Michel is an online text mining analysis service that collects information from blogs, online reviews and social media to find internet trends. Plus Alpha Consulting, the Japanese company behind the site, recently put together a report that shows the most popular TV commercials in Japan by analysing tweets from the past year.
It’s always fun to watch award-winning TV commercials, as they often gives some insight into the type of humor and creativity that works well in certain cultures. So with that in mind, let’s take a look at few of the best television commercials from Japan in 2013.
The most popular TV commercial from last year was by Nissin for its Cup Noodle product. The company has always been super creative and funny with its Cup Noodle commercials. But in the latest version, they make fun of happy people on Facebook who feel the need to share every single happy moment they experience with friends. The shark in the video represents these happy people, and the guy fighting the shark screams out, “I’ll only press ”Like” when I really like something!”
SoftBank won the number two spot with it’s unique commercials. The company is recently running a commercial that mimics the popular TV series Hanzawa Naoki, with it’s long running ‘Oto-san’ series (‘father’ in Japanese). A Japanese shibainu dog plays the part of the father in the SoftBank family. Interestingly, this father role was suppose to be played by a huge actor but at the last minute he couldn’t make it and they substituted in a dog. It’s funny how hits are made!
‘Loto 7’ nabbed the number three spot, with their commercial for a popular lottery here in Japan, where the prize is 400 million yen. In the commecial, two popular Japanese actors play the parts of a boss and his subordinate. The boss feigns disinterest in the lottery, asking “Can you buy your dreams with money?” But in the end it turns out that his employee catches him buying a ticket.
It’s interesting to note that all three major mobile phone carriers – Docomo, au, and Softbank – made top ten commercials list.
Michel also announced its list of well-received brands, with Softbank ranking number one, a construction company Daiwa House second, and Toyota third.
This year in 2014, Michel plans to release a monthly report of popular TV commercials based on this kind of Twitter analysis. They plans to provide an analytics service for TV commecials to advertising agencies and promoters as well.
Beijing Skyline See the original article in Japanese from last month Among the eight startups who pitched at a recent event at Beijing’s Tech Temple, the following four startups provide all provide really interesting mobile solutions. Considering Xiaomi’s recent growth, and I came away with the impression that it could be Chinese startups like these that step to the fore on the the world stage. Appbyme AppByMe Appbyme is a cloud platform for the development smartphone apps, targeting beginner developers. In the US, there are similar services like as Invision and Flinto that help users prototype smartphone apps. Not just with prototyping, Appbyme helps users until they complete developing an app and even monetizing from that. In China, many people operate Bulletin Board Sites (BBSs) using content management systems like Discuz, PHPwind and WordPress. Those BBS already have regular users, and if their operators produce an app, then naturally that app can pick up quite a few users as well. And with Appbyme, such users can create an app simply by choosing a template. Many features such as push-notification, location-based gaming, social media sharing, or group-buying can be easily added to the app. Before founding Appbyme, CEO Zhao Jian worked…
Among the eight startups who pitched at a recent event at Beijing’s Tech Temple, the following four startups provide all provide really interesting mobile solutions. Considering Xiaomi’s recent growth, and I came away with the impression that it could be Chinese startups like these that step to the fore on the the world stage.
Appbyme is a cloud platform for the development smartphone apps, targeting beginner developers. In the US, there are similar services like as Invision and Flinto that help users prototype smartphone apps. Not just with prototyping, Appbyme helps users until they complete developing an app and even monetizing from that.
In China, many people operate Bulletin Board Sites (BBSs) using content management systems like Discuz, PHPwind and WordPress. Those BBS already have regular users, and if their operators produce an app, then naturally that app can pick up quite a few users as well. And with Appbyme, such users can create an app simply by choosing a template. Many features such as push-notification, location-based gaming, social media sharing, or group-buying can be easily added to the app.
Zhao Jian, CEO of AppByMe
Before founding Appbyme, CEO Zhao Jian worked as the technical officer of Yicha, a mobile search engine in China. He feels that it is getting more difficult to search for content as more services assume the form of a mobile apps. His vision is to make a better structure for content search on mobiles.
In this field, there are competitors already out there in China like AppCan and Zhuixin. But when it comes to the number of users and apps, Appbyme stands out. To date, 5400 webmasters are registered on Appbyme, and more than 50,000 apps have been released. The business model is based on a revenue share with developers and advertisers, charging bigger developers for a subscription.
The BBS community in China is very active, especially in cities. According to Zhao, local portal sites are popular, and they have their own business potential, the kind you cannot see for sites in larger, central cities. Appbyme hopes to take advantage of such local opportunities.
The company also plans to make the English, Japanese, and Korean versions so that it can expand overseas.
SayHi is a worldwide dating app with daily active amounting to about 650,000. It has many users in Middle Eastern countries and in Asia as well. Even though the app is developed in China, the service is not being provided there.
On SayHi, users can find other users nearby through GPS and then chat with them. But you need points to chat other members. For example, when a male user wants to chat with a popular female user, he has to pay one point for an hour. If you become a VIP member for a 6000 yen monthly fee, you can chat as much as you want.
According to Shi Yan, the CEO of Easyroid, the company has apps on iOS, Android and Windows Mobile. He says that 29% of their sales comes from Japanese market.
Shi Yan pitches SayHi
In China, there are other popular messenger apps with similar features, including Momo and iAround. Globally, Badoo and Skout are doing well. SayHi plans to add more entertainment and game features in the app in order to differentiate from competitors.
vWorld’s CEO Gao Song once worked as the chief officer of Shangshuixuan Studio, the game department of Kingsoft (HKG:3888). Gao says that the number of smartphone users in China amounts to 354 million, and most are either students or white-collar workers. There are some common characteristics among them:
Since they literally grew up with games, they care much about the quality of games.
They are used to sharing content on social media.
They are keenly competitive.
vWorld is a game app where users compete to conquer actual places. It’s a bit different from Foursquare, where users become the mayor of a location by accumulating check-in points. On vWorld, one can become the leader of a location if they win a game against other users.
The company wants to create a user experience where once users conquer various locations in a city that they would actually be motivated to move on to a different city. The app uses GPS to find the actual location using Autonavi’s API.
App Annie is an analytics platform that tracks downloads of mobile apps, and it’s a service we frequently reference here at The Bridge. You can easily get statistical information about iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Mac apps, giving you a good idea of which apps are popular in which market, popular and which ones are earning revenue.
App Annie has its headquarters in Beijing, but according to CEO Bertrand Schmitt, the company has 130 staff spanning across six cities. In September of 2013, the company raised $15 million in its series C round from Sequoia Capital, IDG Capital Partners, Greycroft Partners and Infinity Venture Partners.
App Annie CEO Bertrant Schmitt
Bertrant shared his insights into the recent trend of mobile apps in the world. For instance, while the iOS AppStore has been growing in China, Google Play has seen remarkable growth in the other BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia and India). When it comes to the revenue, the big money comes mostly from advanced countries, with Android doing especially well are in the US and Japan. For the Japanese market, sales on Android and iOS are relatively well balanced [1].
App Annie Index
For app developers, if you don’t know how your apps are selling in certain markets, you cannot develop a strategy for your development and design. But by using the market data available on App Annie and by utilizing other growth hacking tools, developers can determine how to make a successful app much more efficiently than before.
App Annie publishes infographic overviews of some of their statistics.In this way, the site can attract future customers, offering more detailed data to user who pay for premium accounts. Many news media who struggle with monetization can learn much from this business model.
We will look at more Chinese startups in our next article, and examine some of the major internet trends among companies in China.
Tech Temple
Many people in the Beijng startup community get together at this party. The entrepreneurs and investors I often meet in Beijing were all there. Even though it was soon after the facility opened, the place seemed to be quite well known in Beijing already.
The corner of the reception and the cafe. The coffee was incredible.
TechTemple is on the first and the second floor of the Tianhai Business Building in Beixinqiao, Beijing.
As you may have read recently, Google has acquired seven robotics startups from the world, as the company looks ahead to new business opportunities. One of these startups is Tokyo-based Shaft, which won the DARPA robotics challenge trials back in December. Japan is an advanced country in this space, so I’d like to highlight a few of the important players in this sector. Read on to learn more! 1. Kiluck Kiluck has developed Rapiro, a humanoid robot compatible with the popular Raspberry Pi computer kit. The company succeeded in raising over $75,000 on Kickstarter last year, compared to its original target of $20,000. In partnership with fellow startups TeamLab and Yukai Engineering, they have developed the famous Necomimi device, a wearable pair of cat-ears that moves in accordance with your brainwave activity. 2. Extrun Since it launched back in 2009, Extrun has been in the system integration business. But they recently started developing a mobile camera called Ilbo, a device which keeps watch inside your home while you’re out. You will be able to control the device using an iOS app, and view what’s happening in your room through your mobile in real time. It will transmit a real-time image,…
Skeletonics
As you may have read recently, Google has acquired seven robotics startups from the world, as the company looks ahead to new business opportunities. One of these startups is Tokyo-based Shaft, which won the DARPA robotics challenge trials back in December. Japan is an advanced country in this space, so I’d like to highlight a few of the important players in this sector. Read on to learn more!
Kiluck has developed Rapiro, a humanoid robot compatible with the popular Raspberry Pi computer kit. The company succeeded in raising over $75,000 on Kickstarter last year, compared to its original target of $20,000. In partnership with fellow startups TeamLab and Yukai Engineering, they have developed the famous Necomimi device, a wearable pair of cat-ears that moves in accordance with your brainwave activity.
Since it launched back in 2009, Extrun has been in the system integration business. But they recently started developing a mobile camera called Ilbo, a device which keeps watch inside your home while you’re out. You will be able to control the device using an iOS app, and view what’s happening in your room through your mobile in real time. It will transmit a real-time image, but in the future they also plan to roll out additional features like remote controls for air conditioners and lights. They expected to introduce the product this spring for about $100.
Liferobotics is a company that develops commercial products based on technologies from Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Science and Technology, or AIST. They’re developing robotic arm products that can be used in various manufacturing industries, or in assisting seniors or those with physically disabilities.
Orylab is a hardware manufacturing company backed by Waseda University’s startup incubator. For people with mobility issues, their robot OriHime can be used as a sort of avatar, allowing you to watch and listen to what’s happening in a remote location. You can talk with remote individuals using a live video chat as well. It can carried anywhere as a sort of stand-in on your behalf.
In this way, you could go on picnic with your family virtually, or even attend a lecture virtually with your classmates.
Mujin was founded by robotics scientist Rosen Diankov and grew out of the University of Tokyo. His team has developed OpenRAVE, a motion planning software for real-world robotics applications, as well as Mujin Controller, software that allows you simulate various robotic motion patterns and optimize performance before you move to full-scale operation. The company raised 75 million yen (about $75,000) from the university’s venture fund in a series A funding back in 2012.
Yukai Engineering was founded back in 2007 (and incorporated in 2011) by Teamlab’s co-founder Shunsuke Aoki. The startup is known to have introduced many interesting hardware devices like computing kit Konashi and smart baby camera Paby, and even helping Japanese smart glass startup Telepathy create their prototypes as well. Our readers may recall we interviewed Aoki back in November.
Doog was grew out of Tsukuba University, and has introduced a wheeled mobile robot (WMR) for purposes like advertising or baggage assistance. Some of their robots can follow you around wherever you go. The company wants to help people evolve their business and life further using robotics technology.
Asratec was launched by Mitou [1] super-creator Wataru Yoshizaki back in 2009. He has been developing a humanoid robot called V-sido. The robot’s primary advantage is that it’s easy to control, even for non-technicians. For most types of humanoid robots, if you make an arm movement, it is likely to fall down if you don’t keep other body parts balanced. This robot’s software calculates how much he needs to stoop or stretch other body parts to maintain balance, so all you need to do is focus on the arm movement. A Softbank executive is leading the company as their president, and several news sources say the Japanese telco plans to launch artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics projects through them.
Skeletonics was created by several Japanese college students who came together to win a robotics contest back in 2008. Their robot moves in sync with the user’s arms and legs, and works and looks like an armored suit, like that in the popular Japanese animation series Ghost in the Shell. It doesn’t use an electric motor-based servo-mechanism but rather mechanical linkage to reduce the robot’s weight as well as possible chances of technical difficulties. As the team recently won the top prize at the ‘Todai to Texas’ Demo Day, they are expected to exhibit their robots at SXSW 2014 taking place in Austin this coming March.
Mitou is a bi-annual software engineering promotion program run by a governmental IT promotional agency in Japan. In 2009, Yoshizaki’s humanoid project was chosen as one of 18 innovative projects out of 124 applicants. ↩
I’ve experimented with a number of to-do apps over the years, with perhaps my favorite ones to date being Task Paper and Quadranto [1]. But I was curious to hear about LvUp recently, a made-in-Japan to-do list app that recently got some love on a popular Japanese television show. The app is deceptively simple, with just a list of tasks on the main screen, and radio buttons you can push when you’ve completed them. At that point you’re congratulated by a fun ‘level-up’ sound and awarded some points for a job well done. But if you dig a little bit under the surface, LvUP has even more features. Tap on a task and you’ll find lots of meta-data under the hood, including points for tasks, an optional date field, and alerts if you want them. There’s also an option for repeating tasks, with even further sub-options for daily, weekly, monthly, or a specified number of days. On the main screen in the bottom right, you’ll also find a chart icon. Tap on that and it brings you to a pretty graph of your completed tasks over time. LvUP was initially released back in 2012, and it is currently the fourth…
I’ve experimented with a number of to-do apps over the years, with perhaps my favorite ones to date being Task Paper and Quadranto[1]. But I was curious to hear about LvUp recently, a made-in-Japan to-do list app that recently got some love on a popular Japanese television show.
The app is deceptively simple, with just a list of tasks on the main screen, and radio buttons you can push when you’ve completed them. At that point you’re congratulated by a fun ‘level-up’ sound and awarded some points for a job well done.
But if you dig a little bit under the surface, LvUP has even more features.
Tap on a task and you’ll find lots of meta-data under the hood, including points for tasks, an optional date field, and alerts if you want them. There’s also an option for repeating tasks, with even further sub-options for daily, weekly, monthly, or a specified number of days.
On the main screen in the bottom right, you’ll also find a chart icon. Tap on that and it brings you to a pretty graph of your completed tasks over time.
LvUP was initially released back in 2012, and it is currently the fourth ranked iOS app in Japan’s ‘health and fitness’ category after its recent TV appearance. If you’d like to give it a try, you can pick it up for 100 yen (or $0.99) over on the App Store.
I love Quadranto, but I’m a little discouraged that syncing has been botched in the iOS version. Nevertheless, I still use it on my Mac. ↩
CTO of Xibao, Alex Farfurnik, on the right (photo cred) China’s top e-commerce site, Taobao, accounts for a whopping 80% share of the nation’s e-commerce market. But even with so many sellers setting up a shop on Taobao, most of them don’t adequately understand how to sell products on the platform. That’s where Xibao comes in. Xibao’s system helps optimize ads and use Taobao’s ad platform more effectively. According to co-founder, Alex Farfurnik, the company offers three plans at a monthly fixed rate. Pricing starts at 0–100 yuan ($0–17) for a freemium plan, 1000 yuan ($170) for a standard plan, and 15,000 yuan ($2500) for a VIP plan. 17 months have passed since the launch of its ad optimization platform, Super Driver, And the total customers subscribing to paid plans has surpassed 40,000. Advertisement fees paid by Taobao through Xibao have surpassed $150 million. At first, Xibao was launched as a service for small businesses. But the business grew because of a partnership with Taobao, and Xibao began offering the service to major companies as well. XiBao now has partnerships with internet giants like Tencent, Qihoo, JD.com, and Baidu. Generally, sellers place ads on Taobao to lead customers to their…
CTO of Xibao, Alex Farfurnik, on the right (photo cred)
China’s top e-commerce site, Taobao, accounts for a whopping 80% share of the nation’s e-commerce market. But even with so many sellers setting up a shop on Taobao, most of them don’t adequately understand how to sell products on the platform. That’s where Xibao comes in.
Xibao’s system helps optimize ads and use Taobao’s ad platform more effectively. According to co-founder, Alex Farfurnik, the company offers three plans at a monthly fixed rate. Pricing starts at 0–100 yuan ($0–17) for a freemium plan, 1000 yuan ($170) for a standard plan, and 15,000 yuan ($2500) for a VIP plan. 17 months have passed since the launch of its ad optimization platform, Super Driver, And the total customers subscribing to paid plans has surpassed 40,000. Advertisement fees paid by Taobao through Xibao have surpassed $150 million.
November 11th is widely referred to as ‘E-commerce Day’ on the Chinese internet. This year the sales on Tmall.com, the online retailer spun off from Taobao, reached 35.019 billion yuan ($5.6 billion) for the day. The above picture is from a monitoring room at Tmall.com.
At first, Xibao was launched as a service for small businesses. But the business grew because of a partnership with Taobao, and Xibao began offering the service to major companies as well. XiBao now has partnerships with internet giants like Tencent, Qihoo, JD.com, and Baidu.
Generally, sellers place ads on Taobao to lead customers to their shops. But it turns out that this is not necessarily cost-effective. For example, there was a case when a Tmall seller placed ads on Qihoo, leading viewers to Tmall from there. With this strategy, the cost performance of the ad was 50 times higher than ads placed directly on Tmall. Xibao looks at all the indicators including transactions and advertising ROI to manage the best ad space.
In the upcoming year, Xibao aims to release two apps and acquire 100,000 freemium accounts.
On November 11th, Xibao staff was working overnight at TechTemple. Every year on this day, all the staff work non-stop.
ActShare is an interesting photo sharing app that breaks photos into action-based categories. So where many vertical photo apps focus narrowly on things like eating or traveling, ActShare encourages you to share a wider range of actions, such as drink, buy, listen, read, or make. When browsing content in the app, you can follow all the actions of a certain user, or you can follow more granularly by action. You can also sort by ‘recent’, ‘popular’ or ‘nearby’. The app was developed by Tokyo based Cougar Inc. Couger Inc. [1], a four person team led by founder and CEO Atsushi Ishii. He explained a little more to me about why they wanted to make this app: One day I realized that most of the posts on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter are related to actions. So ActShare has some common act categories, and the concept is to be an “ActLog”. This means next generation of the Blog. I want to have an app with a simple user interface. I really think anybody can use this app. This is a nice idea, although it would be great down the road if other forms of content could be shared besides photos. For example,…
ActShare is an interesting photo sharing app that breaks photos into action-based categories. So where many vertical photo apps focus narrowly on things like eating or traveling, ActShare encourages you to share a wider range of actions, such as drink, buy, listen, read, or make. When browsing content in the app, you can follow all the actions of a certain user, or you can follow more granularly by action. You can also sort by ‘recent’, ‘popular’ or ‘nearby’.
The app was developed by Tokyo based Cougar Inc.Couger Inc. [1], a four person team led by founder and CEO Atsushi Ishii. He explained a little more to me about why they wanted to make this app:
One day I realized that most of the posts on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter are related to actions. So ActShare has some common act categories, and the concept is to be an “ActLog”. This means next generation of the Blog. I want to have an app with a simple user interface. I really think anybody can use this app.
This is a nice idea, although it would be great down the road if other forms of content could be shared besides photos. For example, an Amazon link to go with the ‘buy’ action, or even regular hyperlinks to connect followers to something you’ve read. Atsushi noted that this is something they would like to add in the future, and that would certainly be good to see.
There have been apps that have tried to do this sort of thing before. My colleague pointed me towards Impala, an app that uses image recognition technology to categorize images.
I think the app in its current form is a good start, but they might benefit by looking at the input method of some existing diary or logging apps, such as Day One or Notabli. The ability to search external content from within the app, perhaps using DuckDuckGo as Writing Kit does, might be a fun possibility to explore as well.
The app just launched last month, so there’s still lots of time to make improvements based on early feedback. But it’s a promising first step, and it will be interesting to see how the app evolves as it picks up more users.
If you’d like to try it out, you can get it for free over on the App Store.
Couger informs us that a previous version of this article mistakenly correctly spelled the company’s name ‘Couger’ as ‘Cougar’. We have gone back and unfixed our non-mistake. ↩
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Masaru Ikeda
Rick Martin
