We previously featured Japanese cosmetics review portal @Cosme earlier this year. Many Japanese women trying to decide between cosmetic products turn to the site for reviews from their peers. The @Cosme website opened back in December of 1999, and on Christmas day this year the company announced that the total number of reviews on the site have exceeded 11 million.

The beauty products review portal covers 230,000 items across 26,000 different brands. The total number of monthly visitors has surpassed 8.4 million.

Ever since its launch, the site has strictly kept to its transparency policy, avoiding positioning itself too close to consumers or cosmetics manufacturers. To keep the website reliable, iStyle, the company behind the portal, monitors every review posted on the site 24/7, 365 days a year.

Even though the site is almost 15 years old, it has remained up to date with the changing interests of Japanese women. Its ‘Best Cosme Taisho‘ (roughly translated as ‘Best Cosmetics Awards’) is trusted by many female magazines who publish about cosmetics.

We’re also seeing more and more videos in the beauty content category. In particular, tutorial videos about how to put on make-up are especially popular. There are dedicated video websites like ‘God Make‘ (‘Make’ is a short for make-up in Japan), ‘Minna-no-make’, and @Cosme’s Kawaii Channel. On Kawaii Channel, users can find tutorials for various occasions, different facial parts, or natural looking or more fancy make-up.

@Cosme has successfully become the most common destination for many beauty related topics for women. It will be interesting to see where the site goes from here.