team has mainly used Google Adwords for marketing, so this should give the product an extra push now that more people can try it out. But the advantages for any individual developers are obvious.
The team has high hopes for DeployGate too, saying they want to become the de facto solution for developing Android applications. That’s a lofty goal, but it looks like they have some prominent clients already. So far, notable companies who use DeployGate are Baidu (Japan), Kayac, Zaim [2], and Tokyo Otaku Mode. I’m told that currently the service has enough paid customers to sustain their current ecosystem, and that’s certainly promising.
So far they have users in 90 countries, with 3,400 apps distributed in total. And surprisingly their customers appear to be more global that than I’d have expected from anything associated with Mixi, with 76% of usage in English, and 24% in Japanese.
It will be interesting to see if this service from the innovation team can break free of the stagnation that has been hampering Mixi as a whole in recent years. But with DeployGate, along with the recently launched Nohana camera app, it’s certainly great to see them try.
See our version of this story in Japanese. We’ve all exchanged name cards while on business or at social events. But a business card can only convey certain information, such as a person’s name, the company they work for, and contact details. Storys.jp tries to tell you even more by sharing experiences in a form of story. The service was launched by ResuPress Inc. last week. Storys.jp helps you easily write up your background and details of your experience by connecting to Facebook and pulling your history. You can then create your story by entering the projects you’ve been involved in and who you’ve been working with, which will give people a more complete idea of who you are. The service also allows you to read some background information about your friends which you might not have known, potentially letting you find more things you may have in common with them. With such an abundance of information on the web these days, and with human relationships already complicated enough, the startup thought that many people might have trouble understanding others at times. Story.jp was launched with the aim of alleviating this problem. They explain: By helping people with different experiences…
We’ve all exchanged name cards while on business or at social events. But a business card can only convey certain information, such as a person’s name, the company they work for, and contact details. Storys.jp tries to tell you even more by sharing experiences in a form of story.
The service was launched by ResuPress Inc. last week. Storys.jp helps you easily write up your background and details of your experience by connecting to Facebook and pulling your history. You can then create your story by entering the projects you’ve been involved in and who you’ve been working with, which will give people a more complete idea of who you are. The service also allows you to read some background information about your friends which you might not have known, potentially letting you find more things you may have in common with them.
With such an abundance of information on the web these days, and with human relationships already complicated enough, the startup thought that many people might have trouble understanding others at times. Story.jp was launched with the aim of alleviating this problem. They explain:
By helping people with different experiences understand and cooperate with each other, we believe that they can create great ideas to solve various problems.
Sharing information about yourself in this way can be a good way to reboot communications with colleagues or friends.
But at the same time, Japanese people typically don’t disclose their backgrounds under their real names in such a way. So I’m curious whether or not Japanese consumers will go for this kind of service.
The startup was founded by ex-JP Morgan employee James Riney and TIT student Koichiro Wada with a 30 million yen (about $320,000) investment from Incubate Fund, Tokyo-based angel investor Anri Samata, and Hong Kong-based angel investor Teddy Lo.
We’ve had another fun week here at SD, doing our best to bring you interesting tech stories going down in Japan. But in case you missed any of it, here’s a wrap up below. Readers on mobile might want to check them out over on Readlists or in ePub format. If you’d like to get this weekly summary plus other bonus content, we hope you’ll check out our shiny new newsletter here. Featured Niconico Douga: Japanese online video site puts discussion front and center Smapo: Can Japan’s answer to Shopkick fend off new competition? A fine line: Shantell Martin projects freestyle performance art Japan’s Gungho Entertainment is winning at home, but will global gamers get it? Business Japanese reality show will ask contestants to live the Amazon life 5 Japanese studios team up to create online anime platform for overseas markets Messaging app Line partners with Nokia to accelerate global expansion Microsoft rolls out huge teaser ads for Surface tablet in Tokyo Gyao and Gree team up to invest in animation content development Design The future of libraries? In Japan, elevated study pods encourage conversation Japanese startup turns oversized greeting cards into an unlikely digital business Fun apps Ewww! Japanese…
We’ve had another fun week here at SD, doing our best to bring you interesting tech stories going down in Japan. But in case you missed any of it, here’s a wrap up below. Readers on mobile might want to check them out over on Readlists or in ePub format.
If you’d like to get this weekly summary plus other bonus content, we hope you’ll check out our shiny new newsletter here.
Photo via toto.co.jp It can sometimes be difficult to find absolute silence in a library if a noisy student or two decide to be chatty. But that’s not really needed at Japan’s Seikei University thanks to the building’s ingeniously designed isolation spheres (pictured above). Referred to as ‘planets’ these modernly designed elevated rooms can be used for meetings or for group work. Such a futuristic environment certainly looks like an inspiring place for young minds to develop! But why bother to go to such lengths to create these isolation rooms? The sole purpose was to create a new type of library where speaking was not prohibited. In a traditional library, students come in to find books that they’re looking for, and then they proceed to read or work quietly. Seikei University wanted to reinvent their library into a space where students have discussions and exchange opinions about their books. The library was co-designed by Shigeru Ban, a graduate of the university and design/construction company Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei. Ban is perhaps best known for his gorgeously designed for Centre Pompidou-Metz in France, pictured below: The library was built back in 2006 to mark the 100th anniversary of Seikei University. Although the…
It can sometimes be difficult to find absolute silence in a library if a noisy student or two decide to be chatty. But that’s not really needed at Japan’s Seikei University thanks to the building’s ingeniously designed isolation spheres (pictured above). Referred to as ‘planets’ these modernly designed elevated rooms can be used for meetings or for group work. Such a futuristic environment certainly looks like an inspiring place for young minds to develop!
But why bother to go to such lengths to create these isolation rooms? The sole purpose was to create a new type of library where speaking was not prohibited. In a traditional library, students come in to find books that they’re looking for, and then they proceed to read or work quietly. Seikei University wanted to reinvent their library into a space where students have discussions and exchange opinions about their books.
The library was co-designed by Shigeru Ban, a graduate of the university and design/construction company Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei. Ban is perhaps best known for his gorgeously designed for Centre Pompidou-Metz in France, pictured below:
The library was built back in 2006 to mark the 100th anniversary of Seikei University. Although the modern building has been around for more than six years, it recently received a lot of attention when someone featured it on Naver Matome, a heavily used Japanese curation site [1].
People who reside in vicinity of the university are allowed to use the library, but I’m not sure if it is open visitors who live beyond those areas. Perhaps if some sci-fi movie director decides to shoot a film there, then maybe you can enjoy a more thorough view of this modern library in Tokyo!
Masaru Ikeda
Tokyo-based VC 
Rick Martin
Junya Mori
Yukari Mitsuhashi
