Tokyo-based startup Qrunch, the company behind online dating site MatchAlarm, announced today it has raised an unspecified amount of funds from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.
The dating site targets single people looking to marry, and helps you connect with a likely match who you aren’t connected with on Facebook.
The service is well-suited for busy office workers who might be otherwise occupied from morning until night, left with little time to date. With this service, users are sent the profile of another member every day at 8am, much like your alarm clock wakes you up every morning. This makes it pretty easy to use the service, because typical Japanese office workers will check messages on their smartphone at that time during their morning train commute.
The service is not yet public, but it was chosen as one of seven finalists at Startups 2011 Spring, a semi-annual startup competition run by CyberAgent Ventures. At that time it was pitching the concept of being a Q&A service.
The startup was incorporated last September, subsequently raised funds from CyberAgent Ventures, and then changed its strategy to this matchmaking service which will likely be easier to monetize.
On a related note, Tokyo-based startup Frigg (backed by IMJ Investment Partners) has been providing similar matchmaking services since last April. It has acquired more than 2,000 registered users in seven months since launch. Interestingly they are disclosing the demographics of their user base in terms of gender balance, age, geography, academic background, annual income, occupation, and whether or not they were previously married.
This is part of our ‘On My Mobile’ series (RSS), a modest attempt to better understand how folks in Japan use their smartphones. Few Japanese startups are creating the sort of buzz that Tokyo Otaku Mode has in the past year. Now with over 11 million fans on its Facebook page, the company’s mission is to promote Japanese subculture abroad, and hopefully make a profit in the process. Back in February we spoke with TOM’s co-founder Nao Kodaka to learn more about his company. But recently I thought it would also be interesting to ask Nao to participate in our ‘On My Mobile’ series, and check out what kind of Android apps he’s using these days (see below). Not surprisingly, Tokyo Otaku Mode’s own Otaku Camera app is on Nao’s homescreen, as he uses it a lot with family. He also enjoys the World Conqueror 2 simulation game, which he says he uses a lot during his commute. Google Drive is also among his favorite apps, allowing him to do work from practically anywhere. If you’d like to find out more about the Android apps that Nao enjoys these days, you can browse the interactive graphic of his homescreen below…
This is part of our ‘On My Mobile’ series (RSS), a modest attempt to better understand how folks in Japan use their smartphones.
Few Japanese startups are creating the sort of buzz that Tokyo Otaku Mode has in the past year. Now with over 11 million fans on its Facebook page, the company’s mission is to promote Japanese subculture abroad, and hopefully make a profit in the process.
Back in February we spoke with TOM’s co-founder Nao Kodaka to learn more about his company. But recently I thought it would also be interesting to ask Nao to participate in our ‘On My Mobile’ series, and check out what kind of Android apps he’s using these days (see below).
Not surprisingly, Tokyo Otaku Mode’s own Otaku Camera app is on Nao’s homescreen, as he uses it a lot with family. He also enjoys the World Conqueror 2 simulation game, which he says he uses a lot during his commute. Google Drive is also among his favorite apps, allowing him to do work from practically anywhere.
If you’d like to find out more about the Android apps that Nao enjoys these days, you can browse the interactive graphic of his homescreen below and click through to the apps on Google Play.
Japanese novelty gadget vendor King Jim has created a device for recording video of your company meetings. Intended to be a solution to taking meeting minutes, the aptly named ‘Meeting Recorder’ is equipped with four cameras and an omni directional microphone. The device can record both video and audio of all attendees, capturing a 360 degree view of the meeting room, which you can then play back later. The files are stored on an SD card, and can be easily transferred to your PC [1]. Meeting Recorder can also be used as a web camera for use in teleconferences, creating a four-person split screen view for the participants who join virtually. Normally, it’s hard to get a good view from a single webcam when you have multiple people in the meeting, so this is a handy solution. King Jim’s Meeting Recorder goes on sale on April 19th in Japan, and comes with a price tag of 34,650 yen (or about $350). A 4GB SD card is included, which is good for about two hours of video recording. ↩
Japanese novelty gadget vendor King Jim has created a device for recording video of your company meetings. Intended to be a solution to taking meeting minutes, the aptly named ‘Meeting Recorder’ is equipped with four cameras and an omni directional microphone.
The device can record both video and audio of all attendees, capturing a 360 degree view of the meeting room, which you can then play back later. The files are stored on an SD card, and can be easily transferred to your PC [1].
Meeting Recorder can also be used as a web camera for use in teleconferences, creating a four-person split screen view for the participants who join virtually. Normally, it’s hard to get a good view from a single webcam when you have multiple people in the meeting, so this is a handy solution.
King Jim’s Meeting Recorder goes on sale on April 19th in Japan, and comes with a price tag of 34,650 yen (or about $350).
A 4GB SD card is included, which is good for about two hours of video recording. ↩
Japan’s Nikkei reports that Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) will launch an online ticket sales service that will allow users to join live events by presenting e-tickets on their smartphone screen at the event venue [1]. So far in this space, convenience store chain Lawson, Sony-backed Entertainment Plus, and 7-Eleven-backed Pia already have a head start, and Yahoo Japan will to be the fourth major player. The ticket sales market in Japan is said to be worth about 1 trillion yen (or about $10 billion). Yahoo Japan is expected to launch its box office service, to be called Pass Market, in a couple of days. All Yahoo Japan users will have access to the service, and when you buy a ticket it will be deducted from your bank account according to the information in your registered user profile. The ticket will be sent to the user’s smartphone in the form of a unique QR code. After presenting the code to a ticket checker at the event venue, they can scan it using a smartphone camera to confirm its validity. With conventional ticket sales platforms, an event organizer usually pays several thousand dollars to starting selling tickets, as well as a 10% commission…
Japan’s Nikkei reports that Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) will launch an online ticket sales service that will allow users to join live events by presenting e-tickets on their smartphone screen at the event venue [1]. So far in this space, convenience store chain Lawson, Sony-backed Entertainment Plus, and 7-Eleven-backed Pia already have a head start, and Yahoo Japan will to be the fourth major player. The ticket sales market in Japan is said to be worth about 1 trillion yen (or about $10 billion).
Yahoo Japan is expected to launch its box office service, to be called Pass Market, in a couple of days. All Yahoo Japan users will have access to the service, and when you buy a ticket it will be deducted from your bank account according to the information in your registered user profile. The ticket will be sent to the user’s smartphone in the form of a unique QR code. After presenting the code to a ticket checker at the event venue, they can scan it using a smartphone camera to confirm its validity.
With conventional ticket sales platforms, an event organizer usually pays several thousand dollars to starting selling tickets, as well as a 10% commission on the ticket sales. But Yahoo Japan will take no set-up fee, and only a 5% commission charge of the ticket sales.
As Japan’s largest internet portal, with more than 27 million user accounts, this new service should represent a significant revenue stream for event organizers – and for Yahoo Japan too, of course.
On a related note, there are also many startups that provide simple ticket sales services for meetups and events, including Peatix, Tixee, Zussar, EventRegist, Everevo, and Atnd.
Our readers may recall that Yahoo Japan has recently acquired on-demand cinema service DreamPass last month.
The Nikkei report can be found here, although it’s paywalled. ↩
I wrote a few weeks back about how with 100 million users, Line is the Japanese Facebook. The popular mobile application is far more than just a chat app, it is now a platform that was built by adding Line Channel back in July of 2012, a place where users can enjoy games, fortune-telling, and even discount coupons. And today Line Corporation added yet another feature to its repertoire: Line Manga. Yes, the company is entering the mobile e-book business, both on iOS and Android. Major publishers such as Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kodansha have already joined Line Manga with over 30,000 comics available, which can be bought using Line’s vitual currency Line Coin. One popular comic Uchu Kyodai (roughly translated as Space Brothers) is available, and anyone who downloads the comic can redeem exclusive Uchu Kyodai stamps. The first 10 pages of many of the comics can be read for free. Line Manga leverages on Line’s core features allowing users to share their favorite comic on the Line timeline. There’s a campaign running until April 22nd, and anyone who shares their favorite comic on Line can get 10 Line Coins per share (a day), and for the first purchase of…
I wrote a few weeks back about how with 100 million users, Line is the Japanese Facebook. The popular mobile application is far more than just a chat app, it is now a platform that was built by adding Line Channel back in July of 2012, a place where users can enjoy games, fortune-telling, and even discount coupons.
And today Line Corporation added yet another feature to its repertoire: Line Manga. Yes, the company is entering the mobile e-book business, both on iOS and Android. Major publishers such as Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kodansha have already joined Line Manga with over 30,000 comics available, which can be bought using Line’s vitual currency Line Coin. One popular comic Uchu Kyodai (roughly translated as Space Brothers) is available, and anyone who downloads the comic can redeem exclusive Uchu Kyodai stamps. The first 10 pages of many of the comics can be read for free.
Line Manga leverages on Line’s core features allowing users to share their favorite comic on the Line timeline. There’s a campaign running until April 22nd, and anyone who shares their favorite comic on Line can get 10 Line Coins per share (a day), and for the first purchase of coins, users will receive 500 bonus coins. Another campaign running until May 6th (Golden Week), one volume of top 100 comic titles can be bought for half price.
The e-book industry in Japan already has big players like Rakuten’s Kobo and Amazon’s Kindle. But if anyone is going to succeed in the e-book business, Line certainly has the potential to do so. Japan’s 40% smartphone penetration rate continues to grow and over 45 million people in the country have downloaded the Line app, making it near ubiquitous among smartphone owners.
Mobile device and e-books are a good match in Japan, going back to Keitai Shosetu, or novels read on mobile. Back in 2006 to 2007 when feature phones were still dominant, these written-on-mobile novels were super popular, especially among young girls. It was sort of like blogging a novel. Some were so successful that they were made into actual books.
So for many people in Japan, reading casual manga on the Line app is not going to be an entirely new experience.
For more information on the growth of Line and its vast repertoire of apps, including Line Manga, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.
See the original story in Japanese. We frequently hear words like ‘usability’ or ’user experience”, but still very few developers have conducted user tests for their apps. So says Daisuke Hiraishi, the CEO of InnoBeta Inc., the up-and-coming startup behind the crowdsourced app testing service UIScope. Innnobeta announced today that it would be partnering with DeployGate, a smartphone app test platform run by Japanese social network operator Mixi. As we mentioned in our previous feature interview, DeployGate has acquired users from over 93 countries and been used for testing more than 4,000 apps worldwide. With this integration with DeployGate, Innobeta provides a one-stop service to be known by the name of ‘DeployGate Scope.’ It allows developers to provide crowdsourced usability testing not only for live apps but also for prototypes still under development. UI Scope was launched last October, and its team consists of three full-time workers, a freelance designer, and an engineer (who is attending grad school). The CEO Hiraishi used the bulletin board service WishScope to invite potential co-workers, including his CTO Takakiyo Aritaka. They’ve had been running a design-oriented app service, but faced many issues in the process of user testing. That experience made them…
We frequently hear words like ‘usability’ or ’user experience”, but still very few developers have conducted user tests for their apps.
So says Daisuke Hiraishi, the CEO of InnoBeta Inc., the up-and-coming startup behind the crowdsourced app testing service UIScope. Innnobeta announced today that it would be partnering with DeployGate, a smartphone app test platform run by Japanese social network operator Mixi. As we mentioned in our previous feature interview, DeployGate has acquired users from over 93 countries and been used for testing more than 4,000 apps worldwide.
With this integration with DeployGate, Innobeta provides a one-stop service to be known by the name of ‘DeployGate Scope.’ It allows developers to provide crowdsourced usability testing not only for live apps but also for prototypes still under development.
UI Scope was launched last October, and its team consists of three full-time workers, a freelance designer, and an engineer (who is attending grad school). The CEO Hiraishi used the bulletin board service WishScope to invite potential co-workers, including his CTO Takakiyo Aritaka. They’ve had been running a design-oriented app service, but faced many issues in the process of user testing. That experience made them realize that many app developers were likely facing the same problem. And this led to them to eventually launch the crowdsourced usability testing service, making use of a pool of testers to provide feedback to developers and designers.
Similar services exist, but there’s no testing service specifically focused on testing for smartphone apps. The majority of the startup’s clients are big Japanese companies such as Recruit or NEC Biglobe, but users from startups also on the rise.
Since launch last October, the service was used for 200 projects by 40 companies. 70% of developers have the service to get feedback on upgrades for their apps, and the rest are for testing initial releases.
In terms of specifying the layer of testers you want to ask, you may choose them according to age, gender. You can also select testers by other criteria, such as people who have tried out a specific service, or even someone who has recently traveled to a certain place. On average, every case takes about one week and with 10 testers. According to global measurement company NielsenJakob Nielsen, a test conducted with 10 five people is enough to find and identify 80% of all problems [1].
Mixi’s DeployGate
The testing process is an interesting one. Participating testers will receive a webcam for free from UI Scope. Testers are requested to record their testing task, speaking their impressions as they proceed step-by-step. By collecting those recorded videos, you can understand how testers thought and felt, why they pressed a certain button, or why they abandoned a screen on the app. These videos will then be passed on to clients. Pricing is 3,000 yen for testing, and clients will pay 15,000 yen on average, typically asking for around 5 testers. Analysis reports are also available as an additional option.
Strict requirements for testers
More than 4,000 people have signed up for the service to be testers. The startup is devising ways to get more applicants, although they have a very strict filtering process for those who want to be qualified testers. Potential testers receive two to three dummy tests a week, and only are few of them who yield good results and display a certain literacy level will finally qualify. After that they can can receive 500 yen compensation every time they finish a testing task. When compensation reaches 2,000 yen, it will be transferred to your bank account.
Housewives were invited to be testers through the startup’s ‘invite your friend’ campaign, and many students have signed up through an introduction from the startup’s partner companies. UI Scope has also partnered with Mamion, a chain operating PC training courses for the elderly, thus succeeding in acquiring some older testers as well. This broad variety of testers helps the startup to receive many testing orders from a wide range of companies.
For future problems they want to solve, Mr. Hiraishi further explains:
We need to some time to educate developers on the necessity of the usability testing. That’s why we’re organizing events like the “Smartphone Design Conference”. For usability testing, it usually requires 10 to 15 minutes for a testing case. Conducting the case with 10 testers, that means 100 minutes at least. We want to improve the service so that it allows users to see each [step] of the testing task. We look into providing more specifications about our testers, so that our clients will be able to conduct more targeted tests.
For now, most testings are conducted at home, but the startup is planning to develop an environment where people can do tests outside their home (useful for testing GPS-enabled apps, for example) and real-time testing (for testing social network apps). For developers who would like to try out the service, UI Scope is giving a 50% discount until the end of this month.
The company previously raised 5 million yen (about $53,800) from Movida Japan, and has acquired 120 developers and 2500 testers during the last six months. The video below will give you a better idea of how the service works.
Thanks to @david_z on Twitter for the error report! Much appreciated. ↩
Masaru Ikeda
Tokyo-based startup Qrunch, the company behind online dating site MatchAlarm, announced today it has raised an unspecified amount of funds from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. 
Rick Martin
Yukari Mitsuhashi
