See the original story in Japanese. Kakao Japan, the Japan subsidiary of Korean messaging app KakaoTalk, announced today that it has partnered with Japanese karaoke and mobile content provider Xing (pronounced ek-sing) to provide stickers and themes in the app’s Item Store. The distribution partnership will start on August 1st. In the Item Store, Kakao Talk users are allowed to download free and paid stickers or smartphone themes, which include animated to talking stickers of webtoons, celebrity icons, and animation characters. Xing launched a ring-tone marketplace called ‘Pokemero Joysound’ back in 1999. Since then, the company has been providing a variety of mobile content to feature phones and smartphones. For Kakao Japan, the partnership is intended to enhance its Item Store with the Japanese provider’s content. KakaoTalk has acquired more than 100 million users worldwide, and its gaming platform KakaoGame has been showing good numbers both in revenue and user growth. In addition, the messaging company has also released a number of more vertical apps such as KakaoStory and KakaoPoll. It will be interesting to see if the company can acquire more users and become more of an app distributor as Line is doing.
Kakao Japan, the Japan subsidiary of Korean messaging app KakaoTalk, announced today that it has partnered with Japanese karaoke and mobile content provider Xing (pronounced ek-sing) to provide stickers and themes in the app’s Item Store. The distribution partnership will start on August 1st.
In the Item Store, Kakao Talk users are allowed to download free and paid stickers or smartphone themes, which include animated to talking stickers of webtoons, celebrity icons, and animation characters.
Xing launched a ring-tone marketplace called ‘Pokemero Joysound’ back in 1999. Since then, the company has been providing a variety of mobile content to feature phones and smartphones. For Kakao Japan, the partnership is intended to enhance its Item Store with the Japanese provider’s content.
Kakao Japan office
KakaoTalk has acquired more than 100 million users worldwide, and its gaming platform KakaoGame has been showing good numbers both in revenue and user growth. In addition, the messaging company has also released a number of more vertical apps such as KakaoStory and KakaoPoll.
It will be interesting to see if the company can acquire more users and become more of an app distributor as Line is doing.
Ichiyaha is a Japanese, mobile optimized web service that lets users sign up to play games which have yet to be released. It’s sort of like betali.st where you can sign up early for startup services. Ichihaya was released back in June, and is operated by CyberZ, a mobile advertising and marketing company in Japan. The company is a subsidiary of internet giant CyberAgent. Ichihaya has content partnerships with over 40 app review sites and game portals, like Kamiapu (roughly translated as ‘god apps’), one of the major iPhone app review portals in Japan. Users can sign up by email using their Facebook or Google credentials. Once registered, they can choose games they find interesting, and will subsequently be notified with updates about that game. Ichihaya lets users download exclusive items for many games as well. For game developers it’s a fast, sure way to reach potential fans. Ichihaya can also be used as a marketing tool by publishing game-related content, such as tips on how to master a certain game. By implementing the SDK for Force Operation X, an advertising solution tool provided by CyberZ, game data can be analyzed as well. It’s only been a little over a…
Ichiyaha is a Japanese, mobile optimized web service that lets users sign up to play games which have yet to be released. It’s sort of like betali.st where you can sign up early for startup services. Ichihaya was released back in June, and is operated by CyberZ, a mobile advertising and marketing company in Japan. The company is a subsidiary of internet giant CyberAgent.
Ichihaya has content partnerships with over 40 app review sites and game portals, like Kamiapu (roughly translated as ‘god apps’), one of the major iPhone app review portals in Japan. Users can sign up by email using their Facebook or Google credentials. Once registered, they can choose games they find interesting, and will subsequently be notified with updates about that game. Ichihaya lets users download exclusive items for many games as well.
For game developers it’s a fast, sure way to reach potential fans. Ichihaya can also be used as a marketing tool by publishing game-related content, such as tips on how to master a certain game. By implementing the SDK for Force Operation X, an advertising solution tool provided by CyberZ, game data can be analyzed as well.
It’s only been a little over a month since its release, so we don’t see a whole lot of up-coming games yet. But for light game users, it’s a great place to keep track of soon-to-be-released titles. Ichihaya can currently be viewed on mobile browsers, but in the future a native app certainly would not hurt either.
I like content presented on maps. And I’ve been a big fan of Hitotoki, developed by Craig Mod and the folks at Tokyo-based AQ, since a few years back. It was a great collection of geo-tagged stories, wrapped in the kind of beautiful design that great stories deserve. But looking back now, I think that this location-based content concept was a little ahead of its time. I asked AQ’s Chris Palmieri about the state of Hitotoki a few months back, and I was pretty excited when he told me that it would be relaunching. After a bit of a wait, the new service is now online and is known simply as Hi, living on the web at SayHi.co [1]. Like Hitotoki, it asks you to ‘sketch’ a moment from where you are, comprised of a photo and some text. The process is optimized for smartphones, geotagging your moment as you add it. Chris notes that Hitotoki and Hi began with the same goal of a 500-word moment, but points out that “how each [one] makes that happen couldn’t be more different.” I had a chance to take an early look at Hi, testing it out over the past few months….
A moment from Nick K on SayHi.co
I like content presented on maps. And I’ve been a big fan of Hitotoki, developed by Craig Mod and the folks at Tokyo-based AQ, since a few years back. It was a great collection of geo-tagged stories, wrapped in the kind of beautiful design that great stories deserve. But looking back now, I think that this location-based content concept was a little ahead of its time.
I asked AQ’s Chris Palmieri about the state of Hitotoki a few months back, and I was pretty excited when he told me that it would be relaunching. After a bit of a wait, the new service is now online and is known simply as Hi, living on the web at SayHi.co[1]. Like Hitotoki, it asks you to ‘sketch’ a moment from where you are, comprised of a photo and some text. The process is optimized for smartphones, geotagging your moment as you add it. Chris notes that Hitotoki and Hi began with the same goal of a 500-word moment, but points out that “how each [one] makes that happen couldn’t be more different.”
I had a chance to take an early look at Hi, testing it out over the past few months. So far my contributions are few and far between – both in terms of time and distance – but there’s a reason for that. While Hi doesn’t ask you to be overly meticulous in composing your moments, for me, the incredible design of the site implicitly demands a certain level of reflection before publishing. It makes me want take a weekend train out of Tokyo, and not come back until I have snapped the perfect selfie with a buddist zen master, and a compose a clever photo caption – preferably in haiku form – to go along with it.
[We] made the sketching tool as enjoyable to use as possible, because we want people to use it over and over and over again.
But interestingly, the publishing flow imposes some reflection by design. After uploading a moment, other Hi users may (or may not) ask you to expand on that moment. This ’Tell me more" request is both a reward for a good contribution, and peer encouragement to take it further [2]. It’s like the applause that encourages a speaker to keep talking with confidence when he’s on stage.
It turns out that the time gap between your initial sketch and your follow up elaboration is conducive to a better published piece. Chris explains that the first step is called a ‘sketch’ for a reason:
We named the initial act of creating with Hi “sketching”, but made the sketching tool as enjoyable to use as possible, because we want people to use it over and over and over again.
But the subsequent steps in the process lets you digest, process, and maybe come up with something you didn’t think of while you were in your moment. By breaking up the process in this way, it doesn’t feel like a process at all. More like a brief instant message session, or a FourSquare check-in that others might actually care about.
Craig Mod explains that the high-quality feedback loops that exist within Hi (the ‘tell me more’ and ‘thanks’ functions) have been effective so far:
It sounds a bit complex but in practice it’s proven to be quite a fluid little interaction model and has already produced over 80,000 words of content — the order of many of those words quite excellent! — in a little over 10 days.
I tend to notice more remarkable things when I travel, and so I find I use Hi more while on the road. But because I like Hi, I find that it’s also prompting me to look for remarkable things in my own neighborhood, seeing it in a slightly different light.
But at the same time, my own privacy concerns keep me from adding moments that are too close to home – so that greatly limits my use, although I expect that may not be as big of a concern for most people. Despite that concern, I really love it a lot and will continue to use it.
It’s clear that Craig and Chris and company love Hi a lot too. As far as websites go, this one is pretty immaculately groomed, and they really believe in the content format. And even though this is a labor of love, there are also hopes that it can be a business as well. Craig says:
This needs to be, at some point, sustainable. For now we’re testing hypothesis around engagement; if the core creative ideas don’t work then it’s pointless to consider the business side of things.
Craig has himeself written a great introduction to Hi over on Medium if you’d like to dive deeper into what it’s all about. Or if you’d like to sign up for it yourself, I have some invitations here (thanks Craig!) if any of our readers would like to sign up.
Personally I really hope that Hi does well, in much the same way that I’m rooting for time-machine app Yesterscape, which archives moments of today for tomorrow. I’m still dreaming of a web service that will do a better job of archiving our stories and culture, letting us scrub through a rich timeline of any given location. I think there’s a huge need for services of this kind, and I really hope we can see more spring up in the future.
The old Hitotoki still exists as Hitotoki classic if you ever want to browse those moments. ↩
If you don’t want to develop it further, that’s cool too. Just click ‘that’s all I’ve got’. ↩
Tokyo-based gaming company Mobcast announced yesterday that its sports-focused gaming platform now has more than 3.5 million users, adding about 380,000 new members every three months. The company expanded its service to Korea back in February, intensifying its localization efforts by acquiring Korean gaming company Entercrews. Mobcast’s Korean gaming platform surpassed 600,000 users, and 300,000 of those have tried MobaSoccer, a soccer title where both Japanese and Korean users can simultaneously play a Japan vs Korea match. In addition to Japan and Korea, the company has expressed interest in expanding to South East Asian markets, and it has already established a local presence in Indonesia. The company has been seeing good results in user acquisition, thanks to marketing efforts in partnership with sports TV shows and notable football clubs. The company parnered with FC Barcelona and shows off high-profile football players in its online soccer gaming app, including stars like Thierry Henry and Lionel Messi. In a previous interview with the company’s CSO (chief strategic officer) Takashi Sato, he unveiled that the company is aiming to reach at least 30 million users in Japan, and one million users in Korea in this year. To learn more about the service, check…
Tokyo-based gaming company Mobcastannounced yesterday that its sports-focused gaming platform now has more than 3.5 million users, adding about 380,000 new members every three months.
The company expanded its service to Korea back in February, intensifying its localization efforts by acquiring Korean gaming company Entercrews. Mobcast’s Korean gaming platform surpassed 600,000 users, and 300,000 of those have tried MobaSoccer, a soccer title where both Japanese and Korean users can simultaneously play a Japan vs Korea match. In addition to Japan and Korea, the company has expressed interest in expanding to South East Asian markets, and it has already established a local presence in Indonesia.
Mobcast Girls cheer and promote the game platform in Japanese media. (Image: Mobcast website)
The company has been seeing good results in user acquisition, thanks to marketing efforts in partnership with sports TV shows and notable football clubs. The company parnered with FC Barcelona and shows off high-profile football players in its online soccer gaming app, including stars like Thierry Henry and Lionel Messi.
In a previous interview with the company’s CSO (chief strategic officer) Takashi Sato, he unveiled that the company is aiming to reach at least 30 million users in Japan, and one million users in Korea in this year. To learn more about the service, check out a couple of its commercials which we have included below.
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 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.
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. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Sumally is a Japanese social network that connects what you love with the people you love. For those not familiar with the service, it allows you to tag items other users have posted with either ‘have’ or ‘want’. If you follow users who tag items similar to those you tag, you can connect with such like-minded people. In this way you can discover things that you might never have seen, but you may be very interested in. The startup recently started issuing corporate accounts, providing them with its e-commerce related features for free. To date the service has acquired more than 150,000 users. For corporate users, the new membership allows you to use all features for free, including: Placing your banner image on the top of their page. Uploading your items without tagging ‘want’ or ‘have’. Providing a dashboard to register your items on the platform. Registering item profiles and images in an Excel file format. In addition to these features, you will be allowed to apply to building up your own e-shop on the platform. Your shop can be set up upon approval from Sumally. When a user buys your product on the…
Sumally is a Japanese social network that connects what you love with the people you love. For those not familiar with the service, it allows you to tag items other users have posted with either ‘have’ or ‘want’. If you follow users who tag items similar to those you tag, you can connect with such like-minded people. In this way you can discover things that you might never have seen, but you may be very interested in.
The startup recently started issuing corporate accounts, providing them with its e-commerce related features for free. To date the service has acquired more than 150,000 users. For corporate users, the new membership allows you to use all features for free, including:
Placing your banner image on the top of their page.
Uploading your items without tagging ‘want’ or ‘have’.
Providing a dashboard to register your items on the platform.
Registering item profiles and images in an Excel file format.
In addition to these features, you will be allowed to apply to building up your own e-shop on the platform. Your shop can be set up upon approval from Sumally. When a user buys your product on the platform, you will need to pay a 5% commission in addition to the payment processing fee.
Since late January when the startup launched full e-commerce operations, it has partnered with more than a few brands and encouraged them to establish official stores on the platform. The introduction of the corporate membership is expected to help on this front.
In a past interview with Wired.jp, the company’s CEO Kensuke Yamamoto said that he was aiming to create a platform that blended social with commerce. Sumally’s recent move makes me feel that it’s definitely heading in that direction.
See the original story in Japanese. Recently we’ve seen fierce competition among two Japanese e-commerce platform builders, Stores.jp and Base. Now it seems both are moving past simple merchants acquisition, looking beyond to see what value they can add to their respective services. Bracket, the startup behind Stores.jp, yesterday unveiled a new feature that will help merchants promote their e-store on the platform, using partner e-commerce portals such as EC Navi, Kakaku.com, and Value Commerce. For merchants, if you use this promotion feature you will be asked to pay a 10% commission for a purchase made via this affiliated traffic. For merchants, products will be featured in search results on partnering portal sites, such as MSN Japan which is pictured below. The startup is exploring partnerships with many other e-commerce portal sites based on a revenue share model. The advent of these simple e-commerce platforms allows merchants to put up an online store far more easily than with conventional ASP-based shopping cart services. It has spurred an abundance of merchants to start e-businesses, but subsequently they have no way to attract new customers. The startup is trying to solve this problem, recently partnering with fashion giant Zozotown, which could be…
Recently we’ve seen fierce competition among two Japanese e-commerce platform builders, Stores.jp and Base. Now it seems both are moving past simple merchants acquisition, looking beyond to see what value they can add to their respective services.
Bracket, the startup behind Stores.jp, yesterday unveiled a new feature that will help merchants promote their e-store on the platform, using partner e-commerce portals such as EC Navi, Kakaku.com, and Value Commerce. For merchants, if you use this promotion feature you will be asked to pay a 10% commission for a purchase made via this affiliated traffic.
For merchants, products will be featured in search results on partnering portal sites, such as MSN Japan which is pictured below. The startup is exploring partnerships with many other e-commerce portal sites based on a revenue share model.
The advent of these simple e-commerce platforms allows merchants to put up an online store far more easily than with conventional ASP-based shopping cart services. It has spurred an abundance of merchants to start e-businesses, but subsequently they have no way to attract new customers. The startup is trying to solve this problem, recently partnering with fashion giant Zozotown, which could be new partner site for them in the future, in terms of helping merchants drive traffic.
Bracket’s CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto explains how they plan to evolve their e-commerce platform.
As well as keeping the image of a simple-to-launch platform, we plan to give merchants many solutions to acquire customers. We have partnered with Zozotown, but we will not change into to a fashion commerce site — we will keep going beyond what we have been doing.
Some of our readers may be familiar with the startup’s competitor Base. Base recently launched an iOS app and an interface that curates featured shops. In contrast with Base, which has not yet partnered with other sites, Stores.jp unveiled a partnership with GMO Makeshop, an e-commerce platform from GMO, one of Japan’s leading internet companies. This could be an indication that the startup might be exploring a partnership-based business.
We’ll try to keep you updated about how these two companies’ business strategies compare in the future.
It was almost three years ago that Japanese food review portal Tabelog went premium. That was back in September of 2010, and since then it has made some progress in gathering paid users. Kakaku.com, the company behind Tabelog, has just announced that the number of premium members now exceeds 250,000, as of July 28th. The total number of monthly users is over 46 million, and page views are over one billion, as of June 2013. With a monthly fee of 315 yen (or about $3.20), premium members can enjoy additional features such as: Sorting or filtering by preferences Coupons with discounts of 20% to 100% A GPS-enabled feature that finds you nearby restaurants Ranking sorted by age and gender An ad-free version of the mobile app Tabelog launched way back in March of 2005, taking about five years to release its premium version – which at the time they did not handle very well. The change was very sudden and the site forced constraints in usage of exisiting features. It was so bad at one point that the almost all of over 440 app reviews submitted were one star ratings. The biggest complaint from the users was the restriction in…
It was almost three years ago that Japanese food review portal Tabelog went premium. That was back in September of 2010, and since then it has made some progress in gathering paid users. Kakaku.com, the company behind Tabelog, has just announced that the number of premium members now exceeds 250,000, as of July 28th. The total number of monthly users is over 46 million, and page views are over one billion, as of June 2013. With a monthly fee of 315 yen (or about $3.20), premium members can enjoy additional features such as:
Sorting or filtering by preferences
Coupons with discounts of 20% to 100%
A GPS-enabled feature that finds you nearby restaurants
Ranking sorted by age and gender
An ad-free version of the mobile app
Tabelog launched way back in March of 2005, taking about five years to release its premium version – which at the time they did not handle very well. The change was very sudden and the site forced constraints in usage of exisiting features. It was so bad at one point that the almost all of over 440 app reviews submitted were one star ratings. The biggest complaint from the users was the restriction in using sorting features.
Tabelog
But looking at the gradual increase in the number of premium members, people seem to have finally accepted it now, and they continue to use the site. Honestly, there aren’t many good enough alternatives out there.
But the lessons to be learned here are very simple. Don’t make a sudden change without taking the time to educate users and adjust their expectations. Premium accounts should offer additional services, and not cripple something that was already available. Although Japanese people are relatively used to micropayments on mobile, when it comes to smartphone apps where free or one-time purchases are more common, they are more unwilling to pay monthly fees.
Tabelog has found other ways to monetize the site too. In addition to premium memberships, the company also operates an equivalent of OpenTable called Cena that allows users to easily make restaurant reservations. It’s likely that they take a cut when reservations are made, just like they do for when a reservation phone call is made through Tabelog restaurant page.
Despite incidents in the past, Tabelog is considered one of the most successful services in Japan, and it will be interesting to see their future attempts in boosting the number of premium members.
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…
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.
Photobooks sold, February to June
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. ↩
The app lets you save multiple addresses, making the process of sending a book to other family members very easy. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based United, the company behind smartphone homescreen decoration app CocoPPa, announced today that it has introduced its popular app on the Opera Mobile Store. That store reaches various mobile platforms including Android, BlackBerry, Java, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. In addition to Apple’s AppStore and Google Play, the company has also introduced the app on Amazon’s Android AppStore earlier this month. The Opera Mobile Store doesn’t aim to defeat conventional app stores, but rather create an alternative for users who may have different needs in terms of mobile accessibility or location. The store has more then 45 million monthly downloads from over than 30 million users in 200 countries, with an especially strong presence in India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Russia. CocoPPa launched on this app store to intensify its user acquisition in these countries in particular. For those who are not familiar with the app, our previous articles will show you how it works and why it’s currently trending. Or check out the video below for a quick overview.
Tokyo-based United, the company behind smartphone homescreen decoration app CocoPPa, announced today that it has introduced its popular app on the Opera Mobile Store. That store reaches various mobile platforms including Android, BlackBerry, Java, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. In addition to Apple’s AppStore and Google Play, the company has also introduced the app on Amazon’s Android AppStore earlier this month.
The Opera Mobile Store doesn’t aim to defeat conventional app stores, but rather create an alternative for users who may have different needs in terms of mobile accessibility or location. The store has more then 45 million monthly downloads from over than 30 million users in 200 countries, with an especially strong presence in India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Russia.
CocoPPa launched on this app store to intensify its user acquisition in these countries in particular. For those who are not familiar with the app, our previous articles will show you how it works and why it’s currently trending. Or check out the video below for a quick overview.
Junya Mori
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
Takeshi Hirano
