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This Japanese Facebook app finds you last-minute drinking dates

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.07.22

After a long day at work on a hot summer day, perhaps you feel like grabbing a beer — but it can be hard to get a hold of friends at the last minute. Now there is an app that helps you find drinking buddies of the opposite sex in your neighborhood. It’s called Kanpai Match (Kanpai meaning ‘cheers’ in Japanese). Kanpai Match is presented as a Facebook app where users can enter information such as their initials, location, topics of interest, and profiles. The app then makes a recommendation everyday at 5pm, suggesting a possible drinking buddy in a nearby place. The app only recommends people of the opposite sex, so this may be more of a dating app than a casual drinking app. After seeing their suggested match of the day, users can push the ‘Let’s Drink’ button to confirm the meet. When a match is completed, the app can be used to send each other messages and discuss the details of the outing. The company behind Kanpai Match is SVC, a company that provides a series of networking apps. Its Tomokore app lets you to discover new friends on popular chat applications like Line, Skype, or KakaoTalk….

After a long day at work on a hot summer day, perhaps you feel like grabbing a beer — but it can be hard to get a hold of friends at the last minute. Now there is an app that helps you find drinking buddies of the opposite sex in your neighborhood. It’s called Kanpai Match (Kanpai meaning ‘cheers’ in Japanese).

Kanpai Match is presented as a Facebook app where users can enter information such as their initials, location, topics of interest, and profiles. The app then makes a recommendation everyday at 5pm, suggesting a possible drinking buddy in a nearby place. The app only recommends people of the opposite sex, so this may be more of a dating app than a casual drinking app.

After seeing their suggested match of the day, users can push the ‘Let’s Drink’ button to confirm the meet. When a match is completed, the app can be used to send each other messages and discuss the details of the outing.

The company behind Kanpai Match is SVC, a company that provides a series of networking apps. Its Tomokore app lets you to discover new friends on popular chat applications like Line, Skype, or KakaoTalk. Another one of its apps is Keijiban for Pazudora (‘Pazudora’ is a sort of Japanese portmanteau of Puzzle and Dragons) which is a dedicated bulletin board where users can find partners to assist them in the game.

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How a Japanese women’s magazine is using Google+ to find its next top model

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.07.17

CanCam is a women’s fashion magazine from publishing house Shogakukan, first published in 1982. The magazine is wildly popular among girls, especially those in their early 20s. The magazine’s circulation was high as 800,000 back in 2006, but it has declined since then. Its popularity was largely due to three popular models who appeared on the cover at the time. And now the magazine is searching for its next-generation model online. To be precise, they’re looking on Google+. Anyone over the age of 13 can participate in the contest [1], simply by posting photos of themselves with the dedicated #cancam hashtag. The magazine’s editors are looking for more than just girls who can pose, but also someone with a mix of talents such as styling, editing, and self-expression. The number of +1s a girl receives in a given day is taken into consideration as the magazine chooses one girl per day. Generally speaking, there are two types of girls/womens’ magazines in Japan: Aomoji and Akamoji. Aomoji are magazine that encourage girls to express themselves uniquely, and Harajuku street magazines or Kyary PamyuPamyu would fall under this category. But CanCam is the latter type, focusing more about whether or not boys…

CanCam is a women’s fashion magazine from publishing house Shogakukan, first published in 1982. The magazine is wildly popular among girls, especially those in their early 20s. The magazine’s circulation was high as 800,000 back in 2006, but it has declined since then.

Its popularity was largely due to three popular models who appeared on the cover at the time. And now the magazine is searching for its next-generation model online. To be precise, they’re looking on Google+.

Anyone over the age of 13 can participate in the contest [1], simply by posting photos of themselves with the dedicated #cancam hashtag. The magazine’s editors are looking for more than just girls who can pose, but also someone with a mix of talents such as styling, editing, and self-expression. The number of +1s a girl receives in a given day is taken into consideration as the magazine chooses one girl per day.

Generally speaking, there are two types of girls/womens’ magazines in Japan: Aomoji and Akamoji. Aomoji are magazine that encourage girls to express themselves uniquely, and Harajuku street magazines or Kyary PamyuPamyu would fall under this category. But CanCam is the latter type, focusing more about whether or not boys will like them. So in that sense, Google Plus is a sensible choice for the magazine. Looking at the comments on the model’s pictures, it’s not surprising that many of them are boys.

CanCam’s next generation model audition will start on July 23rd and will run for 100 days. The final winner will receive a 10 million yen contract fee (about $100,000). If you’d like to follow along, you can check out CanCam Plus to see how the audition is going.

On a related note, Google+ has previously been leveraged by Japanese girl supergroup AKB48, as we mentioned in a past article.

Being a Japanese national is not an requirement. ↩

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Top 5: Japanese Online Dating Sites

SCORE 93,192

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.07.02

Online dating sites like Match.com don’t really have clear equivalents in Japan, at least not ones that people talk about using openly. Online dating is still less common here and even a little frowned upon. But thanks to the rise of social networks, especially Facebook, more people feel safe about meeting someone new online. Here are just a few social online dating services that leverage Facebook, in no particular order. My-Qpit ¶ The company behind a site called 81 just announced that its total of registered users has exceeded 10,000, this just two months after release. My-Qpit lets users search for partners by age, occupation, and even by hobbies. By liking each other’s profile, two people can start exchanging messages on the app. After going back and forth twice, they can then check out each other’s real Facebook profiles. The site is popular with young women, and is free to use — but for men, it requires a monthly fee of 2,500 yen. MatchAlarm ¶ By looking at your Facebook social graph, MatchAlarm recommends a new person for you every morning at 8am. If individuals find each other attractive, they can start chatting within the app. Many online matchmaking services…

Online dating sites like Match.com don’t really have clear equivalents in Japan, at least not ones that people talk about using openly. Online dating is still less common here and even a little frowned upon. But thanks to the rise of social networks, especially Facebook, more people feel safe about meeting someone new online. Here are just a few social online dating services that leverage Facebook, in no particular order.

My-Qpit ¶

The company behind a site called 81 just announced that its total of registered users has exceeded 10,000, this just two months after release. My-Qpit lets users search for partners by age, occupation, and even by hobbies. By liking each other’s profile, two people can start exchanging messages on the app. After going back and forth twice, they can then check out each other’s real Facebook profiles. The site is popular with young women, and is free to use — but for men, it requires a monthly fee of 2,500 yen.

MatchAlarm ¶

By looking at your Facebook social graph, MatchAlarm recommends a new person for you every morning at 8am. If individuals find each other attractive, they can start chatting within the app. Many online matchmaking services requires users to do the searching, but MatchAlarm takes away the hassle by doing the work for users. Users can check each other’s profile for a limited time, just until the end of the day (for 16 hours). It takes three coins (one coin is roughly $1) to tap on the ‘I might like you’ button.

MatchAlarm is backed by CyberAgent Ventures.

Omiai ¶

The word ‘Omiai’ refers to a Japanese custom where individuals are introduced to each other as potential marriage material. According to Omiai-jp.com’s Facebook app page, it is the biggest online dating service in Japan to leverage the Facebook social network. You can search for your ideal partner using 24 criteria, including age, nationality, income, personality, and more.

As with other sites, users can hide their Facebook identity until they feel comfortable enough to share with the other person. Omiai is free for women to use, and for men it costs 1,980 yen per month. Omiai is also available as an app on iOS and Android.

Frigg ¶

This one is also for individuals who are serious about finding a marriage partner. But Frigg takes a somewhat passive approach. After answering over 100 questions about personality, lifestyle, hobby, etc, the site recommends a match once per day. The site also allows users to choose non-negotiable criterias, such as no excess gambling or drinking. Instead of clicking through profile photos, the limited number of recommendations makes individuals extra cautious when before saying yes or no. Men can use premium service starting from 980 yen per month.

Pairs ¶

Pairs is an online dating site with over 150,000 members. With 950,000 Facebook likes, the site is very aggressive in its online marketing. Judging by the posts on its Facebook page, they appear to target men more than women. All identities are displayed by initials only, and nothing will be posted on people’s Facebook pages. You can set your preferences for your partner, and click through the options displayed.

On a related note, US-based dating site for people already in a relationship, Ashley Madison, recently made its official launch in Japan. It’s off to a good start too, acquiring 75,000 users in its first four days according to News on Japan. It will be interesting to see if that website will be accepted among Japanese people.

(Lead photo via Omiai)

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TeamLab technology to make televised events more social in Japan

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.06.29

Japan’s Nippon Television Network is making the first ever attempt to make the experience of watching a music performance on TV into an extremely social experience. The creative team responsible for making this happen is TeamLab, with its ‘TeamLab Social Instrument’ technology. On July 6th, Nippon Television Network will mark its 60th anniversary. A TV program called The Music Day, Power of Music will be aired on that day for 12 hours. Japanese pop group Arashi will give performance that can be enjoyed as a real time sound game. Viewers in front of the TV can access a special web page on their mobile phones, computers, or even using their TV remote control. On the web page, they can choose an instrument and tap on the button whenever the instrument’s icon appears on TV during the performance. TeamLab’s social instrument technology has been used for real live performances before (check out the video below), but it has been enhanced to compensate for possible network delays. Each performance is given a score for rhythm accuracy after performance, and I assume that there will be some sort of social element to share the score on the internet. For those eager to join…

Japan’s Nippon Television Network is making the first ever attempt to make the experience of watching a music performance on TV into an extremely social experience. The creative team responsible for making this happen is TeamLab, with its ‘TeamLab Social Instrument’ technology.

On July 6th, Nippon Television Network will mark its 60th anniversary. A TV program called The Music Day, Power of Music will be aired on that day for 12 hours. Japanese pop group Arashi will give performance that can be enjoyed as a real time sound game. Viewers in front of the TV can access a special web page on their mobile phones, computers, or even using their TV remote control. On the web page, they can choose an instrument and tap on the button whenever the instrument’s icon appears on TV during the performance.

TeamLab’s social instrument technology has been used for real live performances before (check out the video below), but it has been enhanced to compensate for possible network delays.

Each performance is given a score for rhythm accuracy after performance, and I assume that there will be some sort of social element to share the score on the internet. For those eager to join the nation wide interactive event, you can access the special website here.

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10 fun photos popular on Twitter Japan

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.06.24

Whether on Twitter or Facebook, of all the things that pass through our social feeds, perhaps nothing gets more attention than photos. But of course really fun photos can be rare or hard to find. But in Japan there is a web service called Twicolle.com that lets you to discover popular photos from Twitter in a snap. According to a survey conducted by ICT, Twitter is still very popular among the many communication services available in Japan. It ranked third following Line and Facebook as the most frequently used communication services. Twitter also nabbed first place for customer satisfaction among major social networks. Let’s take a quick look to see what Japanese netizens are finding most interesting on Twitter right now. なんか教室着いたらものすごく爽やかになってた pic.twitter.com/gA6XTb3VSj — げんそ (@hisakura_genso) June 20, 2013 A chalk drawing on a blackboard. マイメロの真実 pic.twitter.com/kQOv8A0k8X — 太郎○ (@tarou7017) June 13, 2013 The truth about My Melody, the popular Sanrio character. あまちゃんを東京編から見始める人のために、北三陸編のあらすじをまとめました。 #あまちゃん #あま絵 pic.twitter.com/tiSEmYt6LP — ぷにんぷ_さな (@puninpu) June 22, 2013 A digest manga of a popular NHK TV show. イランで見つかったガイコツで、６０００歳だそうです。愛は時間を超えるんですね♡ pic.twitter.com/uhNb1ExC43 — 思わずグッときたbot (@gu_tto_kita) May 30, 2013 6000-year-old skeleton couple found in Iran. 青森やばい。 pic.twitter.com/RCAPOTLQpx — 歌広場淳 (@junjunmjgirly) June 23, 2013 Strawberry-flavored ramen noodles found…

Whether on Twitter or Facebook, of all the things that pass through our social feeds, perhaps nothing gets more attention than photos. But of course really fun photos can be rare or hard to find. But in Japan there is a web service called Twicolle.com that lets you to discover popular photos from Twitter in a snap.

According to a survey conducted by ICT, Twitter is still very popular among the many communication services available in Japan. It ranked third following Line and Facebook as the most frequently used communication services. Twitter also nabbed first place for customer satisfaction among major social networks.

Let’s take a quick look to see what Japanese netizens are finding most interesting on Twitter right now.

なんか教室着いたらものすごく爽やかになってた pic.twitter.com/gA6XTb3VSj

— げんそ (@hisakura_genso) June 20, 2013

A chalk drawing on a blackboard.

マイメロの真実 pic.twitter.com/kQOv8A0k8X

— 太郎○ (@tarou7017) June 13, 2013

The truth about My Melody, the popular Sanrio character.

あまちゃんを東京編から見始める人のために、北三陸編のあらすじをまとめました。 #あまちゃん #あま絵 pic.twitter.com/tiSEmYt6LP

— ぷにんぷ_さな (@puninpu) June 22, 2013

A digest manga of a popular NHK TV show.

イランで見つかったガイコツで、６０００歳だそうです。愛は時間を超えるんですね♡ pic.twitter.com/uhNb1ExC43 — 思わずグッときたbot (@gu_tto_kita) May 30, 2013

6000-year-old skeleton couple found in Iran.

青森やばい。 pic.twitter.com/RCAPOTLQpx

— 歌広場淳 (@junjunmjgirly) June 23, 2013

Strawberry-flavored ramen noodles found in Aomori prefecture.

犬「なんかなぁ、うち昼寝しとってん。ほんでな、いきなり雨ふってきてん。」 pic.twitter.com/bmUppKC2nX — 歌うわたあめ (@watakodayo) June 23, 2013

Dog: “I was taking a nap and it started raining.”

もしもツイッターに「知らんがな」ボタンがあったら。 pic.twitter.com/TULNe0YZvc

— 非リア充あるある (@hi_riaju_) May 31, 2013

What if there was an “I don’t give a shit” button on Twitter?

佐川急便がやってしました……… pic.twitter.com/zJfx1Rl5Jh — East (@gtosairisuta) June 23, 2013

A truck in a little trouble.

正方形を31個見つけたら人材、35個は天才、40個以上はアップル社の面接行ったほうがいいらしい（笑） pic.twitter.com/jj5e4wLVwT

— よっ！ポジなか (@ftjhsmj) May 17, 2013

How many squares can you find? If you can find more than 40, you belong at an Apple job interview.

抹茶アイスの蓋を開けたら… くっそwwwwww 吹いたww pic.twitter.com/RgEG4DFTA2

— Kissy (@Kissy0722) June 23, 2013

I opened some maccha ice cream and I found— LoL.

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Japan’s Mixi to appoint new CEO, co-founder Kenji Kasahara to step down

Masaru Ikeda 2013.05.15

Japanese social network giant Mixi (TYO:2121) announced today that its co-founder Kenji Kasahara would step down from the CEO position. Yusuke Asakura will take over in his place effective June 25th when the company’s next shareholder meeting is scheduled. Asakura started his career at McKinsey & Co, founding his startup Naked Technology in August of 2010 [1]. That company was subsequently acquired by Mixi. In the announcement, Mr. Kasahara expressed some parting thoughts: Mr. Asakura has two different backgrounds — working at a big consulting firm and running his own startup, and that experience will help guide him to make good decisions in a logical manner, with passion. He is still just 30 years old but has the great entrepreneurial drive needed to lead our business. 16 years has been passed since the launch of Find Job (a talent/job matching site by Mixi), and nine years has been passed since the launch of the Mixi social network platform. I’ll be stepping down as chairman, but our new CEO will evolve the entire company to bring more new services to the community. Last August Mixi set up an internal ‘innovation team’ to intensify service development efforts. So far their products include app…

Japanese social network giant Mixi (TYO:2121) announced today that its co-founder Kenji Kasahara would step down from the CEO position. Yusuke Asakura will take over in his place effective June 25th when the company’s next shareholder meeting is scheduled.

From the left: the current CEO Kenji Kasahara and upcoming CEO Yusuke Asakura — Current CEO Kenji Kasahara (left) and incoming CEO Yusuke Asakura (right)

Asakura started his career at McKinsey & Co, founding his startup Naked Technology in August of 2010 [1]. That company was subsequently acquired by Mixi. In the announcement, Mr. Kasahara expressed some parting thoughts:

Mr. Asakura has two different backgrounds — working at a big consulting firm and running his own startup, and that experience will help guide him to make good decisions in a logical manner, with passion. He is still just 30 years old but has the great entrepreneurial drive needed to lead our business.

16 years has been passed since the launch of Find Job (a talent/job matching site by Mixi), and nine years has been passed since the launch of the Mixi social network platform. I’ll be stepping down as chairman, but our new CEO will evolve the entire company to bring more new services to the community.

Last August Mixi set up an internal ‘innovation team’ to intensify service development efforts. So far their products include app testing service DeployGate and photo printing app Nohana. These are not derivatives from the social network, and they represent entirely new revenue streams for the company.

Mixi has also been aggressively acquiring high-profile startups and entrepreneurs, and this is a trend that can be seen across the entire Japanese tech scene, with Yahoo Japan being especially active.

Press briefing at Mixi Headquarters (May 15th, Tokyo)

We’ve recently written about another Naked Technology alum Miku Hirano, who is trying to conquer the Southeast Asia region with a unique photo sharing app. ↩

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StickerMe: Add your own face to mobile chat stickers, share on Facebook, Line, or Kakaotalk

SCORE 2,290

Rick Martin 2013.05.03

Adding to our growing list of fun Japanese photo apps, here’s one for all your guys who have joined the mobile chat app craze. It’s called StickerMe, and it comes from the folks at Motion Portrait, an app publisher well known for its face-altering technology. One of the biggest attractions of mobile chat applications like Line or Kakaotalk is that you can use fun stickers to express yourself. And now with StickerMe, you can take a picture of yourself or any of your friends, and make it into a cute sticker that you can send with your favorite mobile chat application. After taking your initial photo, you can then choose from a pretty wide array of stamps, many of them closely resembling those you’d find on Line (see pictures below). But given the growing popularity of these chat apps in Asia and around the world, this certainly looks like it could be a popular photo utility. Check it out over the Apple App Store, or see how it works in the video above.

Adding to our growing list of fun Japanese photo apps, here’s one for all your guys who have joined the mobile chat app craze. It’s called StickerMe, and it comes from the folks at Motion Portrait, an app publisher well known for its face-altering technology.

One of the biggest attractions of mobile chat applications like Line or Kakaotalk is that you can use fun stickers to express yourself. And now with StickerMe, you can take a picture of yourself or any of your friends, and make it into a cute sticker that you can send with your favorite mobile chat application.

After taking your initial photo, you can then choose from a pretty wide array of stamps, many of them closely resembling those you’d find on Line (see pictures below). But given the growing popularity of these chat apps in Asia and around the world, this certainly looks like it could be a popular photo utility.

Check it out over the Apple App Store, or see how it works in the video above.

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Japanese microblog ‘Arrow’ lets you vent stress towards a single random stranger

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.04.26

In Japan, since many people are connected with work-related acquaintances on Facebook, many suffer from not being able to express themselves freely. Arrow is an anonymous mini blog that was released in May of 2011, aiming to become a solution to such problems. Arrow has more than 70,000 unique users and over 11 million postings. If you think of this number as people who might be secretly venting about others, that’s a pretty big number. Users on Arrow post their inner thoughts and feelings within the 200 character limit, and then the “Arrow” is sent to a random user on the site. On Arrow, there are no strings attached. The only connection you have with someone is while you’re responding to an arrow or getting a response. Users posts all sorts of things on Arrow, starting from what they’re having for dinner to something more serious like a crisis with their spouse. The good thing about arrow is that you will always get a response. If a user who received an arrow does not respond, the arrow is automatically sent to someone else who would respond. There is a feature called ‘TaraiMawashi’ (meaning to rotate) that allows users to skip…

In Japan, since many people are connected with work-related acquaintances on Facebook, many suffer from not being able to express themselves freely. Arrow is an anonymous mini blog that was released in May of 2011, aiming to become a solution to such problems.

Arrow has more than 70,000 unique users and over 11 million postings. If you think of this number as people who might be secretly venting about others, that’s a pretty big number. Users on Arrow post their inner thoughts and feelings within the 200 character limit, and then the “Arrow” is sent to a random user on the site. On Arrow, there are no strings attached. The only connection you have with someone is while you’re responding to an arrow or getting a response.

Users posts all sorts of things on Arrow, starting from what they’re having for dinner to something more serious like a crisis with their spouse. The good thing about arrow is that you will always get a response. If a user who received an arrow does not respond, the arrow is automatically sent to someone else who would respond. There is a feature called ‘TaraiMawashi’ (meaning to rotate) that allows users to skip arrows as well.

Kazuki Masuda is the COO of Green romp, the company behind Arrow. He elaborated on the network’s uniqueness:

Arrow is different in that users register themselves anonymously and they can never connect to each other. They are free from the stress and attachments of being connected with their boss or clients and can simply be who they are. And whatever they post, they will always get a response from someone. People will never feel fatigue over using our service.

In Japan, there’s something called “Honne to Tatemae” which roughly translates to the contrast between one’s true intentions/feelings and what is said on the surface. Japanese people often prioritize being polite over being blunt or harsh. Arrow is exclusively for Honnne with no strings attached. Green romp hopes that a place like Arrow and other existing social neworks can co-exist for people living in the digital age.

Not only is this service a very clever one but company itself seems very unique. Interestingly they present a questionnaire before Arrow’s user registration, and selects which users can join depending on the answers. Examples of such questions are “Are you a nice person?,” “Can you take a joke?,” or “Do you use drugs?”

Arrow is available on both iOS and Andoid.

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U.S. teens show Facebook fatigue. But what about kids in Japan?

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.04.15

According to new research by Piper Jaffray, teens are growing tired of popular web destinations like Facebook and Youtube. They are moving on to sites like Reddit, Twitter, Vine, 4chan, and even SnapChat. But is this also true in Japan? Video Research Interative conducted a survey that might have the answer. The survey was done in Janurary of this year, and it found that the most frequently visited site among university students is Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689), followed by Google, Facebook, and Youtube. In comparison to teenagers, university students preferred sites like Facebook and Hatena, whereas teenagers preferred Youtube, FC2, and Ameba. Hatena operates series of web services like Hatena Diary, Jinriki Search Hatena (Jinriki means manpower in English), and the Japanese Delicious equivalent Hatena Bookmark. Ameba operates a lineup of services as well, but is mostly known for its blogging platform. The smartphone penetration of survey respondents has grown from 15.1% in November of 2010 to 43.5% in 2011, and 68.9% in same period last year. Many university students decided to switch from feature phones to smartphones when beginning their job-hunting in order to check for updated information and emails on the go. To keep up with the rapidly shifting…

According to new research by Piper Jaffray, teens are growing tired of popular web destinations like Facebook and Youtube. They are moving on to sites like Reddit, Twitter, Vine, 4chan, and even SnapChat. But is this also true in Japan? Video Research Interative conducted a survey that might have the answer.

The survey was done in Janurary of this year, and it found that the most frequently visited site among university students is Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689), followed by Google, Facebook, and Youtube. In comparison to teenagers, university students preferred sites like Facebook and Hatena, whereas teenagers preferred Youtube, FC2, and Ameba. Hatena operates series of web services like Hatena Diary, Jinriki Search Hatena (Jinriki means manpower in English), and the Japanese Delicious equivalent Hatena Bookmark. Ameba operates a lineup of services as well, but is mostly known for its blogging platform.

The smartphone penetration of survey respondents has grown from 15.1% in November of 2010 to 43.5% in 2011, and 68.9% in same period last year. Many university students decided to switch from feature phones to smartphones when beginning their job-hunting in order to check for updated information and emails on the go.

To keep up with the rapidly shifting interests of young people, Japanese companies are coming up with different strategies. CyberAgent, for example created a dedicated team for girls’ products back in December of 2012.

The smartphone shipping volume grew 146% compared to last year, and one survey (by Markezine conducted in August of 2012) suggests that one in five girls use their smartphone for longer than ten hours a day. Smapo, the Japanese equivalent of ShopKick that we covered in a past article, is finding new partners for female brands to better satisfy this growing segment.

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