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KDDI Mugen Labo unveils 5 new incubated startups

Masaru Ikeda 2013.09.27

KDDI Mugen Labo is the incubation arm of Japan’s second largest telco, KDDI. It recently unveiled five startups that qualified to participate in the fifth batch of its incubation program. They will receive mentoring in residency at the incubator as well as free rental of smartphone or tablet devices. Here’s a quick rundown of the startups and what they will be working on. Zukan.com Zukan.com is a consumer-generated photo curation site that aims to create a variety of encyclopedias. The platform was developed by two engineers from Kyushu University’s graduate school. One example of how it works is a curated picture book that introduces 2,700 species of fish shown in 34,000 pictures. Dr. Wallet Some of our readers may recall that we recently featured this personal finance data entry solution that simply scans your receipts. Dr. Wallet does not use OCR (optical character recognition) but instead depends on human-powered data entry to ensure accuracy, sorting and classifying your purchases as well. With this human element, the company can achieve data entry accuracy of up to 99.98%, likely enough to ease users’ concerns of erroneous input. The startup is backed by Incubate Fund. SmaOku SmaOku, a Japanese portmanteau of ‘Smart’ and…

KDDI Mugen Labo is the incubation arm of Japan’s second largest telco, KDDI. It recently unveiled five startups that qualified to participate in the fifth batch of its incubation program. They will receive mentoring in residency at the incubator as well as free rental of smartphone or tablet devices.

Here’s a quick rundown of the startups and what they will be working on.

Zukan.com

Zukan.com is a consumer-generated photo curation site that aims to create a variety of encyclopedias. The platform was developed by two engineers from Kyushu University’s graduate school. One example of how it works is a curated picture book that introduces 2,700 species of fish shown in 34,000 pictures.

Dr. Wallet

Some of our readers may recall that we recently featured this personal finance data entry solution that simply scans your receipts. Dr. Wallet does not use OCR (optical character recognition) but instead depends on human-powered data entry to ensure accuracy, sorting and classifying your purchases as well. With this human element, the company can achieve data entry accuracy of up to 99.98%, likely enough to ease users’ concerns of erroneous input. The startup is backed by Incubate Fund.

SmaOku

SmaOku, a Japanese portmanteau of ‘Smart’ and ‘Auction’, is a mobile auction app focused on second-hand clothes for females. Users can create their own store in as little as three minutes using a smartphone. The service was developed by Tokyo-based startup Zawatt, which has been developing notable web services like WishScope and Ohaco. CEO Daisaku Harada believes conventional auction sites don’t fit with user behaviors in the smartphone era, and so he is aspiring to develop a more simple auction platform.

PEDALRest

PEDALRest is a finalist from a recent Startup Weekend Tokyo event. In Tokyo, illegal bicycle parking near railway stations is a big problem for many local governments. But from the commuter’s point of view, it can be hard to find a parking space. This service connects you with landlords who have idle spaces, allowing you to easily find a space for your bicycle. It makes our communities a marginally easier place to live in, and it eliminates the danger of costly parking fines.

Aoi Zemi

Aoi Zemi (‘zemi’ here means ‘seminar’), is a live-streamed online lecture service for junior high students. Their focus is to provide informative live programming as well as opportunities to interact with other users by sharing something they’re calling ‘timelines’. Live-streaming is available for free, but you will be charged for watching recorded lecture programs.

This 5th batch of the incubator program will start very shortly, and we can expect to see the results of their efforts at their presentation event three months from now.

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Grand Prix Story: Retro 8-bit racing goodness on mobile

Rick Martin 2013.09.26

There were lots of fun mobile games at the recent Tokyo Game Show. But here’s a game that I stumbled upon today, which has actually been around for some time, but is still worth sharing here. Kairosoft’s Grand Prix Story is a delicious little 8-bit race simulation game that puts you in the role of a racing team manager. And for a racing game that actually require you to drive, it’s surprisingly fun. Your job is to manage the teams funds, improve your car, hire drivers and mechanics, and even acquire sponsorships. You can spend money to have your team conduct research on developing better car parts, and then out them to the test in a simulated race. As the team manager, you can also put your driver through training, but you need to make sure he’s well rested enough to go full throttle on race day. If he can pull off a podium finish, that will bring prize money you can further invest, and it also turns the heads of sponsors to get behind your team. Grand Prix Story comes in two versions: a paid app which is $3.99, and a free/lite version that limits your playing time. For…

There were lots of fun mobile games at the recent Tokyo Game Show. But here’s a game that I stumbled upon today, which has actually been around for some time, but is still worth sharing here. Kairosoft’s Grand Prix Story is a delicious little 8-bit race simulation game that puts you in the role of a racing team manager. And for a racing game that actually require you to drive, it’s surprisingly fun.

Your job is to manage the teams funds, improve your car, hire drivers and mechanics, and even acquire sponsorships. You can spend money to have your team conduct research on developing better car parts, and then out them to the test in a simulated race.

As the team manager, you can also put your driver through training, but you need to make sure he’s well rested enough to go full throttle on race day. If he can pull off a podium finish, that will bring prize money you can further invest, and it also turns the heads of sponsors to get behind your team.

Grand Prix Story comes in two versions: a paid app which is $3.99, and a free/lite version that limits your playing time. For a better idea of how the game is played, check out our video demo above.

If you’d like to try another fun 8-bit mobile game from Japan, you might also check out Ninja Striker, a really fun retro platformer that we looked at last month.

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Line Camera photo app surpasses 50 million users

Rick Martin 2013.09.26

Line Corporation announced today that its Line Camera application has surpassed 50 million users as of yesterday. That application was initially released back in April of 2012, and like all of Line’s other apps, it has ridden the popularity of the Line chat platform (or Line Channel) to reach a number of app markets around the world. To date Line camera has done very well, becoming a top 10 iOS photo app in 20 countries, and a top 10 Android photo app in 14 countries – primarily in Asia and South America. The app supports the main languages in those regions, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, as well as Thai and Spanish which were added in the 5.0 update in August. The company will apparently be targeting female users with new beauty features are coming in early October to Line camera, including capabilities to adjust skin brightness and smoothness, fix skin blemishes, as well as functions to make your face smaller and eyes bigger. You can see these functions in screenshot below provided by Line. If you look closely there is also an ‘volume’ button with what looks like a breasts icon too. I’m not yet sure how I feel about…

Line Corporation announced today that its Line Camera application has surpassed 50 million users as of yesterday.

That application was initially released back in April of 2012, and like all of Line’s other apps, it has ridden the popularity of the Line chat platform (or Line Channel) to reach a number of app markets around the world.

To date Line camera has done very well, becoming a top 10 iOS photo app in 20 countries, and a top 10 Android photo app in 14 countries – primarily in Asia and South America. The app supports the main languages in those regions, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, as well as Thai and Spanish which were added in the 5.0 update in August.

The company will apparently be targeting female users with new beauty features are coming in early October to Line camera, including capabilities to adjust skin brightness and smoothness, fix skin blemishes, as well as functions to make your face smaller and eyes bigger. You can see these functions in screenshot below provided by Line. If you look closely there is also an ‘volume’ button with what looks like a breasts icon too. I’m not yet sure how I feel about this last feature.

For more information on the history of Line to date, check out our interactive Line timeline.

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In conversation with Survey Monkey CEO Dave Goldberg

Masaru Ikeda 2013.09.26

Last week featured a number of international tech events here in Tokyo, including the Tokyo Game Show and ad:tech Tokyo. I was asked to serve on some panels at ad:tech, and moderated a fireside chat with Dave Goldberg, who is a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and also the husband of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. For those unfamiliar with his work, he’s the CEO of Survey Monkey, a cloud-based, web survey development company, which raised $800 million from several investors (including Google) back in January. Prior to joining the company in 2009, he started his first media company, Launch Media, back in 1993, which was subsequently acquired by Yahoo for $12 million in 2001. According to Dave, the Survey Monkey has acquired over 68,000 users in the Japanese market alone, and he says both user and revenue growth are strong. The company has 15 million users in total around the world. Survey Monkey has acquired over 68,000 users in the Japanese market alone Coinciding with this his visit to Tokyo, he unveiled a new feature for Japanese users called Question Bank. The feature aims to make survey creation easier and faster by presenting samples of recommended Q&A sets to reduce bias…

chat-with-goldberg1 — Image credit: Hideyuki Nakanishi

Last week featured a number of international tech events here in Tokyo, including the Tokyo Game Show and ad:tech Tokyo. I was asked to serve on some panels at ad:tech, and moderated a fireside chat with Dave Goldberg, who is a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and also the husband of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

For those unfamiliar with his work, he’s the CEO of Survey Monkey, a cloud-based, web survey development company, which raised $800 million from several investors (including Google) back in January. Prior to joining the company in 2009, he started his first media company, Launch Media, back in 1993, which was subsequently acquired by Yahoo for $12 million in 2001.

According to Dave, the Survey Monkey has acquired over 68,000 users in the Japanese market alone, and he says both user and revenue growth are strong. The company has 15 million users in total around the world.

Survey Monkey has acquired over 68,000 users in the Japanese market alone

Coinciding with this his visit to Tokyo, he unveiled a new feature for Japanese users called Question Bank. The feature aims to make survey creation easier and faster by presenting samples of recommended Q&A sets to reduce bias and give you more accurate answers.

Typically, when I have a chance to speak with entrepreneurs or investors from Silicon Valley, there’s one thing I can’t help but ask about. The most prominent startups in the Japanese market are from the gaming industry. But in the US, we’ve seen many exits for startups that serve enterprises. Why is there such a big difference in the two ecosystems?

He answered that there was a rise in the entertainment and consumer-focused gaming industry in the US, but the trend is changing. He says you can see user demographics changing at Evernote, as the service first targeted individuals but subsequently many office workers started using it to share documents with colleagues. Many companies have adopted it as a business tool, and he calls this phenomenon the ‘consumerization of business tools’. Dave adds that in Japan, when companies choose what tools should be used, it is typically a top-down decision where those at the top make their employers use the same tools. He notes this business culture gap makes it difficult for Japanese startups to succeed with business-focused innovations.

He closed with some sound advice for Japanese entrepreneurs:

Don’t fear failure, hire people who are smarter than you, and get all the support you can get.

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Tokyo Game Show: The Mobile Players

Rick Martin 2013.09.24

If 2012 was the year that mobile exhibitors overtook consoles at the Tokyo Game Show, 2013 was the year consoles rebounded, with Sony and Microsoft dominating the show. But there was still a strong mobile presence this year, perhaps the biggest exhibitor being GREE, once again shelling out for a large floor space. We spoke to their SVP of social games Eiji Araki, who explained why they feel the need to go big every year. But the standout newcomer this year at TGS was GungHo Online Entertainment, the developer of perhaps the world’s most successful game, Puzzle & Dragons, spotlighting their new 3DS version. They also previewed their upcoming title, Divine Gate, which is set for a September 30 release on Android. There were some notable absences from the mobile space however. GREE rival DeNA, as always, chose to skip the event. Colopl had a pretty large booth last year, but they took a pass on showing up this year. Casual game makers Line Corporation and BeeWorks, the creator of the wildly popular (and cute) Nameco franchise, were also no shows. We turned our eyes to the little guys in mobile this year, skipping over consoles entirely [1]. In the…

If 2012 was the year that mobile exhibitors overtook consoles at the Tokyo Game Show, 2013 was the year consoles rebounded, with Sony and Microsoft dominating the show.

But there was still a strong mobile presence this year, perhaps the biggest exhibitor being GREE, once again shelling out for a large floor space. We spoke to their SVP of social games Eiji Araki, who explained why they feel the need to go big every year. But the standout newcomer this year at TGS was GungHo Online Entertainment, the developer of perhaps the world’s most successful game, Puzzle & Dragons, spotlighting their new 3DS version. They also previewed their upcoming title, Divine Gate, which is set for a September 30 release on Android.

There were some notable absences from the mobile space however. GREE rival DeNA, as always, chose to skip the event. Colopl had a pretty large booth last year, but they took a pass on showing up this year.

Casual game makers Line Corporation and BeeWorks, the creator of the wildly popular (and cute) Nameco franchise, were also no shows.

We turned our eyes to the little guys in mobile this year, skipping over consoles entirely [1]. In the indie gaming area it was great to see companies like Okinawa-based SummerTime Studio, who has had a hit with their Ancient Surfer mobile game. We had a short discussion with their president, Hirotsu Takeyasu, which you can check out below.

Set up right next to them was Tokyo-based Link Kit, the maker of Samurai Defender, a game that we reviewed (and loved) earlier this year. Team Martini was also showing off Pechan, a really fun game for iPad where you have to push a juicer around the screen to crush fruit.

The game show also had an area dedicated to romance simulation games, featuring Eitarosoft, Voltage, and the oddly named ZZYZX. We did a short interview with Voltage (see video below), a prolific game publisher with over 50 titles to date. They plan to release one app every month, including some games that men can enjoy as well. This is one of those genres that is unique to Japan, but I imagine we will see more of these kind of titles creep into the global market (as we saw with card battle games), on an experimental basis if nothing else.

They came from beyond

Of course, the game show wasn’t just about Japanese game producers peddling their wares. There were also an abundance of foreign game makers parachuting into the country to show off titles here. As we mentioned yesterday, the one that most impressed us was Israel’s Nordau Creative with its Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting title.

But there was also an abundance of exhibitors from the Asia region, representing Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Tawian, Thailand, and Vietnam.

We also were quite impressed by the efforts of Russian developer and publisher Game Insight, who just recently launched a localized version of their Tribez game here in Japan for iOS. They win our unofficial award for the most enthusiastic game demo, corralling me and my colleague into a room and not letting us go until we had seen five of their games. They should get a raise.

And finally, making my naughty list this year is Square Enix, who once again had their “no photos” policy in effect at their booth, demonstrating that they still do not comprehend the concept of a “show”.

tokyo-game-show-201316 — The Nordau Creative team, featuring Kazooloo AR game at Tokyo Game Show

There no shortage of coverage over on sites like Tktk and Tktk, so you can check that out there. ↩

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Israel’s Nordau Creative unleashes virtual dragons upon Tokyo Game Show

Rick Martin 2013.09.23

While we were primarily focused on Japanese mobile game makers in our visit to the Tokyo Game Show, there were lots of foreign developers and publishers who brought great games to show off. The one that stood out the most for me was from Israeli studio Nordau Creative. They were turning lots of heads with their Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting game. This mobile title makes use of a large board that you place on the floor, which when viewed through the camera on your phone or tablet, appears as a sort of inter-dimensional vortex that spawns angry dragons for you to fight. Admittedly, these AR games can be somewhat gimmicky sometimes. But watching visitors dance around Kazooloo game boards shooting at floor dragons makes me think that this one has more potential than most. To try the game out for yourself, you’ll first need to get the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play and then purchase one of the available boards from the company website, which will then be shipped to you. They range in price from $14.99 for a mini-board, to $49.99 for larger sizes. If you’d like a visual demo of how the game…

While we were primarily focused on Japanese mobile game makers in our visit to the Tokyo Game Show, there were lots of foreign developers and publishers who brought great games to show off.

The one that stood out the most for me was from Israeli studio Nordau Creative. They were turning lots of heads with their Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting game. This mobile title makes use of a large board that you place on the floor, which when viewed through the camera on your phone or tablet, appears as a sort of inter-dimensional vortex that spawns angry dragons for you to fight.

Admittedly, these AR games can be somewhat gimmicky sometimes. But watching visitors dance around Kazooloo game boards shooting at floor dragons makes me think that this one has more potential than most.

To try the game out for yourself, you’ll first need to get the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play and then purchase one of the available boards from the company website, which will then be shipped to you. They range in price from $14.99 for a mini-board, to $49.99 for larger sizes.

If you’d like a visual demo of how the game works, you can check out their promo video for the game below.

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After a rough year, GREE still goes big at Tokyo Game Show

Rick Martin 2013.09.23

Back in 2011 the Tokyo Game Show was GREE’s coming out party, with the company planting a very big footprint in the gaming world – quite literally too, occupying about 10% of the entire floorspace. That exhibition was interpreted by some to be more political than practical, a show of power from a company poised to take over the world via smartphones. Skip to 2013 and we find that GREE, while still a mobile powerhouse, has had to scale things back. GREE’s offices in China and the UK have been shut down, and in the US and Canada the platform division has been shrunk, with staff being integrated back to Japan. Sony and Microsoft are the biggest exhibitors this year, spotlighting new consoles, and for mobile, the new kid on the block is GungHo Online Entertainment, showcasing Puzzle & Dragons in a coming out party reminiscent of GREE two years back. Tokyo Game Show is a very important opportunity for us to interact with our players. Nevertheless, GREE was still out in full force at the Tokyo Game Show this year, with the same humongous booth that they’ve had for the past three years. I wondered, after what was a…

Back in 2011 the Tokyo Game Show was GREE’s coming out party, with the company planting a very big footprint in the gaming world – quite literally too, occupying about 10% of the entire floorspace. That exhibition was interpreted by some to be more political than practical, a show of power from a company poised to take over the world via smartphones.

Skip to 2013 and we find that GREE, while still a mobile powerhouse, has had to scale things back. GREE’s offices in China and the UK have been shut down, and in the US and Canada the platform division has been shrunk, with staff being integrated back to Japan. Sony and Microsoft are the biggest exhibitors this year, spotlighting new consoles, and for mobile, the new kid on the block is GungHo Online Entertainment, showcasing Puzzle & Dragons in a coming out party reminiscent of GREE two years back.

Tokyo Game Show is a very important opportunity for us to interact with our players.

Nevertheless, GREE was still out in full force at the Tokyo Game Show this year, with the same humongous booth that they’ve had for the past three years. I wondered, after what was a rough year for GREE, why it was necessary for GREE to have such a huge display. I suppose once you make a booth of that magnitude, you may as well keep using it. It’s hardly something you can sell on eBay or Craigslist, is it? But I spoke to GREE senior vice president of social gaming, Eiji Araki, about this, asking why the company still comes to TGS in full force:

The Tokyo Game Show is a very important opportunity for us to interact with our players. In the mobile internet industry it is very difficult to interact with real players to see how they play our games, to see how they are enjoying the games. There are lots of staff here, game producers standing besides the titles they created.

This last point took me by surprise, as I had thought that perhaps the staff at the booth were just temporary part-timers. Like most companies at TGS, GREE had its share of models manning their floor space, but it’s encouraging to see that their game producers are on site to speak and interact with consumers.

Araki points out that the focus of their booth is primarily on existing titles rather than new ones. But one fresh change for the GREE booth this year was a dedicated section for Pokelabo, the Japan-based studio which GREE acquired back in October of 2012 for 13.8 billion yen.

Almost a year after that acquisition, Araki tells me that the Pokelabo studio still operates separately for the most part, but that there is a mixed team where Pokelabo and GREE work on collaborative titles. But letting Pokelabo do what they do best is somewhat indicative of GREE’s new focus going forward, distilling their business to do what they collectively do best. Araki explains:

That’s why we downsized some studios, and these studios are still doing really well, focusing on what they are good at. So we are creating lots of new games in US studio for US market, and in the Japan studio for Japan market. At this moment, we are not creating games from Japan for abroad, or from US to Japan, It would be better for our studios to focus on what they are good at, focus on the markets they know.

This applies to San Francisco-based Funzio as well, the other big GREE purchase in 2012, as Araki notes that their US studio is not only stable but actually growing. The Funzio-developed title Knights & Dragons has been doing pretty well of late in the US market, which has been ranking well on the iOS top grossing charts in the US thanks to continued in-game events. Crime City is another Funzio title that has fared well in many markets.

However, Araki admits that they will ~~stop~~ cut back on developing card battle games for the US market however, as that genre is “not huge,” and already pretty saturated. Of course, the card battle genre is still a massive market in Japan, and GREE will continue to develop such titles at home [1].

GREE’s refocus in the coming year will be largely about increasing their hit-ratio, says Araki in true gamer lingo. The company has yet to produce the big runaway hit recently that we might have expected from them.

And now, with more competition at home and abroad, GREE still has a significant challenge ahead if it wants to win the attention of the world’s mobile gamers.

A little more on this point. GREE’s NFL Elite card battle game (which I’ve been a big fan of, as I wrote in my review here) is now doing well, now that the 2013 NFL season has kicked off. Since it was rebranded from NFL Shuffle back on September 3rd, the game has been ranked in or near the top ten for the iOS US market. The other sports card battle game, MLB Full Deck, has not been as fortunate, Araki noting that we have “almost stopped” it. ↩

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Japan’s Uzabase introduces business news curation app

Takeshi Hirano 2013.09.22

See the original story in Japanese. The advent of social media and smart devices has allowed us to receive continuous updates from content producers at any time, no matter where we are. So these days people really need practical solutions to help them filter what to receive and read. We’ve seen several outstanding Japanese startups working on such information solutions, including Smart News, Vingow, and Gunosy. It’s an economic journal for the smartphone era On Friday another player jumped into this space. Tokyo’s Uzabase, the startup behind corporate profile database Speeda, unveiled an iOS app that curates financial and business news updates. It’s called News Picks. News Picks aggregates business and financial updates from 30 news entities in Japan and around the world, delivering them to subscribers with in-depth analysis by the startup’s team of economists and high profile entrepreneurs. The app is available for iOS, and its desktop version will be also introduced by the end of this year. If you think this is just a RSS news aggregator, you’re partly right. But the biggest draw of this service is that it is developed and managed by a team with a solid background in finance. The startup was founded…

See the original story in Japanese.

The advent of social media and smart devices has allowed us to receive continuous updates from content producers at any time, no matter where we are. So these days people really need practical solutions to help them filter what to receive and read. We’ve seen several outstanding Japanese startups working on such information solutions, including Smart News, Vingow, and Gunosy.

It’s an economic journal for the smartphone era

On Friday another player jumped into this space. Tokyo’s Uzabase, the startup behind corporate profile database Speeda, unveiled an iOS app that curates financial and business news updates. It’s called News Picks.

News Picks aggregates business and financial updates from 30 news entities in Japan and around the world, delivering them to subscribers with in-depth analysis by the startup’s team of economists and high profile entrepreneurs. The app is available for iOS, and its desktop version will be also introduced by the end of this year. If you think this is just a RSS news aggregator, you’re partly right. But the biggest draw of this service is that it is developed and managed by a team with a solid background in finance.

The startup was founded back in 2008. The company’s first app, Speeda, was invented by its founding members who previously worked with investment banks. It collects news updates and business analysis from think tanks, and provides them to finance businesses. In terms of differentiation from big players like Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters, the service requires users to have no special terminal nor master specific commands or functions.

The company is rapidly expanding its focus on Asia, and has overseas offices in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Curation by economic experts might be the key

One key service provided by the startup is a strong expertise in business trends, with valuable news updates curated by financial experts.

When you launch the app, you’re required to log in to the service with your social media accounts. But I found it somewhat discouraging that it asked me to create a user account/password for the service in addition to the social media login. Subsequently, you choose persons or business categories that interest you. This process is similar to that of the Vingow app as well.

You can browse updates in the timeline curated by other users you follow, or check out the news crawling robots. You can add notes on updates, which then allows other users know why you liked it. Like conventional RSS reader apps, you can jump to the original website from any given update.

From my perspective, there’s still room to improve in terms of choosing updates to suit my preference. It’s difficult to choose which high profile user I should follow. For example, if I follow Japanese dotcom tycoon Takafumi Horie, I don’t know what kind of curated updates I will get through his timeline.

Here on this site, we also bring you updates from startup scenes around the world, including business updates. From a media person’s perspective, I’m looking forward to seeing how this kind of solutions changes how consumers’ get news updates.

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Forget food photos. Japan’s ‘Instapaper for Interiors’ raises $1M

Takeshi Hirano 2013.09.20

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Tunnel is the startup behind RoomClip, a photo sharing service that lets you show off your room. The company announced today that it has raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from Femto Growth Capital. Coinciding with this funding, the investment firm’s general partner Tetsuya Isozaki will join the board of the startup. Tunnel was founded back in November of 2011. Previously it received seed investment of 10 million yen ($100,0000) from Samurai Incubate and Cyber Agent Ventures back in 2011. According to the startup’s CEO Masahiko Takashige, the service’s main userbase are females in their 20s and 30s. He observed many people sharing interior photos on Mixi and other social networking services even before launching the startup back in May of 2012. To date the RoomClip mobile app has seen 130,000 downloads and over 100,000 photos posted. I asked Takashige about what motivates users sharing those photos. For some users, they may not be so proud to show the inside of their home to others. So sharing such photos of your room can be a good excuse to clean up a little. Other users say it can be sort of addictive. In terms…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Tunnel is the startup behind RoomClip, a photo sharing service that lets you show off your room. The company announced today that it has raised 100 million yen ($1 million) from Femto Growth Capital. Coinciding with this funding, the investment firm’s general partner Tetsuya Isozaki will join the board of the startup.

Tunnel was founded back in November of 2011. Previously it received seed investment of 10 million yen ($100,0000) from Samurai Incubate and Cyber Agent Ventures back in 2011.

According to the startup’s CEO Masahiko Takashige, the service’s main userbase are females in their 20s and 30s. He observed many people sharing interior photos on Mixi and other social networking services even before launching the startup back in May of 2012. To date the RoomClip mobile app has seen 130,000 downloads and over 100,000 photos posted. I asked Takashige about what motivates users sharing those photos.

For some users, they may not be so proud to show the inside of their home to others. So sharing such photos of your room can be a good excuse to clean up a little. Other users say it can be sort of addictive.

In terms of user behaviors, 90% of users are viewing other user’s photos, and refer to interiors posted by the service’s most frequent users. This tendency leads to some monetization potential with e-commerce opportunities.

For typical interior fanatics, they hope to discover and buy items they really want. We see many furniture and specialty stores in town. But you select items and place them in your room very much according to your own preference. Our service lets you share this experience online.

The startup expects to add product details and links to e-commerce sites in the app, and examine how these efforts can help drive user traffic for monetization.

The company aims to eventually reach 2.5 downloads for its mobile app and acquire 2 million users.

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Japanese publisher lets readers tweet out their favorite manga page

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.09.20

Japanese publisher Kodansha is making aggressive moves toward digital recently. Our readers may recall we wrote about their partnership with Line’s novel service back in June. Another initiative from Kodansha is its mobile app ‘D Morning’ provided in cooperation with internet portal Excite Japan. There is a weekly comic book entitled ‘Morning’ that has been in print since 1982. Since then, the comic book has attracted so many manga fans of all ages, especially men. D Morning is the digital version of this comic, and works as a subscription-based app. The application was released back in May and provides about 500 pages from popular comics such as Shimakosaku and Uchu-Kyodai. Users of D Morning can enjoy the latest issues of comics every Thursday at 12am, faster than anybody else. The two companies just updated the app, with a unique feature that lets users share their favorite page from a selected comic to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Readers can tweet out their favorite quotes or pictures that they find especially moving. This feature is exclusive to iOS users for now, but the Android app will see an update sometime in October. D Morning can be downloaded for free,…

Japanese publisher Kodansha is making aggressive moves toward digital recently. Our readers may recall we wrote about their partnership with Line’s novel service back in June.

Another initiative from Kodansha is its mobile app ‘D Morning’ provided in cooperation with internet portal Excite Japan. There is a weekly comic book entitled ‘Morning’ that has been in print since 1982. Since then, the comic book has attracted so many manga fans of all ages, especially men. D Morning is the digital version of this comic, and works as a subscription-based app.

The application was released back in May and provides about 500 pages from popular comics such as Shimakosaku and Uchu-Kyodai. Users of D Morning can enjoy the latest issues of comics every Thursday at 12am, faster than anybody else.

The two companies just updated the app, with a unique feature that lets users share their favorite page from a selected comic to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Readers can tweet out their favorite quotes or pictures that they find especially moving. This feature is exclusive to iOS users for now, but the Android app will see an update sometime in October.

D Morning can be downloaded for free, on both iOS and Android. The first download comes as a free issue, but subsequent downloads will cost 500 yen (about $5) per month. The back catalogue, going back to the time of registration, is available as well.

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