Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten held a business strategy briefing today, unveiling that it has acquired VoIP and messaging app company Viber for $900 million.
Viber has acquired over 300 million users worldwide, with 550,000 new users signing up every day. And Rakuten’s founder and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani expects to bring much of that user base to Rakuten’s e-commerce business, which already has 200 million users worldwide.
To commemorate the acquisition, the two companies started a promotion that lets users worldwide to make a call to any landline phones in Japan for free.
See the original story in Japanese. It was announced yesterday that Keio Media Design’s [1] indie film portal site, Node, will tie up with Singapore-based Viddsee, an online movie shorts startup. You may remember that Viddsee raised $40,000 from ACE Singapore back in November of 2013 [2]. Node has been introducing films online with the goal of helping independent directors. Through this partnership, Node will set up a Japan-focused channel called Node Japan on Viddsee, showing Japanese indie films to a global audience, with English subtitles added. As we write this, the following four titles are available with more to be added later: Tales from the Cottage (by Takafumi Tachibana) A Flower in a Part (by Asami Tomatsuri) A Treasure (by Yuki Yamaguchi) Rootless Heart (by Toshiko Hata) Node was initially launched back in July of 2013 to create value through connecting people and groups. Viddsee was launched in March of 2013 by Singaporean entrepreneurs Ho Jia Jian and Derek Tan to give people a better chance to access to short films from Asia. While most established directors can show their works at the many movie festivals worldwide and through other distribution channels, opportunities for new directors are limited. Even if…
It was announced yesterday that Keio Media Design’s[1] indie film portal site, Node, will tie up with Singapore-based Viddsee, an online movie shorts startup. You may remember that Viddsee raised $40,000 from ACE Singapore back in November of 2013 [2].
Node has been introducing films online with the goal of helping independent directors. Through this partnership, Node will set up a Japan-focused channel called Node Japan on Viddsee, showing Japanese indie films to a global audience, with English subtitles added. As we write this, the following four titles are available with more to be added later:
Tales from the Cottage (by Takafumi Tachibana)
A Flower in a Part (by Asami Tomatsuri)
A Treasure (by Yuki Yamaguchi)
Rootless Heart (by Toshiko Hata)
Node was initially launched back in July of 2013 to create value through connecting people and groups. Viddsee was launched in March of 2013 by Singaporean entrepreneurs Ho Jia Jian and Derek Tan to give people a better chance to access to short films from Asia.
While most established directors can show their works at the many movie festivals worldwide and through other distribution channels, opportunities for new directors are limited. Even if a film is focused on a very niche topic, this partnership can help it reach an interested global audience.
Some of our readers may recall Singapore’s video streaming website Viki was acquired by Rakuten for $200 million back last September. As both wired and mobile broadband internet are rapidly developing in Asia, viewing professional content on the internet is becoming a viable entertainment option for people as an alternative to conventional broadcasting.
KMD’s ‘Node’
Keio Media Design is the graduate school of Media Design, Keio University. ↩
Action Community for Entrepreneurship is a state-run entrepreneurship encouragement initiative in Singapore. ↩
Japanese internet company Mixi today announced its financial report for the previous quarter. But they also announced that their CEO, Yusuke Asakura, will step down, appointing Hiroki Morita, general manager of the game department as the new CEO, effective after the scheduled shareholder meeting on June 24th. According to the company, the huge success of its gaming apps (like Monster Strike) have helped them return to profit, despite the prediction that the company might show a $10 million loss in the fiscal year ending this March. They appointed the new CEO as part of their shifting from a recovery phase to a “re-growth” stage. Asakura was appointed as the CEO just last June. Prior to joining Mixi back in 2011, he had been running the startup Naked Technology, subsequently acquired by Mixi. His former colleagues include Miku Hirano, whose startup Spicy Cinnamon recently announced a new round of funding, as well as a new photo app.
From the left: Co-founder Kenji Kasahara and the current CEO Yusuke Asakura
Japanese internet company Mixi today announced its financial report for the previous quarter. But they also announced that their CEO, Yusuke Asakura, will step down, appointing Hiroki Morita, general manager of the game department as the new CEO, effective after the scheduled shareholder meeting on June 24th.
According to the company, the huge success of its gaming apps (like Monster Strike) have helped them return to profit, despite the prediction that the company might show a $10 million loss in the fiscal year ending this March. They appointed the new CEO as part of their shifting from a recovery phase to a “re-growth” stage.
Late last year we told you about Comico, a free online manga service available on the web, as well as on iOS and Android. At that time we mentioned that NHN PlayArt, the company behind the service, had set an initial goal of acquiring 300,000 users by the end of 2013. It appears that the company is well past that goal now, announcing earlier this week that Comico has surpassed 1 million downloads, requiring only about 100 days since its initial launch to do so [1]. In Japan, it is now the top free iOS ‘books’ app, and the sixth ranked Google Play ‘comics’ app. NHN PlayArt is a subsidiary of Naver Corporation, developing many of Line’s popular casual games including the recently released Disney Tsumu Tsumu, currently the top free app on both iOS and Android in Japan with over 4 million downloads in its first 14 days. So overall it has been a pretty good start to 2014 for the group, which is housed within Line Corporation headquarters in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. When Comico launched, there were 56 different comics available to read, free of charge. The service has since expanded to include 71 comics. And as of…
Late last year we told you about Comico, a free online manga service available on the web, as well as on iOS and Android. At that time we mentioned that NHN PlayArt, the company behind the service, had set an initial goal of acquiring 300,000 users by the end of 2013. It appears that the company is well past that goal now, announcing earlier this week that Comico has surpassed 1 million downloads, requiring only about 100 days since its initial launch to do so [1]. In Japan, it is now the top free iOS ‘books’ app, and the sixth ranked Google Play ‘comics’ app.
NHN PlayArt is a subsidiary of Naver Corporation, developing many of Line’s popular casual games including the recently released Disney Tsumu Tsumu, currently the top free app on both iOS and Android in Japan with over 4 million downloads in its first 14 days. So overall it has been a pretty good start to 2014 for the group, which is housed within Line Corporation headquarters in Tokyo’s Shibuya district.
When Comico launched, there were 56 different comics available to read, free of charge. The service has since expanded to include 71 comics. And as of this past December, it also allows amateur manga artists to submit comics for consideration, with prize money currently available as part of an contest. After February 17th, 30 works will be selected from these submissions, and then reader voting will take place to chose a winner.
As for the Comico app itself, it’s interesting to compare it to Japan’s other popular manga app these days, DeNA’s Manga Box. That app has seen over 2 million downloads the span of about a month after its December launch. For readers abroad, you’ll find no English interface or translations in Comico yet, so perhaps Manga Box, which has better titles available in my view, might be a better option.
In Comico, you can crop a section and share with friends
Comico does have some interesting features though, most notably the fact that its manga are in color (as opposed to black and white). There is also a pretty interesting crop-and-share feature, which will let you easily select a snap of your manga to share with friends on social networks or over email (see picture above).
It’s good to see more and more services offering mobile manga solutions. As we pointed out before, Line also has its own mobile manga app, Line Manga, which is doing quite well too. It is currently ranked fifth in the iOS ‘books’ category, and second in the Google Play ‘comics’ category.
Comico’s ranking on iOS since its October release (App Annie)
Japanese app monetization platform Metaps announced today that all the mobile apps using its monetization platform have achieved a cumulative total of 1 billion downloads worldwide. While the company doesn’t disclose how many apps or developers have adopted the platform to date, the number of downloads has risen in the past few months, especially after establishing partnerships with Line and Kakao to help app developers using those messaging platforms monetize better. These partnerships were particularly instrumental in the company’s rapid growth. Metaps’ monetization platform consists of three different solutions: DirectTap, a cost per click-based ad network; Exchange, a traffic exchange network for participating apps; and Metaps OfferWall, a reward ad platform. Since launching back in in 2011, the company has been focusing on providing solutions to developers in Asian markets like Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Metaps launched a new office in Shanghai in late 2013 to intensify its marketing efforts in mainland China. To commemorate this milestone, the company is providing a time-limited special offer to new users. For mobile developers, if you are new to the platform but sign up and integrate the Metaps Offerwall SDK into your app, the revenue generated will be 1.5 times…
Japanese app monetization platform Metapsannounced today that all the mobile apps using its monetization platform have achieved a cumulative total of 1 billion downloads worldwide.
While the company doesn’t disclose how many apps or developers have adopted the platform to date, the number of downloads has risen in the past few months, especially after establishing partnerships with Line and Kakao to help app developers using those messaging platforms monetize better. These partnerships were particularly instrumental in the company’s rapid growth.
Metaps’ monetization platform consists of three different solutions: DirectTap, a cost per click-based ad network; Exchange, a traffic exchange network for participating apps; and Metaps OfferWall, a reward ad platform.
Since launching back in in 2011, the company has been focusing on providing solutions to developers in Asian markets like Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Metaps launched a new office in Shanghai in late 2013 to intensify its marketing efforts in mainland China.
To commemorate this milestone, the company is providing a time-limited special offer to new users. For mobile developers, if you are new to the platform but sign up and integrate the Metaps Offerwall SDK into your app, the revenue generated will be 1.5 times the normal amount. This offer is effective for new users who sign up before the end of this month, starting today.
A few months back we wrote about New York-based Aviary, which at the time was making an effort to establish itself in Japan. And now this month, an upcoming event will be a big part of that effort, as Aviary’s recently announced hackathon, Photo Hack Day, is set to take place on the weekend of February 22/23. As we have noted previously, Japan is perhaps the most enthusiastic mobile photography nation, and we have covered an incredible amount of great photo applications that have been produced here. It’s not unlikely that many more fun apps will be created at this Japan version of Photo Hack Day, so if you are a developer that would like to participate, you can check out the Photo Hack Day site for more information on how to do that. Aviary’s previous Photo Hack Day took place at Facebook’s San Francisco headquarters, with over 300 developers and designers producing 63 mobile apps. The Japan event will take place at Mixi headquarters in Tokyo, with 300,000 yen as the first place award (about $3,000, out of $15,000 total in prizes). There are a number of API sponsors on board, with API demos taking place on the morning…
A few months back we wrote about New York-based Aviary, which at the time was making an effort to establish itself in Japan. And now this month, an upcoming event will be a big part of that effort, as Aviary’s recently announced hackathon, Photo Hack Day, is set to take place on the weekend of February 22/23.
As we have noted previously, Japan is perhaps the most enthusiastic mobile photography nation, and we have covered an incredible amount of great photo applications that have been produced here. It’s not unlikely that many more fun apps will be created at this Japan version of Photo Hack Day, so if you are a developer that would like to participate, you can check out the Photo Hack Day site for more information on how to do that.
Aviary’s previous Photo Hack Day took place at Facebook’s San Francisco headquarters, with over 300 developers and designers producing 63 mobile apps. The Japan event will take place at Mixi headquarters in Tokyo, with 300,000 yen as the first place award (about $3,000, out of $15,000 total in prizes).
There are a number of API sponsors on board, with API demos taking place on the morning of the 22nd before the actual hacking kicks off at 11:30am [1]. So if you’re a developer or designer who would like to get involved in what looks to be very interesting, and very focused hackathon, do drop over to the website for more information, or register here on Peatix.
Our readers may recall that Aviary recently launched the first international edition of its photo editor in Japan back in November. We briefly spoke with their CEO Tobais Peggs at that time, who gives a brief intro to his service in the video below.
I should also note that I’ve agreed to volunteer at the event as one of the judges in an effort to help out. So if you’re in attendance, do come say hello! ↩
Masaru Ikeda
Rick Martin
