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Japanese recipe sharing site Cookpad makes two key international acquisitions

Cookpad

Masaru Ikeda 2013.12.21

Japanese recipe sharing site Cookpad announced today that it has acquired two companies doing similar business: US-based Allthecooks and Spain-based Mis Recetas. Cookpad has no intention to integrate its services with these two, but plans to share knowledge about providing better user experiences and explore possible business synergies. Mis Recetas is a user-generated content platform for sharing recipes. It has 400 million users with about 6 million monthly visitors across Mexico, Argentina, Spain and other countries. Their iOS app is ranked tops in food and drink iOS category in 17 Spanish-speaking countries. It also provides an Android version. Allthecooks is a US-based recipe site that launched back in December of 2012, and their smartphone app has over 1 million users and is ranked number one in the recipe app category on Google Play. According to Japanese tech news sites CNet Japan and IT Media, Cookpad reportedly took over the Spanish company for 1.12 billion yen ($10.7 million), and the US company for a price ranging from $5 million to $10 million.

Japanese recipe sharing site Cookpad announced today that it has acquired two companies doing similar business: US-based Allthecooks and Spain-based Mis Recetas. Cookpad has no intention to integrate its services with these two, but plans to share knowledge about providing better user experiences and explore possible business synergies.

Mis Recetas is a user-generated content platform for sharing recipes. It has 400 million users with about 6 million monthly visitors across Mexico, Argentina, Spain and other countries. Their iOS app is ranked tops in food and drink iOS category in 17 Spanish-speaking countries. It also provides an Android version.

Allthecooks is a US-based recipe site that launched back in December of 2012, and their smartphone app has over 1 million users and is ranked number one in the recipe app category on Google Play.

According to Japanese tech news sites CNet Japan and IT Media, Cookpad reportedly took over the Spanish company for 1.12 billion yen ($10.7 million), and the US company for a price ranging from $5 million to $10 million.

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Postach.io: Could this be the perfect blog platform for Japan?

Rick Martin 2013.12.19

There are so many ways for people to start a blog these days. The recent trend of ‘static’ blog services like Scriptogr.am and Ghost are refreshing, because for a personal or casual blog, there really shouldn’t be any reason that you must have your own server running a database [1]. Dropbox lets is publish to the web, and a solution like Calepin (for example) can take advantage of that, serving your blog’s files from there. The idea behind Postach.io is similar. The brainchild of Vancouver-based Input Logic, it uses Evernote to post content to your blog, letting users choose between a number of wonderful design templates as well. The startup is off to a good start, having joined Evernote’s accelerator class having won the company’s Devcup this year. To date, I’m told there are 21,000 people blogging with Postachio so far. The big advantage for a service like this is that it enlists users by finding them on a platform they already use. They already live in Evernote, and can easily publish to Postachio just by adding a note with the tag ‘published’ to a specified Evernote notebook. Big in Japan About 20% of Evernote’s users (and about 30% of…

There are so many ways for people to start a blog these days. The recent trend of ‘static’ blog services like Scriptogr.am and Ghost are refreshing, because for a personal or casual blog, there really shouldn’t be any reason that you must have your own server running a database [1]. Dropbox lets is publish to the web, and a solution like Calepin (for example) can take advantage of that, serving your blog’s files from there.

The idea behind Postach.io is similar. The brainchild of Vancouver-based Input Logic, it uses Evernote to post content to your blog, letting users choose between a number of wonderful design templates as well. The startup is off to a good start, having joined Evernote’s accelerator class having won the company’s Devcup this year. To date, I’m told there are 21,000 people blogging with Postachio so far.

The big advantage for a service like this is that it enlists users by finding them on a platform they already use. They already live in Evernote, and can easily publish to Postachio just by adding a note with the tag ‘published’ to a specified Evernote notebook.

apex — One of Postachio’s many themes, Apex

Big in Japan

About 20% of Evernote’s users (and about 30% of its revenue) come from Japan. Docomo, of course, was an early investor in Evernote [2], and has promoted Evernote Premium to its users. So the ties to Japan are already in place for Postachio to make this sort of overseas jump. So naturally, I was curious to see if the Postachio had any plans to push their blogging service in the country. Co-founder and designer Shawn Adrian explained a little their plans for the next year [3]:

We plan to internationalize, and a Japanese version is in the works. […] We’re going really dig in and improve our themes and the community around them. We’re also launching new social features to help users build their audience, and tools for pro bloggers and companies.

I understand the team has already met some representatives from Docomo Ventures in Silicon Valley, and I expect that whenever a localized version is ready, that it would be very well received here.

The team is also thinking to integrate other platforms too, letting people publish from just about anywhere. For me, I like the possibilities of publishing a Markdown note (Postachio does support Markdown) via Evernote’s publish-over-email function, sending from the mobile Drafts app on iOS.

Evernote's APAC GM Troy Malone users Postachio — Evernote’s APAC GM Troy Malone users Postachio

Static blogs are very trendy these days, but the degree of difficulty for many solutions like Jekyll or Pelican, or even the aforementioned Scriptogram, can be difficult for an average user to wrap their head around. Postachio, for someone who already understands Evernote, is very easy and accessible [4].

I got in touch with some Evernote reps here in Asia just to see how much this Postachio has caught on within the company. While I didn’t get any specific numbers I’m told that APAC general manager Troy Malone is a huge fan, running his own blog on Postachio. Even the Evernote South East Asia blog runs Postachio.

My colleagues here at The Bridge frequently share notes published to the web with Evernote. This interests me, since I myself tend to use Dropbox for that, and I wonder how many other Japanese users also prefer Evernote for web publishing. Perhaps I’m reading too much into a very small difference, but I think this sort of preference could bode well for Postachio.

To learn more about Postachio, check out their video demo below.

Or at least, no reason to pay for a server. ↩
Or more specifically, Docomo Capital. ↩
The other co-founder (and coder) is Gavin Vickery, and the third member is programmer Brandon Brown. ↩
As for my own preference, I’m planning to switch over my personal site to Pelican from Drupal pretty soon. I’d happily use something like Postachio, but because I’m studying Python, I’m going to opt for Pelican. I should also take this opportunity to express how much I really despise WordPress. It started out well, but when the WYSIWYG started randomly injected span and div tags into my code, I decided I had had enough. We still use WordPress on this blog, but for me, it’s not without frequent curse words. ↩

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Lancers CEO Yosuke Akiyoshi on obstacles facing crowdsourcing in Japan

Takeshi Hirano 2013.12.19

This is part of our coverage of Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013 See the original article in Japanese We conducted many interviews about consumer-to-consumer (C2C) businesses at the recent Infinity Ventures Summit. Today we have a conversation from that event that we had with Yosuke Akiyoshi, the CEO of Lancers, a leading startup in Japan’s crowdsourcing space. The Bridge: Here I’ve been interviewing many people from the C2C businesses. One of the hot topics among those people lately is Crowdworks’ recent fund raising. Akiyoshi: Looking back on the five years since we launched our crowdsourcing business, the space has really changed a lot. We target people with basic knowledge of the internet, and among those people, words such as ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘Lancers’ became better known. It took four years for the total number of users (workers who receive orders) to reach 100,000. The number rapidly grew to 200,000 this October, and 220,000 last month. It could surpass 300,000 early next year. But some users still feel they don’t fully understand the system. So, we need to better educate them. In that sense, the 1.1 billion yen (raised by Crowdworks) means a lot in developing the industry. The Bridge: You announced…

This is part of our coverage of Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013

See the original article in Japanese

We conducted many interviews about consumer-to-consumer (C2C) businesses at the recent Infinity Ventures Summit. Today we have a conversation from that event that we had with Yosuke Akiyoshi, the CEO of Lancers, a leading startup in Japan’s crowdsourcing space.

The Bridge: Here I’ve been interviewing many people from the C2C businesses. One of the hot topics among those people lately is Crowdworks’ recent fund raising.

Akiyoshi: Looking back on the five years since we launched our crowdsourcing business, the space has really changed a lot. We target people with basic knowledge of the internet, and among those people, words such as ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘Lancers’ became better known. It took four years for the total number of users (workers who receive orders) to reach 100,000. The number rapidly grew to 200,000 this October, and 220,000 last month. It could surpass 300,000 early next year. But some users still feel they don’t fully understand the system. So, we need to better educate them. In that sense, the 1.1 billion yen (raised by Crowdworks) means a lot in developing the industry.

The Bridge: You announced today that Lancers will have partnership with GMO Epsilon Inc.

Akiyoshi: GMO Epsilon offers payment services, and lots of work opportunities will arise due to the implementation of the service. Many of such work orders will be placed on Lancers.

The Bridge: The fast-growing aspects of crowdsourcing tend to get a lot of attention. But many services struggle to build a solid culture for C2C and B2C businesses. What kind of issues do you face?

Akiyoshi: Users are increasing, and I don’t see any problem with that. The problem lies on the side of the companies. Currently, there are a core group of companies who are accustomed to the system. But the goal is for any company to use the system. And there are issues that need to be overcome.

The Bridge: I see.

Akiyoshi: First, direction. When a company places an order, it needs to divide the work. But many companies get stuck at this point.

The Bridge: For example, for a web-design work order, work needs to be divided into coding, writing, and programming, with an order made for each. We plan to solve this issue by holding seminars for companies and dividing up the process control of the system. Also, product managers who can understand and handle the process are needed. We aim to implement more training to increase the amount of such product mangers. We need to enlighten companies.

The Bridge: When you enlighten companies, so to speak, which advantages of Lancers do you emphasize?

Akiyoshi: We tell them the overall advantages in speed, cost and resources.

The Bridge: What about users who receive orders? How do you educate them? I heard you often visit local areas.

Akiyoshi: I have already visited about 15 regions. I realized it is important to have face-to-face communication and to solve such issues. … There are few jobs in local regions. Businesses in Tokyo take jobs from the local. There are few useful communities where you can find opportunities, unlike Tokyo.

The Bridge: How long do you think it will take for crowdsourcing to be accepted as a new kind of work style?

Akiyoshi: It depends on how we measure the success, although we have set a metric. Right now, there are about 200 workers who can make a living just from their Lancers work. We’d like to increase that figure to 10,000 by 2017. But it will take much longer to completely change people’s way of working.

The Bridge: It will certainly take a while. So what number or metric do you currently care about the most?

Akiyoshi: Focusing on improving the users’ experiences, we pay attention to the repeat customer rate. Of course we look at the number of the work orders and the member total at the same time.

The Bridge: Thank you for your time.

I got the impression that more workers understand the concept of crowdsourcing these days. But there are still lots of obstacles that get in the way of companies using crowdsourcing. It’s not only about speed and cost, but quality needs to be considered. And it requires more understanding from companies about how to use the system and handle the process control. That knowledge is not open enough, and it becomes an obstacle.

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Tokyo Office Tour: Zendesk gets set to serve Japan from its new space

Masaru Ikeda 2013.12.17

Our readers may recall that online customer support platform provider Zendesk established a presence in Japan back in March. The company was initially launched back in 2007 in Copenhagen, but relocated its headquarters to San Francisco to develop more global business opportunities. They have set up a branch here in Tokyo, and we were invited to their recent launching party, hosting many of their customers from the local startup community. This is the fifth regional branch for them, following London, Melbourne, Copenhagen, and Dublin. CEO Mikkel Svane was in attendance, on his way back from the Infinity Venture Summit in Kyoto. He and his country manager, Kan Kunimura, broke open a ceremonial Japanese sake barrel together to serve drinks to guests. They also hired the kind of Japanese food stall often seen at shrine festivals, where anyone can order their favorite foods out of fried noodles, beef rice balls, and the more. I was curious to see that they still have only three people at this branch despite the large office, spanning over 100 square meters. But their marketing manager Shoko Yanagisawa told me they will be hiring more people to serve better their Japanese clients, so we can expect…

zendesk-breakingbarrel — Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane (Left) and Kan Kunimura broke open a Japanese sake barrel.

Our readers may recall that online customer support platform provider Zendesk established a presence in Japan back in March. The company was initially launched back in 2007 in Copenhagen, but relocated its headquarters to San Francisco to develop more global business opportunities. They have set up a branch here in Tokyo, and we were invited to their recent launching party, hosting many of their customers from the local startup community. This is the fifth regional branch for them, following London, Melbourne, Copenhagen, and Dublin.

CEO Mikkel Svane was in attendance, on his way back from the Infinity Venture Summit in Kyoto. He and his country manager, Kan Kunimura, broke open a ceremonial Japanese sake barrel together to serve drinks to guests. They also hired the kind of Japanese food stall often seen at shrine festivals, where anyone can order their favorite foods out of fried noodles, beef rice balls, and the more.

I was curious to see that they still have only three people at this branch despite the large office, spanning over 100 square meters. But their marketing manager Shoko Yanagisawa told me they will be hiring more people to serve better their Japanese clients, so we can expect it to fill up in the not-too-distant future. For the time being, staffers at their Melbourne branch will be assisting with Japanese clients since they’re in close time zone.

Zendesk’s Tokyo office is located alongside a busy street filled with many Japanese bars and diners. If you visit them in evening, it will be easy to find a place in their neighborhood to chat over drinks.

zendesk-entrance — From the office entrance. Some guests have already started networking.

zendesk-flowers-and-bags — Flowers and foldable bags

zendesk-kickass — Who has two thumbs and apparently likes to kick ass? This guy!

zendesk-foodstall2 — Mikkel orders from a food stall.

zendesk-teammember — One of their team members celebrated his birthday as well

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With 18M global downloads, Noom CEO looks to the future of fitness tech

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.12.17

We’ve covered the New York startup Noom several times in the past. Noom is a popular diet/fitness app with over 18 million downloads globally. Back in August, the team launched its Japanese version with its Android app ‘Noom Diet Coach’. The app was updated today with a new group feature that had been available to US users since May. Based on a user’s target weight, age, sex, and location, the app automatically adds users to their groups. Because of their similar characteristics and goals, these groups can be a big motivator to Noom users. On the release of this new feature app we asked Noom CEO, Saeju Jeong, a little about team building, the challenge of launching and marketing in the Japanese market, and the future of the healthcare sector. The Bridge: Tell us a little about your background and how you ended up starting your own business. Jeong: I was raised in the country side in South Korea, and went to Seoul to study electronic engineering at HongIk University. I started my first media business, a record label at age 19, and it quickly took over the Korean music market. I moved to New York in 2005 after dropping…

We’ve covered the New York startup Noom several times in the past. Noom is a popular diet/fitness app with over 18 million downloads globally. Back in August, the team launched its Japanese version with its Android app ‘Noom Diet Coach’. The app was updated today with a new group feature that had been available to US users since May. Based on a user’s target weight, age, sex, and location, the app automatically adds users to their groups. Because of their similar characteristics and goals, these groups can be a big motivator to Noom users.

On the release of this new feature app we asked Noom CEO, Saeju Jeong, a little about team building, the challenge of launching and marketing in the Japanese market, and the future of the healthcare sector.

The Bridge: Tell us a little about your background and how you ended up starting your own business.

Jeong: I was raised in the country side in South Korea, and went to Seoul to study electronic engineering at HongIk University. I started my first media business, a record label at age 19, and it quickly took over the Korean music market. I moved to New York in 2005 after dropping out of the college so I could achieve a little more. I built my connections and a network from scratch, and ended up working as an executive producer for the broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie, hiring some of the top talent in the industry. I met my cofounder, Artem Petakov, in 2006. We cofounded WorkSmart Labs (our former company name) in 2007.

The Bridge: Was founding a company in Korea an option for you?

Jeong: No. From the start of the company, my idea was that in Korea we would fail to get the sort of top talent needed to build a truly strong global company. If I want to build a global company, its going be hard to hire the such talent in Shanghai, Korea, etc. NY was simply the best location to hire the best talent, and that would accelerate the company’s growth. I came to NY with no network, but I knew I would find something once I came here. You don’t really know until you take the risk and do it. But I see that sort of risk as an opportunity.

The Bridge: What qualities or skillsets would be ideal for entrepreneurs?

Jeong: It’s those who are always curious about new things, those who like solving problems. If you believe you can fix the problem, that represents tremendous energy to overcome future struggles and obstacles. There is no manual to fix a problem. So you just have to figure it out. Use the best knowledge you have and then move on.

The right stuff

The Bridge: What do you look for when you’re hiring for Noom?

Jeong: (cites three things)

The skillset that meets the job description (engineering, marketing, business… any position) – this is basic.
Communication skills – teamwork cannot be done without communication.
Integrity

The Bridge: What word would be the most appropriate to explain the current Noom team?

Jeong: I would say that they’re smart, open-minded, and like a family.

The Bridge: How do you go about finding talent?

Jeong: All kind of channels – we do everything to get the top talent. It’s just like dating – if you want to date someone, you try every single way to attract that person. We are open to every opportunity that will let us hire the best talent. Our bar is very high. The interview process is very long and tough, and it’s not easy to get into.

The Bridge: Who are Noom users?

Jeong: Most users are female in their 20s and 30s, and even their 40s. More than 40% of our users stay with Noom even after 2 years. Some users want to lose weight for a special occasion, others just to look better and gain confidence. Many women after having a baby, perhaps they gained weight and want to lose it.

The Bridge: What do you care most about your product?

Jeong: Results. We want to deliver a product that enables users to get good results through better habits and better lifestyles. This drives how we improve the service, through the UI, etc.

The Bridge: Why should users choose Noom over the many competitors out there?

Jeong: We are different from all those healthcare products. Noom provides intelligent nutrition/exercise coaching plus motivational support, 24/7, all available in your pocket! So it’s sustainable in the long term. We also know that logging is important, but we also know that it is hard to keep logging. So we analyze the data of users, and provide active coaching. What we are promising is very difficult. We want to build an AI and its not easy at all. We learn everyday how users are behaving and make changes to our product.

Local understanding

The Bridge: Do you localize features and the app itself to suit local markets?

Jeong: Features and designs are universally the same because our strength is our background in technology and design. We are truly proud of our talented engineers’ and designers’ work on the product so far. But we do have localized task content, the food database, etc, to serve Japanese users.

The Bridge: What do you think you need to be the most careful of when marketing to the Japanese market?

Jeong: We are a startup so we move fast, and make judgements quickly too. So we will need to stay patient, not judging the market too fast. Setting an appropriate timeline will be very important. Also, taking care of the voices of locals will be important too. The message and language towards users in the market has to be 100% local. I respect the lifestyle of Japanese people. What we are good at is providing the right technology, but we don’t want to be just a “Made in the USA technology company,” no. There is a saying that “the customer is the king” in Korea, and this applies to Japanese users too. We are from New York, but if one user is not happy about our service, we listen. That’s how we have developed our product and how we can improve the product as well.

The Bridge: How do you promote Noom?

Jeong: We always emphasize that we don’t over-market like many other weight loss service providers. In US, we have incurred no user acquisition cost, ever. We focus on service quality and interact a lot with users. We listen carefully to what they need. But we have global partners such as Curves, the world’s biggest fitness gym chain, Amore Pacific, a famous Korean cosmetic brand, as well as well institutions like the NIH (National Institution of Health) and the United Nations. Collaborating with those global partners will definitely help make our brand trusted by users, so we’d like to continue working with partners that have the same goal of helping people live healthier through diet and exercise.

The Bridge: Do you have a different approach to different markets?

Jeong: We are savvy about how people’s needs differ by country. Why people want to lose weight is different in the US, Korea, Japan, etc. So we will differentiate the messaging accordingly.

The Bridge: How do you see the mobile wellness/fitness sector in the future?

Jeong: I think wearable devices are disrupting the hardware industry. Laptop features have improved dramatically, with faster CPUs. Smart phones improve every six months. […] We started seeing wearable devices recently, not many yet, but these new devices are going to be disruptive – cheaper, durable, lighter, faster. As a software maker, we see it as an opportunity. Software makers create more fun, interesting services, and create ecosystems. There are more than 100 companies who make wearable devices like Fitbit already! We can provide a better software experience, lighter, cheaper, and faster. People will be used to seeing more of this kind of things, and the entire market will grow faster than ever.

The Bridge: Is there any interesting new service or product you think is particularly interesting?

Jeong: A food scanner, which will be on the market in two years. It scans food or drink and tells you the calories. Galaxy gear and wearable device will also be disruptive.

The Bridge: Do you expect partnerships with local companies?

Jeong: I think there are many ways to work with Japanese organizations. Medical organizations can be one. More broadly, we see potential partners in those who are focused on helping people live healthier with diet and exercise. Naturally this opens us up to a wide range of partners, so we’re exploring where’s best to begin.

The Bridge: Where will Noom be in three years?

Jeong: I think Noom will do more in the healthcare eco-system, eventually. The opportunity to improve health just by improving diet and exercise is extraordinary. Those two things alone can powerfully improve many aspects of health. Diabetes prevention, your heart, overall energy levels, not to mention the emotional benefits that come from improving physical health. The impact can be tremendous.

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Tokyo Office Tour: Find your dream job with friends on Wantedly

Rick Martin 2013.12.16

We recently featured Tokyo-based startup Wantedly as one of the nominees in last week’s CNet Japan Startup Awards. The company has taken an innovative approach to helping people in their job search, providing a platform that leverages your social graph to ensure you find a better fitting job. The ideas is, that by being introduced to jobs by friends and mutual friends, you have a higher chance if finding a job that you’ll love. So far the platform has over 60,000 users and 1800 clients, which is not bad considering that they are just a year and a half old. Their team is growing, and they like to point out that they have brought on new members using the Wantedly platform. In addition to their multi-talented CEO, Akiko Naka, some of folks that I spoke to seem to have ridiculously impressive pedigrees, many coming from places like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Goldman Sachs [1]. Wantedly just recently moved into a new office on Meguro, and they were nice enough to allow me to bring my camera by and take some pictures. The office sits just adjacent to a beautiful park, giving the staff a pretty inspiring view, especially at this…

We recently featured Tokyo-based startup Wantedly as one of the nominees in last week’s CNet Japan Startup Awards. The company has taken an innovative approach to helping people in their job search, providing a platform that leverages your social graph to ensure you find a better fitting job. The ideas is, that by being introduced to jobs by friends and mutual friends, you have a higher chance if finding a job that you’ll love.

So far the platform has over 60,000 users and 1800 clients, which is not bad considering that they are just a year and a half old. Their team is growing, and they like to point out that they have brought on new members using the Wantedly platform. In addition to their multi-talented CEO, Akiko Naka, some of folks that I spoke to seem to have ridiculously impressive pedigrees, many coming from places like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Goldman Sachs [1].

Wantedly just recently moved into a new office on Meguro, and they were nice enough to allow me to bring my camera by and take some pictures. The office sits just adjacent to a beautiful park, giving the staff a pretty inspiring view, especially at this time of year with all the fall foliage still hanging around.

It will be interesting to see what kind of ideas they hatch from this new space. Given that there’s lots of English on their front page right now, I think we can expect Wantedly to make an overseas push in 2014 (or a push to neighboring Asian markets), although for the time being they aren’t saying much on that point. The team has more than a few fluent English speakers, so I think they’ll be far better prepared to go global than most other Japanese startups.

You can check out some of the photos below for a better idea of the layout of their new space, as well as a short video intro from the CEO [2].

wantedly-01 — Wantedly office entrance: Ring the bell to say hi

wantedly-02 — I’ve seen this dog somewhere before…

Engineer's super-keyboard of the future — Engineer’s super-keyboard of the future

Akiko herself is ex-Facebook. But overall she’s a pretty remarkable talent, who in addition to being a programmer, has also dabbled with making her own manga. As we talked in her office, one of her paintings was propped against the sofa. ↩
It was really cool of her to give this video a try in English. Not many Japanese startups have dared to do that so far in our series. ↩

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Cooliris courts photo-crazed Japan with new localization

Rick Martin 2013.12.13

Occasionally the folks from Palo Alto-based Cooliris swing through Tokyo as part of efforts to promote their photo sharing service in Asia. Our readers may recall that we spoke with them back in March, when they were making good progress in China with an early partnerships with social service Renren. So I was curious to see how Cooliris has progressed since then, both in China and Japan, and in surrounding Asian regions. CEO Soujanya Bhumkar tells me that China has seen particularly solid growth, with a 30% increase in downloads in the last quarter making the Middle Kingdom their number two install base after the US. They’ve made significant localization efforts in China, now with Sina Weibo on board as a connected service. Users can browse Weibo photos using the slick Cooliris interface, diving deep to explore pictures from various users, as well as those from people they follow or are followed by. Tencent Weibo and Baidu Yun are now also supported Cooliris services, having been added over the past year. Interestingly, India has been a new growth market for them thanks to increased smartphone adoption there, now suddenly a top ten country for Cooliris. Japan, which previously was Cooliris’s…

Occasionally the folks from Palo Alto-based Cooliris swing through Tokyo as part of efforts to promote their photo sharing service in Asia. Our readers may recall that we spoke with them back in March, when they were making good progress in China with an early partnerships with social service Renren. So I was curious to see how Cooliris has progressed since then, both in China and Japan, and in surrounding Asian regions.

CEO Soujanya Bhumkar tells me that China has seen particularly solid growth, with a 30% increase in downloads in the last quarter making the Middle Kingdom their number two install base after the US. They’ve made significant localization efforts in China, now with Sina Weibo on board as a connected service. Users can browse Weibo photos using the slick Cooliris interface, diving deep to explore pictures from various users, as well as those from people they follow or are followed by. Tencent Weibo and Baidu Yun are now also supported Cooliris services, having been added over the past year.

iPad_screenmocks4-japanese — Japanese interface

Interestingly, India has been a new growth market for them thanks to increased smartphone adoption there, now suddenly a top ten country for Cooliris.

Japan, which previously was Cooliris’s second biggest market, still remains one of their top five markets. But with the latest update of the Cooliris iOS app, Japanese localization has been added. I understand that the company isn’t going to be making significant marketing efforts, but the localization at least makes it more accessible here. They’ll continue to try to serve Japanese users in later versions.

Considering that Cooliris now supports integration with so many social services, the missing puzzle piece for the company here in Japan is obviously Line. The team couldn’t tell me too much on this point, but obviously users here would definitely like to see such an integration. So Line users should keep their fingers crossed, and stay tuned [1].

The Cooliris app has a few other significant changes recently, as Soujanya and his VP of business development Sebastian Blum (he’s the guy in the video above) inform me that the app’s group function is now the number one driver of user acquisition and user retention. Groups could be as small as just two people sharing photos privately, or it could be many more. Groups can be based around certain activities like weddings, vacations, with discussion happening on Cooliris even before that event takes place.

As I was speaking with Soujanya, I happened to have Yammer open on my Mac, as that’s one of the collaborative tools that we use here at The Bridge. He pointed out to me that while there are many corporate collaborative tools like this, there are few collaborate options for consumers. People’s photo experience is typically fragmented across multiple service and multiple friends, and Cooliris gives people a chance to bring them together in one place.

In total they have seen over 3 billion photos brought into the Cooliris app, and over 1 billion photo engagements [2]. And for those who share photos in many different online places, it will continue to be a useful service. Whether it can pick up some more steam in photo-crazy Japan remains to be seen, but this new localization is an encouraging first step.

I confess, I used Cooliris for a while this year, but eventually drifted away from it. My mobile photo use is primarily restricted to Notabli, a family-focused photo app. I use Flickr as storage for pictures taken with my DSLR, but the majority of them are private. But I can see the potential of Cooliris for people more social than myself. ↩
I understand that an engagement is when you tap on a photo and view it in higher resolution. ↩

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Salaryman turned online star: This Japanese YouTuber has 2.3M subscribers

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.12.13

Youtube recently unveiled its Youtube Rewind 2013, a look back at some of the most viewed videos and YouTubers on the site. In Japan, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu nabbed a bunch of top spots (first, third and fourth place) among all music videos. Looking at the top ten Youtube channels overall in Japan, we can see huge entertainment entities like the agency Avex and idol supergroup AKB48. But surprisingly the fifth spot is occupied by the only individual performer to make the list, Hikakin TV. He is a 24-year-old human beatbox performer who has been active on YouTube since 2006. His channel now has over 2.3 million subscribers with a whopping 400 million total views. Although he initially began performing just his human beatbox routine and techniques (which you can check out in the video below), Hikakin now broadcasts a variety of short performances on four different channels. One YouTube channel is dedicated a live report of himself playing games called HikakinGames. Considering that the majority of his fans are young digital natives who also play games, this sort of content makes sense. His online popularity eventually led to appearances on TV and other media. His published book, entitled My Job…

Youtube recently unveiled its Youtube Rewind 2013, a look back at some of the most viewed videos and YouTubers on the site. In Japan, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu nabbed a bunch of top spots (first, third and fourth place) among all music videos.

Looking at the top ten Youtube channels overall in Japan, we can see huge entertainment entities like the agency Avex and idol supergroup AKB48. But surprisingly the fifth spot is occupied by the only individual performer to make the list, Hikakin TV. He is a 24-year-old human beatbox performer who has been active on YouTube since 2006.

His channel now has over 2.3 million subscribers with a whopping 400 million total views. Although he initially began performing just his human beatbox routine and techniques (which you can check out in the video below), Hikakin now broadcasts a variety of short performances on four different channels.

One YouTube channel is dedicated a live report of himself playing games called HikakinGames. Considering that the majority of his fans are young digital natives who also play games, this sort of content makes sense.

His online popularity eventually led to appearances on TV and other media. His published book, entitled My Job is Youtube, came out back in July. Hikakin has also released an Android app,HikakinBeat, which lets anyone become a creative and platful DJ.

His is the story of a salaryman turned into an online star. Hikakin is definitely a digital pioneer, whose online popularity gave him the chance to expand to traditional media.

Here he is making Super Mario beatbox sounds in the video below.

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From tech startup to media company: Videogram evolves, with smart TV on the horizon

Rick Martin 2013.12.12

We’ve written about Cinemacraft’s Videogram solution a few times before here on The Bridge. It is a player that lies of top of existing web video, giving a visual paneled preview of different portions of that video. The startup received investment from 500 Startups, and this year began working with Turner Broadcasting by way of its 12-week Media Camp, and subsequently when it became an investor as well. Founder Sandeep Casi explained to me that although they started out strictly as a technology company, they have now grown to become more of a media company. And not just any media company either. Recently they were one of five TVOT nominees for the best TV and video user interface / user experience, right alongside the likes of Netflix, Dish Network, and Showtime Network. They’re building for the future too, announcing Leap Motion integration today. Much of their recent progress, says Sandeep, has come about thanks to the alliance with Turner. “Turner has been fantastic,” he explains. He says that the connection with Turner really helped them get official embed status for Twitter, their player now white-listed for viewing. What that means is that now Videogram clips can be shared in the…

videogram-leap — Videogram is now Leap Motion enabled

We’ve written about Cinemacraft’s Videogram solution a few times before here on The Bridge. It is a player that lies of top of existing web video, giving a visual paneled preview of different portions of that video. The startup received investment from 500 Startups, and this year began working with Turner Broadcasting by way of its 12-week Media Camp, and subsequently when it became an investor as well. Founder Sandeep Casi explained to me that although they started out strictly as a technology company, they have now grown to become more of a media company.

And not just any media company either. Recently they were one of five TVOT nominees for the best TV and video user interface / user experience, right alongside the likes of Netflix, Dish Network, and Showtime Network. They’re building for the future too, announcing Leap Motion integration today. Much of their recent progress, says Sandeep, has come about thanks to the alliance with Turner.

“Turner has been fantastic,” he explains. He says that the connection with Turner really helped them get official embed status for Twitter, their player now white-listed for viewing. What that means is that now Videogram clips can be shared in the Twitterstream, and function as they normally would.

Having made solid progress with presentation of video on the web, Sandeep is looking ahead to what he says was his vision all along: Television. He’d like to make electronic program guides more interactive, and Videogram can be a pathway to doing that. By integrating their service into smart TVs, not only do you bring the paneled functionality of Videogram, but you also bring the capability to socially share portions of television shows in a more granular manner via the sharing function on those panels. You can check out some Videogram Smart TV interfaces here if you’d like to learn more.

As for the business side of things, Videogram panels also enable banner ad placement within videos for advertisers. Sandeep showed me an example using an NBA clip (see below), where panels visually previewed highlights of a Knicks game, with one panel showing a banner ad for a basketball shoe. That banner, when clicked, gave an option to buy via the Nike website [1]. Obviously this sort of hyper-relevant product placement holds a lot of potential in the video advertising space, especially for TV. Sandeep explains:

We’re trying to make the industry think about engagement, not views. For advertisers this is important, because they now know their video is being eyeballed.

When I talked with Sandeep, he showed me a number of Videogram mockups and samples for a wide range of notable entertainment properties. To be honest, it was hard to keep up with which companies were already clients, and which ones were just mockups. But it’s hard not to admire Videogram having the confidence to overhaul a given company’s online video presence on spec, and take it to their offices to sell them on its potential. Sandeep adds:

This is our business development scheme. This is what we do. And I really can’t believe that more startups don’t do it. Clients get it immediately. We give them a link, and they can convince internally with that link.

Videogram’s iOS app has come a long was as well, recently getting an upgrade that lets users capture multiple clips, combining them as a composite video. This is a function we see in many video apps these days, but the technique lends itself especially well to Videogram since different clips could be represented by different panel previews.

Cinemacraft has already deployed Videogram across a number of properties, including CBS, ABC, FOX , Sony, and even in India’s Bollywood. I expect NTT group will also be assisting the company to reel in some big fish here in Japan as well. I’m told that their service has grown in popularity in Korea as well, so I look forward to hearing news from that front too.

There’s also a play button, so buy link appears to be not too intrusive. ↩

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Japan and the culture of crowdsourcing: Crowdworks’ CEO Koichiro Yoshida (2/2)

Takeshi Hirano 2013.12.10

See the original article in Japanese Crowdworks, the startup behind crowdsourcing platform of the same nae, recently announced that it has raised 1.1 billion yen (or about $11 million). In the second part of our interview with the CEO, Koichi Yoshida (the first part is here), he talked about what is needed to really establish crowdsourcing in Japan, as well as the pain that inevitably comes when startups grow rapidly. The Bridge: I’m sure there are lots of obstacles to establishing a C2C or B2C working style in Japan. What will be the key to expand this new kind of work in this country? Yoshida: I think the key lies in whether the individual worker can be independent or not. Crowdsourcing first emerged 10 years ago, a new working style based on the premise that individual workers could be work responsibly for businesses. But companies too need to have somewhat mature mindset. Previously they used to place an order for work without thinking twice. They had little problems with dealing with sales reps to place an order, but that method has become less profitable. Even for a company that has never used crowdsourcing, some are now expressing interest in it….

See the original article in Japanese

Crowdworks, the startup behind crowdsourcing platform of the same nae, recently announced that it has raised 1.1 billion yen (or about $11 million). In the second part of our interview with the CEO, Koichi Yoshida (the first part is here), he talked about what is needed to really establish crowdsourcing in Japan, as well as the pain that inevitably comes when startups grow rapidly.

The Bridge: I’m sure there are lots of obstacles to establishing a C2C or B2C working style in Japan. What will be the key to expand this new kind of work in this country?

Yoshida: I think the key lies in whether the individual worker can be independent or not. Crowdsourcing first emerged 10 years ago, a new working style based on the premise that individual workers could be work responsibly for businesses. But companies too need to have somewhat mature mindset. Previously they used to place an order for work without thinking twice. They had little problems with dealing with sales reps to place an order, but that method has become less profitable. Even for a company that has never used crowdsourcing, some are now expressing interest in it.

The Bridge: You said that companies need to change their mindset. What about the workers? Does one need a specific mindset to do crowdsourced work?

Yoshida: Unlike working for a company, individual workers need to be more responsible for their own work. They need to complete it once they accept it. Some workers start at a rate of 5000 yen (about $50) for writing an article, and later the rate grows to 10,000 yen and then 20,000 yen. Those workers, who successfully build up experience, constantly receive requests for work estimates.

It will take some time until the mindset of individual workers changes dramatically. But the overall cost effectiveness could motivate companies to use crowdsourcing as “the fourth resource”, after hiring permanent workers, temporary workers, and outsourcing.

The Bridge: I think that this new working style won’t become really common unless it is accepted in more wide-ranging areas and across a wider demographic. You previously said you were willing to expand the service to smaller cities by building partnerships with local governments, such as Gifu prefecture and Minami-soma in Fukushima. Can you tell me more about this plan?

Yoshida: We will continue the partnership with local governments, focusing more on local workers. There are many workers bound to a certain region, so to speak. We will consider implementing a kind of safety net, such as offering insurance when workers are unemployed.

The Bridge: This is something we often forget, but there are still many people don’t use the internet, seniors in particular. We’ll need to serve this cluster better in order to establish a culture around crowdsourced work.

Yoshida: This is just a plan, but we are thinking to divide the market according to skills or needs. For example, we have work where a sign manufacturing company requests a worker to take pictures of broken signs. Such a task can be put in a category where no special skill is required.

The Bridge: I see. As long as the worker can use a digital camera, then he or she can do the work.

Yoshida: There are a wide variety of abilities among seniors. Some do just data entry and some design business cards with remarkable skill. If the smartphone becomes truly mainstream, more people will be online and that could spur demand for micro tasks such as data entry.

The Bridge: Still there will be people without an internet connection. Will it be possible that a third party business could use Crowdworks to matching senior workers and jobs?

Yoshida: Some workers actually delegate their work by hiring other workers. The overall concept is based on open source, so various ways to get the work done are possible.

I cannot go into too much detail here, but I talked with Yoshida-san about the difficulties that come with local expansion. I can personally relate to the local culture through my own past work experiences, and I know that it is not always so welcoming of new-comers.

I believe that the key to making crowdsourcing mainstream in Japan lies in utilizing hidden resources like seniors or people in other locales. But in this interview, I had impression that Yoshida thinks promoting companies’ use of the service and fostering an overall understanding of the process is the first thing to do.

Inside a fast-growing startup.

The Bridge: What was the most difficult time during these three year at Crowdworks?

Yoshida: To be honest, now is the most difficulty time. We have carefully built a KPI management tool before we started the service. We were united to achieve our goals. But it is not so difficult to reach your goals when you have only one metric to meet. It gets harder when the number of KPIs increase to two or three. We work under pressure.

There is a sort of difference between the original members on the team and those who joined after a while. I have to decide whether I should narrow this mental gap, or focus on moving forward.

The Bridge: You are expected to be experienced leader for your team. What approach do you take when talking to them?

Yoshida: One thing I tell members is to work for users, as opposed to the stockholders. Based on my past experiences, I believe the company who serves users will win the market eventually.

The Bridge: So the team works for users, and you work for stock holders.

Yoshida: Haha.

The Bridge: Thank you for your time today.

So what do you think about the future of crowdsourcing in Japan? Crowdworks’ success is definitely not the result of a bubble – or at least, I’d like to believe so. The scale of their business is not so large compared with other businesses like game developers. But I got a strong impression that this service is going to take time to expand. Creating a new working style is sort of analogous to establishing a culture where new graduates can consider crowdsourcing as an option for their first job, as an alternative to being employed by a company.

Due to time constraints, we didn’t have a chance to discuss the company’s competitors, like Lancers. I think a united front with competitors is necessary to establish the necessary culture, but Crowdworks needs to win this competition in order to thrive in the industry. We hope to touch on that topic next time.

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