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Japan’s love affair with photo apps

photo apps

Rick Martin 2014.05.01

This morning I met with Canadian research student Laurel Hart who is currently in Tokyo studying mobile photography communities in Japan. Even though we’ve written about mobile photo apps significantly on this site (which is how she found me), I needed to take some time to think about what information I might be able to offer her. I thought I’d share some of those thoughts here, just in case it might be of interest to readers as well.

While there has been some indication that Japanese mobile users love photo apps more than other regional markets (see this chart from Flurry Analytics) [1], it’s a little bit more difficult to identify what kinds of things they are doing and what sorts of photos they are taking.

In a purely non-scientific exercise, I thought I’d review a few of the kinds of apps we see trending here in Japan, in an effort to dive deeper this area. Here a few genres of photo apps (and photo-related apps [2]), in no particular order:

Collage apps (Petapic, Cameran Collage, Papelook)
Photo decorations apps (DecoAlbum, Snapeee)
Food apps (SnapDish, Miil)
Fashion apps (Wear, Nailbook, Stulio, In My Bag )
Manga/Anime effects (Manga Camera, Otaku Camera, Kame Camera)
Family photo apps (Nohana, Kiddy and more)
Printing apps (Nohana, Tolot, and Fotofig if you include 3D printing) [3]
Beautifying apps (Beautecam, BeautyPlus, Qtiie)

These represent just a few of the more popular clusters of photos apps that we have seen here in Japan. Of course, everyone makes use of their mobile camera for different reasons, so we cannot claim that there is any sort of trend among consumers here. But perhaps we can assume that the apps that Japanese developers produce are at least partially indicative of the market’s demands.

As for mobile photography communities, I confess I’ve never seen such groups gathering offline [4]. But we often see people come together online around common ideas or themes. For example, the Nailbook app mentioned above is an intriguing community where people exchange pictures of nail art. And then their are mobile photographers who share photos around a suddenly viral meme, such as the ‘Cups Fuchiko-san’ meme where a tiny figure is posed on cups or glasses in strange ways, or the Makankosappo (literally translated as “Magic Penetrating Killing Ray”) meme, upon which the Kame-Camera app is based.

The world of smartphone photography obviously runs far deeper than what I’ve outlined above. If you there’s something that we’ve overlooked, don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments.

This chart doesn’t seem to be on Flurry’s site any longer. But thankfully, we still have a version here. ↩
I say photo-related, because some photo apps might technically be classified by an App Store as a photography app, but it might have a different primary purpose. The mobile flea market app Fril is an example of this. ↩
These are interesting considering the aging demographic in Japan, giving you the ability to send prints to older folks who may not use smartphones. ↩
It seems rather silly to me to define a photography community by device. ↩

news

Japan’s Actcat launches automated platform for reviewing code on GitHub

SideCI

Junya Mori 2014.05.01

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based software development company Actcat announced yesterday that it has launched a source code review and bug detection platform called SideCI. It provides a continuous integration service aimed at reducing time-consuming work for system developers. The service can review a given Ruby on Rails project under development on GitHub, detects security holes, points out areas likely to contain bugs, and detects libraries in need of updating. When you push source code to a GitHub repository, SideCI will review it automatically. Using the dashboard provided, you can also easily check out how many discrepancies you have addressed and how many still remain. The team is planning to add testing and deployment features, as well as support for programming languages other than Ruby. They attended the pitch session at TechCrunch Tokyo 2013 and the sixth batch of Incubate Fund’s development camp program. The company is perhaps best known for having developed many web services and mobile apps in a range of programming languages and for different platforms. They plan to use this experience to improve the platform to better serve developers.

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based software development company Actcat announced yesterday that it has launched a source code review and bug detection platform called SideCI.

It provides a continuous integration service aimed at reducing time-consuming work for system developers. The service can review a given Ruby on Rails project under development on GitHub, detects security holes, points out areas likely to contain bugs, and detects libraries in need of updating.

When you push source code to a GitHub repository, SideCI will review it automatically. Using the dashboard provided, you can also easily check out how many discrepancies you have addressed and how many still remain.

The team is planning to add testing and deployment features, as well as support for programming languages other than Ruby. They attended the pitch session at TechCrunch Tokyo 2013 and the sixth batch of Incubate Fund’s development camp program.

The company is perhaps best known for having developed many web services and mobile apps in a range of programming languages and for different platforms. They plan to use this experience to improve the platform to better serve developers.

news

Japanese location-based search engine Pathee raises $1.3 million

Pathee

Masaru Ikeda 2014.05.01

Tokyo-based Trietrue, the startup that operates location-based (Japanese) search engine Pathee, announced yesterday that it has raised 130 million yen (about $1.3 million) from Japanese digital marketing company Opt and Daiwa PI Partners. Pathee is a search engine focused on helping users obtain more relevant search results using the location detection technology. You may have sometimes seen such location-specific results when using search services like Google or Yahoo. For example, when you need to find a bathroom, you can simply enter ‘toilet’ in a search bar of the app, and it will navigate you to any of the bathrooms within a five-minute walk from where you are. What’s unique here is the result includes the locations of bathrooms in shopping complexes or other public premises, despite the fact that Google Maps can only show you a list of intentionally designated ‘public bathrooms’. The service currently is available only as a mobile web app, but an iOS app will be coming at the end of May. via TechCrunch Japan

For example, when you need to find a bathroom, you can simply enter ‘toilet’ in a search bar of the app, and it will navigate you to any of the bathrooms within a five-minute walk from where you are. What’s unique here is the result includes the locations of bathrooms in shopping complexes or other public premises, despite the fact that Google Maps can only show you a list of intentionally designated ‘public bathrooms’.

The service currently is available only as a mobile web app, but an iOS app will be coming at the end of May.

via TechCrunch Japan

news

Japanese startup raises funding for a new kind of interactive news site

Byus

Junya Mori 2014.04.30

See the original story in Japanese. Japanese startup Byus today launched the beta version of its interactive news service. The company also announced that it has secured an undisclosed sum of funding from Venture United, Incubate Fund, and Voyage Ventures. The news site was initially launched in alpha version back in July. Unlike other news sites, it lets you to ask other users about a specific news topic, with an article page for every topic generated through this Q&A back-and-forth. Each article page has links to other articles for related keywords, so you can easily explore topics you like. Overall, the service helps you understand a topic in depth, not only by exploring various factual information but also by hearing the voices of others. The news site prompts users to ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ to read every topic. But often they might not know enough a certain topic to decide on whether to accept. So this is why the development team decided to pivot towards a Q&A-based site. They also introduced a bookmarklet which helps users easily adds topics they like and ask others for more details. We understand that an Android app will be introduced before this summer, and that…

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese startup Byus today launched the beta version of its interactive news service. The company also announced that it has secured an undisclosed sum of funding from Venture United, Incubate Fund, and Voyage Ventures.

The news site was initially launched in alpha version back in July. Unlike other news sites, it lets you to ask other users about a specific news topic, with an article page for every topic generated through this Q&A back-and-forth. Each article page has links to other articles for related keywords, so you can easily explore topics you like. Overall, the service helps you understand a topic in depth, not only by exploring various factual information but also by hearing the voices of others.

The news site prompts users to ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ to read every topic. But often they might not know enough a certain topic to decide on whether to accept. So this is why the development team decided to pivot towards a Q&A-based site. They also introduced a bookmarklet which helps users easily adds topics they like and ask others for more details.

We understand that an Android app will be introduced before this summer, and that the company plans to acquire 30,000 registered users by September.

news

Task management tool ‘Jooto’ targets Japanese businesses

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.29

See the original story in Japanese. While startups and freelancers tend to be more agile and flexible, they might fall behind in task management if team members work at different locations or have communication issues. There are a wide range of business tools out there for messaging or knowledge sharing, but we still find ourselves taking notes or writing on post-its and sticking them around the office. Of course, you can’t share updates with team members efficiently in this way. To address this problem, a new task management tool emerged earlier this year, featuring a beautiful graphical interface and drag-and-drop operability. It’s called Jooto. The development team has been improving the app based on feedback from test users since its launch of its closed beta back in January. The official launch was earlier this month. While the app is unique in its own right, the team behind it is also worthy of mention. They have their design and operations team in Singapore, system development in Hanoi, but they have chosen to target the Japanese market only. Interestingly their marketing team is not based in Tokyo, but instead on the remote island of Ishigaki, at the south-western end of the Japanese…

See the original story in Japanese.

While startups and freelancers tend to be more agile and flexible, they might fall behind in task management if team members work at different locations or have communication issues. There are a wide range of business tools out there for messaging or knowledge sharing, but we still find ourselves taking notes or writing on post-its and sticking them around the office. Of course, you can’t share updates with team members efficiently in this way.

To address this problem, a new task management tool emerged earlier this year, featuring a beautiful graphical interface and drag-and-drop operability. It’s called Jooto. The development team has been improving the app based on feedback from test users since its launch of its closed beta back in January. The official launch was earlier this month.

While the app is unique in its own right, the team behind it is also worthy of mention. They have their design and operations team in Singapore, system development in Hanoi, but they have chosen to target the Japanese market only. Interestingly their marketing team is not based in Tokyo, but instead on the remote island of Ishigaki, at the south-western end of the Japanese archipelago.

Tomoko Devidal, the head of Nano Marketing who manages the app’s marketing efforts, told us why they operate in this way:

Since our app Jooto is developed for multilingual use, our global expansion is not so challenging from an engineering perspective. But since every startup has limited resources, we have to narrow our marketing focus. The app was developed by Skipforward in Singapore, a place where we couldn’t see a huge market opportunity. That’s why we decided on Japan as our initial target.

Despite the fact that they’ve not yet localized it to languages other than Japanese and English, they received some attention from internet users in Korea because of the highly intuitive user experience.

news

Japanese startup Sumally launches mobile marketplace service

Takeshi Hirano 2014.04.29

See the original article, written in Japanese Sumally is a social platform where users find recommendations by recording what they already have and they what. The startup has now also begun a C2C e-commerce service called Sumally Marketplace. Currently, it is available only on iPhone. You can list your item as available for sale on the app platform either by selecting an item you have already registered on site, or by registering new items via a bookmarklet and uploading its picture via the app. There is no initial fee and monthly fee for sellers, and at the moment no sales commission either. People who buy items need to only pay for the price displayed on the app, with no transaction fees. Payments are transacted by Sumally, and CEO of Sumally Kensuke Yamamoto says that the company plans to implement a 10% commission in the future. The competition in C2C mobile commerce is still very fierce in Japan. There are already Frill and Mecari in the startup arena, and Yahoo Japan on the corporate side. There are other C2C platforms out there are well including as Locari, Listore, Stulio, and Mom’s Market. It is estimated that the C2C mobile platform in…

See the original article, written in Japanese

Sumally is a social platform where users find recommendations by recording what they already have and they what. The startup has now also begun a C2C e-commerce service called Sumally Marketplace. Currently, it is available only on iPhone.

You can list your item as available for sale on the app platform either by selecting an item you have already registered on site, or by registering new items via a bookmarklet and uploading its picture via the app.

There is no initial fee and monthly fee for sellers, and at the moment no sales commission either. People who buy items need to only pay for the price displayed on the app, with no transaction fees.

Payments are transacted by Sumally, and CEO of Sumally Kensuke Yamamoto says that the company plans to implement a 10% commission in the future.

The competition in C2C mobile commerce is still very fierce in Japan. There are already Frill and Mecari in the startup arena, and Yahoo Japan on the corporate side. There are other C2C platforms out there are well including as Locari, Listore, Stulio, and Mom’s Market. It is estimated that the C2C mobile platform in Japan transacts nearly $200 million a month. All the players are striving to either increase their current share or find a new market.

50 million data points

In this extremely competitive field, how can Sumally compete? I think Sumally has much potential to grow, because of its solid structure for connecting the users and items based on their accumulated data.

Sumally started in September of 2011, and since then it has been building a network where items are connected to one another. According to Yamamoto, the database now contains 1.35 million items, built by almost 400,000 registered users. In addition, a lot of metadata has been added to each item, amounting to nearly 50 million data points. All that metadata can really help you find what you really want.

Here is how it actually works. First you click the “want it“ button on whatever item is similar to what you want. Related items will begin to appear by continuing to use the want, you will eventually achieve the ideal item.

Find a handbag in 7 steps

Since I was not quite sure how accurate the underlying data structure was, I tried out the service to see if I could find a bag to fit my own taste. Here is how I reached my ideal bag, in a total of 7 steps. I really feel this recommendation system is quite novel, very different from that of Amazon.

I wanted a handbag. So I pushed the “want it” button on a bag that I randomly selected. And I chose a hand bang of the sort that I wanted.

I continued to click “want it“ on bags which I thought were better.

I wanted a blue bag. The selection is got closer to what I wanted.

I finally I found my ideal bag.

The potential

At this point, you cannot buy the items you want on the Sumally website at the marketplace. But sellers can understand which product is popular on the website site and use that info to choose which items to sell on the marketplace.

As the number of listed items grows on the marketplace, the precision of the matching will be key. It could be a big advantage for the company, and they could even expand their business by allowing other services to use their data.

In talking with Yamamoto, I saw a lot of potential with this business structure. I’ll write more about that next time.

Japan’s love affair with photo apps

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Task management tool ‘Jooto’ targets Japanese businesses