Line Corporation announced today that its Line Camera application has surpassed 50 million users as of yesterday.
That application was initially released back in April of 2012, and like all of Line’s other apps, it has ridden the popularity of the Line chat platform (or Line Channel) to reach a number of app markets around the world.
To date Line camera has done very well, becoming a top 10 iOS photo app in 20 countries, and a top 10 Android photo app in 14 countries – primarily in Asia and South America. The app supports the main languages in those regions, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, as well as Thai and Spanish which were added in the 5.0 update in August.
The company will apparently be targeting female users with new beauty features are coming in early October to Line camera, including capabilities to adjust skin brightness and smoothness, fix skin blemishes, as well as functions to make your face smaller and eyes bigger. You can see these functions in screenshot below provided by Line. If you look closely there is also an ‘volume’ button with what looks like a breasts icon too. I’m not yet sure how I feel about this last feature.
For more information on the history of Line to date, check out our interactive Line timeline.
Last week featured a number of international tech events here in Tokyo, including the Tokyo Game Show and ad:tech Tokyo. I was asked to serve on some panels at ad:tech, and moderated a fireside chat with Dave Goldberg, who is a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and also the husband of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. For those unfamiliar with his work, he’s the CEO of Survey Monkey, a cloud-based, web survey development company, which raised $800 million from several investors (including Google) back in January. Prior to joining the company in 2009, he started his first media company, Launch Media, back in 1993, which was subsequently acquired by Yahoo for $12 million in 2001. According to Dave, the Survey Monkey has acquired over 68,000 users in the Japanese market alone, and he says both user and revenue growth are strong. The company has 15 million users in total around the world. Survey Monkey has acquired over 68,000 users in the Japanese market alone Coinciding with this his visit to Tokyo, he unveiled a new feature for Japanese users called Question Bank. The feature aims to make survey creation easier and faster by presenting samples of recommended Q&A sets to reduce bias…
Image credit: Hideyuki Nakanishi
Last week featured a number of international tech events here in Tokyo, including the Tokyo Game Show and ad:tech Tokyo. I was asked to serve on some panels at ad:tech, and moderated a fireside chat with Dave Goldberg, who is a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and also the husband of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
For those unfamiliar with his work, he’s the CEO of Survey Monkey, a cloud-based, web survey development company, which raised $800 million from several investors (including Google) back in January. Prior to joining the company in 2009, he started his first media company, Launch Media, back in 1993, which was subsequently acquired by Yahoo for $12 million in 2001.
According to Dave, the Survey Monkey has acquired over 68,000 users in the Japanese market alone, and he says both user and revenue growth are strong. The company has 15 million users in total around the world.
Survey Monkey has acquired over 68,000 users in the Japanese market alone
Coinciding with this his visit to Tokyo, he unveiled a new feature for Japanese users called Question Bank. The feature aims to make survey creation easier and faster by presenting samples of recommended Q&A sets to reduce bias and give you more accurate answers.
Typically, when I have a chance to speak with entrepreneurs or investors from Silicon Valley, there’s one thing I can’t help but ask about. The most prominent startups in the Japanese market are from the gaming industry. But in the US, we’ve seen many exits for startups that serve enterprises. Why is there such a big difference in the two ecosystems?
He answered that there was a rise in the entertainment and consumer-focused gaming industry in the US, but the trend is changing. He says you can see user demographics changing at Evernote, as the service first targeted individuals but subsequently many office workers started using it to share documents with colleagues. Many companies have adopted it as a business tool, and he calls this phenomenon the ‘consumerization of business tools’. Dave adds that in Japan, when companies choose what tools should be used, it is typically a top-down decision where those at the top make their employers use the same tools. He notes this business culture gap makes it difficult for Japanese startups to succeed with business-focused innovations.
He closed with some sound advice for Japanese entrepreneurs:
Don’t fear failure, hire people who are smarter than you, and get all the support you can get.
This site began in Japanese as Startup Dating back in 2010, since then bringing Asian tech news to readers in Japan. This year, I had to honor of joining the team to create a complementary English version, SD Japan, with the mission of bringing Japanese tech and startup news to the rest of Asia and the world. So now this bilingual site is a bridge that sends news in two directions. And I’m really happy to announce that we have some big plans to make it even better in the next few months. The first step will be a rebrand that reflects what we aspire to be for the tech and startup space. On October 7 we will evolve our work so far into a new media presence known as ‘The Bridge’. Check out our swanky new orange logo on the right. It’s rich in vitamin C. Without going into too many details, let me briefly say that this is far more than a simple rebrand. New features will be rolling out in phases, with a heavier focus on our database as well as a sort of scoring system that will guide our readers towards the hottest startups and trends…
This site began in Japanese as Startup Dating back in 2010, since then bringing Asian tech news to readers in Japan. This year, I had to honor of joining the team to create a complementary English version, SD Japan, with the mission of bringing Japanese tech and startup news to the rest of Asia and the world.
So now this bilingual site is a bridge that sends news in two directions.
And I’m really happy to announce that we have some big plans to make it even better in the next few months.
The first step will be a rebrand that reflects what we aspire to be for the tech and startup space. On October 7 we will evolve our work so far into a new media presence known as ‘The Bridge’. Check out our swanky new orange logo on the right. It’s rich in vitamin C.
Without going into too many details, let me briefly say that this is far more than a simple rebrand. New features will be rolling out in phases, with a heavier focus on our database as well as a sort of scoring system that will guide our readers towards the hottest startups and trends in the industry.
We hope to be more than media, and act as a service to connect startups and investors, not just in Japan but around Asia too.
There will be more updates in our regular weekly newsletter as things develop, so I encourage you to sign up.
In an age where news is information, technology news sites have a responsibility to create more than just a firehose of articles. You deserve better, and we’re going to try our best to deliver. That means more than just text. It means video interviews, timelines, app/game screencasts, and more ambitious big-picture projects like our Japan Internet Map that tie it all together.
If you’re an aspiring writer, media producer, or data nerd looking to develop your digital media chops, do get in touch if you’d like to get involved. And as always, if you are a young startup company or entrepreneur, we’d love to talk with you as well!
For many people, thinking back to teenage years may bring some awkward memories. But recently here in Japan we’re seeing a number of apps that attempt to make life better and more fun for kids going through these difficult years. Here are three apps that we stumbled upon that are targeted at teenage girls in Japan, in no particular order. My Nikibi The last thing a girl wants is a pimple on her face on the day of a hot new date. ‘My Nikibi’, meaning ‘my pimples’, is an app that helps girls deal with unwanted blemishes. It lets them manage their pimples by taking photos, and noting which ointment they used to treat it. By looking back later, they can then figure out which methods work best. Like many services in Japan, My Nikibi features a cute character as well. The app is available as a free download for both iOS and Android. Decolink Decolink is another app by CyberAgent which we mentioned in a past article. Released back in February, the app competes directly with Line but focuses exclusively on teenage girls as its target user base. There are over 10,000 free stamps available, and girls can enjoy…
For many people, thinking back to teenage years may bring some awkward memories. But recently here in Japan we’re seeing a number of apps that attempt to make life better and more fun for kids going through these difficult years. Here are three apps that we stumbled upon that are targeted at teenage girls in Japan, in no particular order.
My Nikibi
The last thing a girl wants is a pimple on her face on the day of a hot new date. ‘My Nikibi’, meaning ‘my pimples’, is an app that helps girls deal with unwanted blemishes. It lets them manage their pimples by taking photos, and noting which ointment they used to treat it. By looking back later, they can then figure out which methods work best. Like many services in Japan, My Nikibi features a cute character as well.
The app is available as a free download for both iOS and Android.
Decolink
Decolink is another app by CyberAgent which we mentioned in a past article. Released back in February, the app competes directly with Line but focuses exclusively on teenage girls as its target user base. There are over 10,000 free stamps available, and girls can enjoy many customization features like changing the fonts and backgrounds for the chat app.
JK Mezamashi is a simple alarm clock app released by CyberAgent. The application is unique in that it is produced by an actual high school student who serves as the editor-in-chief of the mobile blogging platform, Candy. On Candy, CyberAgent conducted a survey of teens asking about their wake-up habits. Not surprisingly, 44% of girls uses the default alarm clock on their phones. Half of the respondents listed checking their mobile phone as the first thing they do after waking up.
The app has many fun alarm sounds including voices by cute guys in three different dialects. You can download the app for both iOS and Android.
Read this article in Japanese In Japan, we have seen a lot of hype around the e-commerce sector, and one of the startups getting a lot of attention is Stores.jp. Launched almost a year ago, the service recently made headlines when it was acquired by Start Today, the company behind the mega fashion e-commerce Zozotown. We visited the very cool Shibuya office of Bracket, the company behind Stores.jp, and talked to the CEO, Yusuke Mitsumoto, about their journey to this point, and where they go from here. The Bridge: Why did you choose Shibuya as the location to set up the Bracket office? Yusuke: I graduated from Aoyama Gakuin University which is located in Shibuya, so I’m very familiar and comfortable here. I really can’t think of any other place. We moved here about three weeks ago, but it’s only a five-minute walk from our previous office. We only had five people before, but the team has grown to be more than 20. The Bridge: How did you end up starting your own company? Yusuke: I use to work for a foreign advertising agency. The ad industry was so much fun, in fact too fun that I even felt a…
In Japan, we have seen a lot of hype around the e-commerce sector, and one of the startups getting a lot of attention is Stores.jp. Launched almost a year ago, the service recently made headlines when it was acquired by Start Today, the company behind the mega fashion e-commerce Zozotown. We visited the very cool Shibuya office of Bracket, the company behind Stores.jp, and talked to the CEO, Yusuke Mitsumoto, about their journey to this point, and where they go from here.
The Bridge: Why did you choose Shibuya as the location to set up the Bracket office?
Yusuke: I graduated from Aoyama Gakuin University which is located in Shibuya, so I’m very familiar and comfortable here. I really can’t think of any other place. We moved here about three weeks ago, but it’s only a five-minute walk from our previous office. We only had five people before, but the team has grown to be more than 20.
The Bridge: How did you end up starting your own company?
Yusuke: I use to work for a foreign advertising agency. The ad industry was so much fun, in fact too fun that I even felt a little scared. In Japan, the job of an ad agency is to sell media space sort of similar to a realtor, but outside Japan, you are more of a partner where you charge your fee by the hour. It was interesting to be able to work for different companies in various industries, from airlines to car manufacturers to even mineral water. But at the end of the day, the final decisions are always made by the client. I wanted to drive my own business and that’s why I started my own company.
The Bridge: Can you tell us about Bracket and its current business?
Yusuke: I founded Bracket as an internet business company back in October of 2008. Five years have since passed and it feels like the blink of an eye. The first service we released was CaFoRe, a C2C car-sharing service, and we now operate five web services in total. The others are Shoes of Prey, Privaterobe, Stores.jp, and ModelTown.
The Bridge: How did you end up making those five products?
Yusuke: The first two years we focused on CaFoRe, and in the third year we released everything except Stores.jp. We launched Stores.jp almost a year ago. We’ve been bootstrapped all this time, so we had to produce more sources of income and each product made contributions to our revenue.
The Bridge: In terms of revenue, which is the biggest contributor?
Yusuke: It’s more like a little from all products, but Shoes of Prey had more impact than we had expected. E-commerce is a simple business: you sell, you get cash. C2C services on the other hand requires a lot of time to grow. Currently, we have about 30,000 registered users on Shoes of Prey.
The Bridge: So would you say that you’ve been the only captain on the boat until now?
Yusuke: Yes, I’ve been the only executive until now. However, one of the team members Aya Tukahara, joined me on the board this year. All of the business decisions have been made by me. There are a few entrepreneurs outside the company that I can talk to, but many people choose to get funded or they already have enough funds at hand, so it’s hard to find someone in the same shoes as me.
The Bridge: Tell me a little about your current team.
Yusuke: There are roughly 20 members on our team including part-timers. Of those, about half are designers and engineers, and a quarter consists of managers and business development. The rest belong to customer support. There are no divisions within these teams, designers work on designs for all five products. But this year, we’ve pretty much focused on Stores.jp and Shoes of Prey.
The Bridge: How do you recruit people?
Yusuke: That’s the hardest part, but many are through introductions. We do put out recruiting ads but it’s been difficult to find qualified people. We don’t want to rush to hire people, because it just means more work when it doesn’t work out. Recruiting takes patience.
The Bridge: Can you tell us the current status of Stores.jp?
Yusuke: Since its launch almost a year ago, we have about 50,000 stores on the platform. About half of those are individuals, and the other half are small businesses with physical stores. Many stores owned by individuals sell design products like t-shirts and handmade items.
The Bridge: Your direct competitor is BASE. Why do your users chose Stores.jp over them?
Yusuke: We make many opportunities to speak directly with our users, and many chose us for our design and usability. They feel that the Stores.jp brand is cool. I think our simple domain Stores.jp helps with that branding.
The Bridge: What do you have planned for Stores.jp in the future?
Yusuke: We’re trying to enhance the ability to sell. At the end of July we released a feature called Promotional Switch. By turning this switch on, items within your store are promoted via partner e-commerce and media sites. We want to increase the number these partners to boost Stores.jp selling power.
The Bridge: Can people sell their items abroad?
Yusuke: Yes, there is a feature to translate stores into English. Not many stores use this feature, but we want this total to increase.
The Bridge: What’s your next big goal?
Yusuke: By the end of the year, we want to double the number of stores on Stores.jp.
Working with Start Today
The Bridge: Has anything changed since you joined Start Today, the company behind Zozotown?
Yusuke: Not really. Generally, when a company is acquired by another, you start your job the next day at the new office, you’re given new business cards, and even a new team. But for us, nothing has changed. The decision to move to our current office was decided before we began talking to Start Today, and I’m still the CEO with the same team working together. But by partnering up with Start Today, we now have access to the many powerful resources that they own.
The Bridge: We heard that the acquisitions talks only took two phone calls.
Yusuke: That’s correct. I have known Mr. Maezawa, the CEO of Start Today, for a few years. Before we launched Stores.jp or Shoes of Prey, he somehow found us and contacted us through our website. Ever since then, I’ve occasionally had dinner with him. Bracket had always been bootstrapped, so it was a big decision and a scary one to get funding from outside. But it was time, and we were looking for two hundred million yen.
The Bridge: So you were already in talks with potential investors.
Yusuke: Yes. At first we were talking about a business alliance with Start Today because Zozotown and Stores.jp had the potential to work together to boost each other’s service. But if we’re doing business together, I suggested it might be best for them to invest in us so that we can really work together.
The Bridge: How do you plan to work with them?
Yusuke: This is unintentional, but almost 70% of store owners on Stores.jp are in the apparel sector. There is obviously a huge demand in the apparel industry, and to cultivate this opportunity, it is crucial that we work with Zozotown which has a big influence in that industry.
The Bridge: How many users does Zozotown have?
Yusuke: They have over five million users, and we can certainly leverage these members, maybe providing stores to these people. They also have an impressive inventory, so its possible for us to provide these services to stores owners on Stores.jp. There are so many possibilities and opportunities that come from us working together, and we want to do that to boost the power of Stores.jp by every possible way.
Check out the video below where Yusuke gives us an intro to Bracket as well as some photos from their new office.
The Tokyo Game Show 2013 this past weekend showcased more than just games. Some companies were exhibiting solutions for game developers, one of the most interesting being QueryEye, a Nagoya-based startup that provides a marketing analysis solution. For mobile developers, if you see a sudden download surge for your app, you may have difficulty in figuring out what caused the spike. But QueryEye’s solution QuerySeeker gives you insight based on metrics and analytics that it collects. It continually crawls more than 45 million pages of popular blogs and app-focused websites. In this way you can figure out what social media post or online article helped give your app a boost. QuerySeeker was recently upgraded and so that now it can give you analytics in almost real time, updating every minute. It can be used for apps in a variety of app stores, like Apple’s AppStore, Google Play, KDDI’s au Smartpass, NTT Docomo’s dmenu, Amazon Kindle Store, the iTunes iBook Store, and Google Books. A single analysis package for an app is available for a monthly charge starting at 148,000 yen (about $1,500) not including the initial setup fee. The company was founded back in 2010 by Masashi Mizuno, known for…
The Tokyo Game Show 2013 this past weekend showcased more than just games. Some companies were exhibiting solutions for game developers, one of the most interesting being QueryEye, a Nagoya-based startup that provides a marketing analysis solution.
For mobile developers, if you see a sudden download surge for your app, you may have difficulty in figuring out what caused the spike. But QueryEye’s solution QuerySeeker gives you insight based on metrics and analytics that it collects.
It continually crawls more than 45 million pages of popular blogs and app-focused websites. In this way you can figure out what social media post or online article helped give your app a boost.
QuerySeeker was recently upgraded and so that now it can give you analytics in almost real time, updating every minute. It can be used for apps in a variety of app stores, like Apple’s AppStore, Google Play, KDDI’s au Smartpass, NTT Docomo’s dmenu, Amazon Kindle Store, the iTunes iBook Store, and Google Books. A single analysis package for an app is available for a monthly charge starting at 148,000 yen (about $1,500) not including the initial setup fee.
The company was founded back in 2010 by Masashi Mizuno, known for contributing insightful mobile market analysis in Japanese tech media.
In the area of user retention, we’ve recently seen more than a few solution providers, including planBCD, Growth Push, Fello, and Korea’s 5Rocks. What QuerySeeker provides is somewhat different but helps developers find more efficient ways to market their apps and bring in more users.
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
Yukari Mitsuhashi
