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Foursquare has 240M check-ins in Japan, will leverage its big data for next business phase

Takeshi Hirano 2013.04.24

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. See the original story in Japanese. Foursquare debuted at SxSW in 2009. Its gamification elements (check-ins, mayor, badges) made it a smash hit all around the world. Now four years since its launch, the company is ready for the next phase of its business. At B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka yesterday, Holger Luedorf, the head of business development at Foursquare, explained what’s on the horizon for the location-based app. In the process he revealed some interesting figures about their userbase, as well as some metrics for Japan. Big data makes predictive search possible Holger began his talk with a screen capture from when he arrived in Fukuoka, showing him that everyone was inviting friends to lunch. Recommendations for restaurants popped up as it was almost noon. He explains that when he is located far from his home, the app detects that he is on a trip and presents him with nearby sightseeing spots. When he checked in at Grand Hyatt (the venue of for event), the app suggested that visit a nearby Starbucks based on his check-in history. He noted that the latest version of the Foursquare…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

See the original story in Japanese.

Foursquare debuted at SxSW in 2009. Its gamification elements (check-ins, mayor, badges) made it a smash hit all around the world. Now four years since its launch, the company is ready for the next phase of its business.

At B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka yesterday, Holger Luedorf, the head of business development at Foursquare, explained what’s on the horizon for the location-based app. In the process he revealed some interesting figures about their userbase, as well as some metrics for Japan.

Big data makes predictive search possible

Holger began his talk with a screen capture from when he arrived in Fukuoka, showing him that everyone was inviting friends to lunch. Recommendations for restaurants popped up as it was almost noon.

He explains that when he is located far from his home, the app detects that he is on a trip and presents him with nearby sightseeing spots. When he checked in at Grand Hyatt (the venue of for event), the app suggested that visit a nearby Starbucks based on his check-in history.

He noted that the latest version of the Foursquare app is optimized for search functions, proposing some places to visit as well as finding destinations in the search box. The more your friends accumulate check-ins, the more precise the app will be when recommending places of interest.

240 million check-ins in Japan

Holger tells the audience that Foursquare has acquired 3.5 billion check-ins, 30 million users, 50 million points of interest, and 50 million public photos around the world.

In Japan, Foursquare has 240 millions check-ins with 1.6 million total venues, all of which are user generated. The top venues for check-ins include Shinjuku Station, Akihabara Station, and Shibuya Station, as you can see in the slide above. When asked about their progress in Asia, Holger points out that they had good growth in the region in 2012, in places like Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. But recently Turkey, Brazil, and Russia have been growing the fastest. He explains:

The nice thing about being a social network is that most of our growth is really viral, so we don’t have anyone on the ground right now in Asia. But I think for finding developers who want to use our data, later on in the next phase we will seek partners for both the platform and the advertising side. I’m pretty confident we’ll have to work with partners here in Japan when it comes time for sales and monetization.

Foursquare’s big data shows people on the move

Holger also showed the following visualization illustrating the fluctuations of the people during the day in both New York and Tokyo. You can even make out the Yamanote Line if you look closely!

If you use any of the apps shown on the slide below, you’re also using Foursquare in a way, because they all make use of its data. Instagram uses Foursquare’s geotag, for example. Holger explained that they have 75 million API calls a day, and if you include all the users of these Foursquare-integrated apps, it totals about 100 million active users.

Their API is used by 40,00 companies, including game developers who use it to build ‘real world’ games. There are also messaging services and navigation app providers. Holger explains that there are lots of interesting ways that people are using Foursquare data, in ways that the company wouldn’t have come up with itself.

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In conversation with two up-and-coming Japanese e-commerce founders

Rick Martin 2013.04.24

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, the final session featured a discussion of e-commerce, with a two interesting guests: Shota Horii CEO, Fablic Inc. Kakiyama Takehiro, the founder and CEO of Flutterscape Moderator: Yusuke Tanaka, senior vice president at Yahoo Japan Commerce born on mobile Fril is a pretty fascinating service in that it created exclusively for mobile. Horii-san explains that they target female users, encouraging them to sell their unwanted clothes on via the Fril flea market, which lives entirely in their smartphone app. They target primarily 20 year olds who might not have a lot of money, but still want to buy clothes. But interestingly, these same women have a lot of unwanted clothes in their closet, and Fril offers them a way to become ‘shops’ in addition to just shoppers. They can upload pictures quickly to via the smartphone platform, an action that was really tedious in the days of feature phones. He notes that the C2C market in Japan is still small, but for this demographic, other online services like Yahoo Auction might be a little too complex. So…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, the final session featured a discussion of e-commerce, with a two interesting guests:

Shota Horii CEO, Fablic Inc.
Kakiyama Takehiro, the founder and CEO of Flutterscape
Moderator: Yusuke Tanaka, senior vice president at Yahoo Japan

Commerce born on mobile

Fril is a pretty fascinating service in that it created exclusively for mobile. Horii-san explains that they target female users, encouraging them to sell their unwanted clothes on via the Fril flea market, which lives entirely in their smartphone app. They target primarily 20 year olds who might not have a lot of money, but still want to buy clothes. But interestingly, these same women have a lot of unwanted clothes in their closet, and Fril offers them a way to become ‘shops’ in addition to just shoppers. They can upload pictures quickly to via the smartphone platform, an action that was really tedious in the days of feature phones.

He notes that the C2C market in Japan is still small, but for this demographic, other online services like Yahoo Auction might be a little too complex. So Fril really fills a nice gap. Interestingly, their team is made of all guys, but they appear to have no difficulties understanding their customer base.

Unique design for a global market

Kakiyama-san is pretty young entrepreneur, but has already turned many heads with his e-commerce service. He graduated from university just back in 2010, and he had a lot of foreign friends who were telling him to do something global. He liked the idea of making something with overseas reach, as well as having global tastes.

It started out as Flutterscape, which may ring a bell with some readers, but about a year ago they shifted gears to offer a B2C service called Monoco which sells designer interior products to a global market. He describes very strong growth, noting that they have about 650 designers on board, coming on at a pace of about 6 or 7 each day. Their site aspires to be fun, occasionally holding limited time flash sales.

Currently Monoco has seven merchandisers, including one in London, one in Bali, and one in New York. He says that having boots on the ground in different regions allows them to meet a variety of great designers.

Both Fril and Monoco are pretty fascinating business ideas, and it will be interesting to see how they both fare in the future.

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B Dash Camp Panel: Discussing developments in big data

Rick Martin 2013.04.23

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, there was a panel discussion on recent developments in the field of big data. Participating in the talk was Takashi Kusano, the CEO and president of BrainPad Inc.; Masaya Mori, the executive officer at Rakuten Inc., and Ryuichi Nishida of B Dash Ventures Inc. The moderator Nishida began by wondering about the term big data, and what it means exactly. Kusano noted that in the past, they would just refer to it as data mining. But these days, he figures that it’s data that you can’t process with traditional tools. At his company, BrainPad, they help companies who can’t process such data on their own. He explains that many companies store unstructured data, which is of low value, but of a huge volume. And for most companies, it’s hard to extract meaning from that. And typically, unless the management can see how important it is, then it’s difficult for them to dedicate a special department for this purpose. Mori explained the unique situation facing Rakuten these days, where they have a business that spans across many sectors,…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, there was a panel discussion on recent developments in the field of big data. Participating in the talk was Takashi Kusano, the CEO and president of BrainPad Inc.; Masaya Mori, the executive officer at Rakuten Inc., and Ryuichi Nishida of B Dash Ventures Inc.

The moderator Nishida began by wondering about the term big data, and what it means exactly. Kusano noted that in the past, they would just refer to it as data mining. But these days, he figures that it’s data that you can’t process with traditional tools. At his company, BrainPad, they help companies who can’t process such data on their own.

He explains that many companies store unstructured data, which is of low value, but of a huge volume. And for most companies, it’s hard to extract meaning from that. And typically, unless the management can see how important it is, then it’s difficult for them to dedicate a special department for this purpose.

Mori explained the unique situation facing Rakuten these days, where they have a business that spans across many sectors, such as travel, finance, retail – so they have much data to deal with to say the least. He notes that they analyze (process?) 300 gigabyes daily, and their big data department alone has 160 people – a total that he notes is still not high enough. The findings from this data is not just used for things like recommendation, but it’s also used in areas like online ads and other products.

The moderator Nishida asked Mori about how active they are in hiring skilled data hires. Mori explained:

We have many data scientists and we actively hire for that position. We have about 60 right now in various departments. What we are doing now is accumulating and analyzing data, beyond what marketers would conventionally do, using it in the are of machine learning to try to get our algorithm to improve itself.

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B Dash Panel: The next stage in social games

Rick Martin 2013.04.23

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, we had a chance to hear from panel of high profile speakers from the social gaming space. Participating speakers included: Naoki Aoyagi, SVP, global operations, GREE Inc. Kenji Kobayashi, the chief game strategy officer, member of the board, DeNA Co. Ltd. Andrew Sheppard, president, Kabam Game Studios Takeshi Sato, director and general manager, platform business division, Mobcast Hironao Kunimitsu, founder and CEO, Gumi Inc. The following are our preliminary live notes from the session. Much of the talk ended up being surprisinly reflective, but there were some notes where speakers looked ahead to the future. 14:28 – Andrew Sheppard says Kabam has 600 employees, 7 offices, been in business three years. Last year they had the top grossing iOS app, top gorrsing iOS game in 50 countries. They were a top 10 mobile gamng comaoaany, with 11 million users. They have $55M in the bank, so doing well! 14:29 – Andrews says that North Amercian is largely an iOS market, and that Asia and Europe are more and more Android. But what’s exciting is that gaming is…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, we had a chance to hear from panel of high profile speakers from the social gaming space. Participating speakers included:

Naoki Aoyagi, SVP, global operations, GREE Inc.
Kenji Kobayashi, the chief game strategy officer, member of the board, DeNA Co. Ltd.
Andrew Sheppard, president, Kabam Game Studios
Takeshi Sato, director and general manager, platform business division, Mobcast
Hironao Kunimitsu, founder and CEO, Gumi Inc.

The following are our preliminary live notes from the session. Much of the talk ended up being surprisinly reflective, but there were some notes where speakers looked ahead to the future.

14:28 – Andrew Sheppard says Kabam has 600 employees, 7 offices, been in business three years. Last year they had the top grossing iOS app, top gorrsing iOS game in 50 countries. They were a top 10 mobile gamng comaoaany, with 11 million users. They have $55M in the bank, so doing well!

14:29 – Andrews says that North Amercian is largely an iOS market, and that Asia and Europe are more and more Android. But what’s exciting is that gaming is the rare content on mobile that indexes high in terms of reach, engagement, and monetization.

14:31 – Kabam’s game Kings of Camelot was a top 5 grossing worldwide game in 2012, at number 4.

14:32 – Andrew reminds us of their recent announcement of a $50M fund for developers. Apologizes for the reminder with a smile.

14:33 – Mobcast’s Sato: The focus on sports games, now open to foreign partners. From yesterday they opened their development partner site. They also have ‘Mobcast Girls’ for promotion.

14:35 – Both Aoyagi of GREE and Kobayashi of DeNA say they are doing well, but things could be better. Kobayashi sounds slightly more optimistic in tone than Aoyagi.

14:36 – Aoyagi: In terms of sales growth the US shows the best performance, so I’m based there. But sometimes my boss calls for me to help out on Tokyo projects. […] So yes, I’m back here quite a bit. Some people create rumors that I’m here in Japan, but there are not many doing well here besides Gungho. If you look at the top titles from makers like Supercell, they’re in the US. When you think about revenue and profit, the US is taking off finally. I think in Japan there was a peak of funding about two years ago […] but I think right now its kind of declining or shrinking.

14:37 – Kobayashi: Basically I’m supervising on a global level, especially on smartphones. Before it was about execution, but now its more about which fields you compete it.

14:39 – Now speaking about Puzzle & Dragons: Andrew says he’s played a bit, says it has not succeed in US yet. Is a very smart game. Because of the mechanic its great for Asian markets, almost like calligraphy. But Americans are slow and not very smart, so maybe it’s difficult (jokingly).

14:41 – Sato: They have TV commercials and that adds to their users. They did all the basics well, and that’s why they have a hit.

14:42 – Kobayashi: The quality when they started was so high. When they started the commercials it was around mid October, and after that it was a really significant increase, and word of mouth and influences really helped. I think they had the right timing.

14:46 – Kobayashi on what’s next? In different countries, different things work. So you can really make whatever you want. But quality is very important. And if you just try to emulate Puzzle & Dragon’s then you will fail.

14:49 – Aoyagi says that the tablet market is something huge, and tablet first is a phrase we’re hearing. If you’re targeting hardcore gamers, the tablet is something you need to look at, especially in the US market. Sato, as you might expect, says they think sports have potential, sand notes the world cup might result in popular soccer games next year.

14:54 – Andrew says he joined when Kabam created KoC, he was very impressed by their CEO, who he describes as a young person but an ‘old soul’. Right from the beginning he put much trust in him, and that’s why he enjoys his job.

14:56 – Sato mentions that he had very good chemistry with his president as well.

15:03 – Andrew notes they have opened an office in Korea to being their Asia push, and they are very exciting about this.

15:04 – I want to focus on foreign markets, and when we listed I was wondering about where we should head. We have the world cup next year, and our president wants to have a global approach, and maybe we can have some kind of global competition among users, and I think that will be intriguing.

15:05 – Kobayashi: foreign markets are really growing so we want to follow and exceed the trend.

15:06 – Aoyagi: Jokes that they plan to acquire Gumi in the future. Says they want to hit good results abroad, thinks that in the past it has been one hit that really changes the world, and he thinks in the future it will also be a sort of trigger like this.

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New trends in Asian startups

Rick Martin 2013.04.23

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, we had a chance to listen to a general discussion of Asian startup trends. The speakers participating in this chat included Mohan Belani, the CEO of the pan-Asia tech media site e27; Jimmy Rim, the CEO of K Cube Ventures; and moderator Shuji Honjo, the managing director of Honjo International. No better time than now Jimmy started the session off by explaining three areas which he thinks are pretty hot in Korea right now. He cited mobile ads, as well as the notion of capturing a mobile’s front screen sort of like Facebook home. He also pointed towards online to offline trends, as well as R&D companies solving problems like recommendation engines for this like movies or content. Jimmy noted that a lack of exits is something that plagues all of Asia, but noted that in Korea specifically, things are getting much better recently, with companies like TNC being picked up by Google, and Ticket Monster getting acquired by Living Social. This has had a positive effect on the ecosystem as a while, with lots of top…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

On day two of B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, we had a chance to listen to a general discussion of Asian startup trends. The speakers participating in this chat included Mohan Belani, the CEO of the pan-Asia tech media site e27; Jimmy Rim, the CEO of K Cube Ventures; and moderator Shuji Honjo, the managing director of Honjo International.

No better time than now

Jimmy started the session off by explaining three areas which he thinks are pretty hot in Korea right now. He cited mobile ads, as well as the notion of capturing a mobile’s front screen sort of like Facebook home. He also pointed towards online to offline trends, as well as R&D companies solving problems like recommendation engines for this like movies or content.

Jimmy noted that a lack of exits is something that plagues all of Asia, but noted that in Korea specifically, things are getting much better recently, with companies like TNC being picked up by Google, and Ticket Monster getting acquired by Living Social. This has had a positive effect on the ecosystem as a while, with lots of top talent realizing that joining a startup was a viable career option. In turn, many investors realized that investing in such companies made sense. He added:

I believe there has never been a better time to do a startup. Japan and korea are traditionally conservative, but if you’re a good engineer, there’s not much risk. even if you fail, the experience of becoming an is [of great value].

More exits, innovation, and optimism

As for Southeast Asia, Mohan mentioned the recent trend of exits and acquisitions in Singapore, citing specifically SingTel and Singapore Press Holdings which have very busy snatching up promising companies. He also noted an improved maturity of entrepreneurs in the region, ones who are developing real solutions to real problems (such as some who are tackling telemedicine in Indonesia), rather than just a social app du jour.

Mohan also took a moment to highlight the standout success of a company called Picmix, which racked up over 9 million users in just three months. They created a photo app for BlackBerry, filling a “unique gap in an area they knew well.” Now that they’ve succeeded on that platform, they have moved on to others.

While Singapore’s ecosystem was very much one that was pushed and promoted by the government, and with government investment, But now there is far more activity from investors, he explains. For companies outside the country, there are lots of business matching opportunities that would make trips to Singapore worthwhile. Mohan closed with a tip of the hat to Japanese investors who he says are a positive influence in the region:

I think investors, including Japanese investors) have been exploring Singapore and Southeast, and this is validation for many startups there. That confidence and cheerleading is something that Japanese companies and investors have done well. […] They realize they can’t understand SEA by just sitting in Japan.

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Naoki Shibata on cutting-edge app SEO techniques

Rick Martin 2013.04.23

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. On day two at B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, we had a chance to briefly hear Naoki Shibata, the co-founder of app store SEO tool SearchMan. Naoki explained that users typically don’t search for an app by looking for a particular name or a brand, but rather instead they will search for it by function. So to this end, it is very helpful if your app’s name includes a significant keyword included. But you do need to be careful not to make it too long because users will just see an excerpt sometimes. He also noted that for the App Store, you app has a limit of 100 characters, so it’s important that you maximize the space given to you. Similarly, in the app description, you need to be careful with this as well, because it shows up just underneath the app’s screenshots – so this is key real estate. In terms of App Store and Google Play ranking criteria, he noted that both stores look for relations, factoring in keywords, users reviews, the app description, as well as the app score (which includes reviews and…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

On day two at B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka, we had a chance to briefly hear Naoki Shibata, the co-founder of app store SEO tool SearchMan.

Naoki explained that users typically don’t search for an app by looking for a particular name or a brand, but rather instead they will search for it by function. So to this end, it is very helpful if your app’s name includes a significant keyword included. But you do need to be careful not to make it too long because users will just see an excerpt sometimes.

He also noted that for the App Store, you app has a limit of 100 characters, so it’s important that you maximize the space given to you. Similarly, in the app description, you need to be careful with this as well, because it shows up just underneath the app’s screenshots – so this is key real estate.

In terms of App Store and Google Play ranking criteria, he noted that both stores look for relations, factoring in keywords, users reviews, the app description, as well as the app score (which includes reviews and sales).

Naoki also gave a brief video demo of his SearchMan service which aspires to help customers take care of all these issues.

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Yoshiaki Maeda on how Docomo plans to tackle Japan’s smartphone app market

Takeshi Hirano 2013.04.23

See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. You can’t discuss the history of the Japanese mobile business without talking about i-mode. This is the featurephone content platform from NTT Docomo, which many content providers used to achieve significant growth and revenue. Of course in recent years, the market need has shifted to smartphones, especially the iPhone, and not many people have their their eyes on i-mode these days. But many of the ideas developed in i-mode live on. For example, Docomo’s competitor KDDI has had much success with SmartPass, a flat rate app subscription program similar to i-mode in terms of its subscription model. How exactly will Docomo respond to KDDI’s smartphone success so far? At B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka yesterday, Yoshiaki Maeda, the managing director of smart communication services at NTT Docomo, explained a little about the company’s upcoming strategy, revealing a few interesting figures in the process. Docomo’s smartphone content sales generates $180 million a month To date, Docomo has acquired 18 million smartphone users. The figure is expected to reach 40 million by the end of 2014. Their smartphone content sales grew to a…

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

You can’t discuss the history of the Japanese mobile business without talking about i-mode. This is the featurephone content platform from NTT Docomo, which many content providers used to achieve significant growth and revenue.

Of course in recent years, the market need has shifted to smartphones, especially the iPhone, and not many people have their their eyes on i-mode these days. But many of the ideas developed in i-mode live on. For example, Docomo’s competitor KDDI has had much success with SmartPass, a flat rate app subscription program similar to i-mode in terms of its subscription model.

How exactly will Docomo respond to KDDI’s smartphone success so far? At B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka yesterday, Yoshiaki Maeda, the managing director of smart communication services at NTT Docomo, explained a little about the company’s upcoming strategy, revealing a few interesting figures in the process.

Docomo’s smartphone content sales generates $180 million a month

To date, Docomo has acquired 18 million smartphone users. The figure is expected to reach 40 million by the end of 2014. Their smartphone content sales grew to a market worth of $180 million, and that’s continuously on the rise each month.

Conversely, the i-mode content market is shrinking.

20130423-083256 — The growth of Docomo’s smartphone subscribers

20130423-083303 — The growth of revenue from smartphone content sales

On-the-spot purchase needs surpasses that of monthly subscription model

In the era of featurephones, monthly subscription models were very strong but it’s shifted to an ‘on-the-spot’ purchase model as our more subscribers move to smartphone users.

20130423-083310 — Monthly subscription sales vs. on-the-spot purchase sales
in the last three years

For us, by bringing the subscription user base from the featurephone market (i-mode) to the smartphone content market, we expect monthly revenue to increase to $300 million.

Partnering with new content providers

Some content providers brought conventional (featurephone optimized) content to the smartphone app marketplace, and that will never attract our subscribers.

We value our providers though, but we further expect to get new providers involved to cultivate the market. We also have our Docomo Innovation Ventures as a touch point for new companies or startups. We’ve exploring ways to work with brand new people.

When will Docomo start ‘Sugotoku’, its monthly flat-rate subscription program for smartphone apps?

We’re preparing for it to be launched very soon. It would be similar to our competitor KDDI’s strategy, but we’re still in talks with partner content providers (and/or app developers). We aspire to make it comfortable enough so that our customers will be happy to use it.

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B Dash Camp panel: Trends in the Japanese online ad business

Takeshi Hirano 2013.04.22

See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. Along with the evolution of web services, online advertising platforms have drastically evolved. In the past, we used to place simple banner ads on our websites, and subsequently search advertising emerged. Now we’ve adopted impression-based ads using ad tools like DSP (demand-side platform). But the further ad solutions evolve, the more issues we face. Here’s a quick rundown on the panel discussing issues facing the online advertising space in Japan. The panelists for the session include: Osamu Aranami, Corporate Office, Head of Marketing Solutions Company, Yahoo Japan Kenichi Sugawara, CMO, ScaleOut Koki Sato, President and CEO, Septeni Holdings Moderator: Toru Kawarazuka, Senior Manager, Sales Management Dept., Sony Bank Does social media have much of an impact on the conventional ad business? Aranami: I can’t disclose our figures because we’re heading towards the announcement of our financial statements in the week ahead. In terms of browsing devices, it’s changing. The share of smartphone and tablets is on the rise. Sato: Social media allows users to create a sort of user pool as well as owning their official website. The engagement helps acquire…

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

Along with the evolution of web services, online advertising platforms have drastically evolved. In the past, we used to place simple banner ads on our websites, and subsequently search advertising emerged. Now we’ve adopted impression-based ads using ad tools like DSP (demand-side platform).

But the further ad solutions evolve, the more issues we face. Here’s a quick rundown on the panel discussing issues facing the online advertising space in Japan. The panelists for the session include:

Osamu Aranami, Corporate Office, Head of Marketing Solutions Company, Yahoo Japan
Kenichi Sugawara, CMO, ScaleOut
Koki Sato, President and CEO, Septeni Holdings
Moderator: Toru Kawarazuka, Senior Manager, Sales Management Dept., Sony Bank

Does social media have much of an impact on the conventional ad business?

Aranami: I can’t disclose our figures because we’re heading towards the announcement of our financial statements in the week ahead. In terms of browsing devices, it’s changing. The share of smartphone and tablets is on the rise.

Sato: Social media allows users to create a sort of user pool as well as owning their official website. The engagement helps acquire high-profile users, and may work well for global business expansions. But it’s still in the stage of trial and error.

Using personal profiles for advertising

Sugawara: DSPs allow you a specific ad space on an impression-basis. In terms of placing ads using this platform, you can specify a target audience segment or ad spaces. The audience segments requires personal profiles. For example, when you visit a motor comparison site (overseas), they will use your profile and propose target vehicles for you.

Aranami: Yahoo Japan has users’ purchase histories on our shopping site and auction site. We’re considering to use that data for our ad delivery. But at the same time, we have to be careful on how we should handle such data.

20130422-185321 — Septeni Holdings CEO Koki Sato speaking on the panel

What’s ahead for rich media ads?

Aranami: To help with promotional activities for the Olympic bid in Tokyo, we’ve created an ad where athletes move when you mouse over them. It generated a lot of buzz, but we’re still preparing for movie ads.

Sato: At my company, the demands of rich media ads account for a lesser share of our business, especially compared to English-speaking countries. There are two key points here: How much can premium (rich media) ads bring value compared to conventional TV ads? And how many users are shifting from desktop browsing to smartphone devices.

Sugawara: There are rights management issues as well. Some TV ads cannot be reproduced for online advertising because of rights issues.

Aranami: Yahoo Japan is working on finding out how we can create a safe and secure ad networks for our clients, as well as deploy further extensive developments on YDN, our Yahoo Display-ad Network. We can take minor requests from our clients, such as which domain they would like to place ads on. We proudly think ourselves as Japan’s largest DSP operator.

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Kakao CEO Sirgoo Lee: Creating a mobile social platform

Rick Martin 2013.04.22

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. At B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka today, Kakao CEO Sirgoo Lee, explained a little about the rise of the KakaoTalk mobile chat application in Korea and around Asia. Sirgoo was joined on stage by Gen Miyazawa, the head of search at Yahoo Japan, Kakao’s partner in Japan. To date the KakaoTalk app has seen over 86 million downloads, including 10 million here in Japan. Sirgoo explained that Kakao has over 29 million daily unique views, and more than 4.8 billion messages are exchanged each day. Perhaps more important than those metrics are the revenue figures that Sigoo mentioned. He says that in 2012 the company hit $42 million in total revenue, turning a profit of $6.5 million. Most of that revenue comes from their platform business, specifically games and social commerce, as well as ads. But he noted that this is just the beginning and that this social layer can stimulate growth in spaces like e-commerce, for example, showing friends what you want to buy. Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa was sitting in the front row (having spoken in a session earlier in the day) and…

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

At B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka today, Kakao CEO Sirgoo Lee, explained a little about the rise of the KakaoTalk mobile chat application in Korea and around Asia. Sirgoo was joined on stage by Gen Miyazawa, the head of search at Yahoo Japan, Kakao’s partner in Japan.

To date the KakaoTalk app has seen over 86 million downloads, including 10 million here in Japan. Sirgoo explained that Kakao has over 29 million daily unique views, and more than 4.8 billion messages are exchanged each day.

Perhaps more important than those metrics are the revenue figures that Sigoo mentioned. He says that in 2012 the company hit $42 million in total revenue, turning a profit of $6.5 million. Most of that revenue comes from their platform business, specifically games and social commerce, as well as ads.

But he noted that this is just the beginning and that this social layer can stimulate growth in spaces like e-commerce, for example, showing friends what you want to buy.

Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa was sitting in the front row (having spoken in a session earlier in the day) and Sirgoo acknowledged that they have a few things that Kakao could take away from watching how Line operates:

We have to learn more from Morikawa-san in terms of global business. We are very local in that 70% of our users are in Korea. It’s difficult to expand beyond Korea. We at Kakao are taking a different approach. […] We’re partnering with Yahoo Japan here, and we’d like to partner with local partners in other regions who know those regions.

This is an interesting contrast with Line, who expands in a different manner, observing where they do well and then flying in to do business there.

The paths of these two mobile chat giants have largely mirrored each other to date, with each one dominating their respective local markets. But with their somewhat differing philosophies on expansion, it will be interesting to see which strategy works best.

news

B Dash Camp panel: Social gaming principles can also be applied to e-learning

B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013

Takeshi Hirano 2013.04.22

See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. The e-learning industry is changing drastically with new technologies like cloud technology or social media. One of notable startups in this space is Schoo, which provides real-time online lecture services on many topics. We had a chance to check out a panel on online e-learning services at B Dash Camp 2013 today in Fukuoka. In the fist, Dylan Arena, the chief learning scientist of the e-learning solution provider Kidaptive, introduced four keywords to describe the latest trends in the US e-learning market. Access: Giving access to online lecture services anywhere at anytime. Attention: Giving teachers an efficient way to pay an attention to what their students are doing in their classrooms. Assessment: An advanced e-learning system gives teachers a way to assess their students far better than before. Personalization: Using the three points stated above, explore a way to personalize lecture content to individual students. For the people who have less learning opportunities for economic reasons, Kidaptive’s solution allows teachers reach students by providing a combination of an online e-learning environment as well as private tuition opportunities. Subsequently teachers can check…

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

The e-learning industry is changing drastically with new technologies like cloud technology or social media. One of notable startups in this space is Schoo, which provides real-time online lecture services on many topics.

We had a chance to check out a panel on online e-learning services at B Dash Camp 2013 today in Fukuoka. In the fist, Dylan Arena, the chief learning scientist of the e-learning solution provider Kidaptive, introduced four keywords to describe the latest trends in the US e-learning market.

Access: Giving access to online lecture services anywhere at anytime.
Attention: Giving teachers an efficient way to pay an attention to what their students are doing in their classrooms.
Assessment: An advanced e-learning system gives teachers a way to assess their students far better than before.
Personalization: Using the three points stated above, explore a way to personalize lecture content to individual students.

For the people who have less learning opportunities for economic reasons, Kidaptive’s solution allows teachers reach students by providing a combination of an online e-learning environment as well as private tuition opportunities. Subsequently teachers can check up on how students are doing in a more systematic manner.

20130422-160324 — From the left: Drecom’s Yuki Naito and Quipper’s Akifumi Yokoi

Interestingly, social gaming players are showing an interest in the e-learning area. On this panel, Drecom‘s CEO Yuki Naito and Quipper‘s Akifumi Yokoi discussed what’s ahead for the intersection of gaming and education services. Naito explained a bit about their e-learning platform, adding:

The know-how for improving user retention rate in the social gaming areas can also work in managing e-learning services.

While it’s doubtful that social gaming developers will sidetrack their businesses into this space, it will interesting to see them occasionally deploying their ideas to different business spaces such as this one.

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