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In Japan, dumbass kids go viral shooting dumbass photos

Yukari Mitsuhashi Yukari Mitsuhashi
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In Japan, the word ‘Enjo” refers to when something goes viral on social networks for all the wrong reasons. Twitter is the most common environment for such unfortunate incidents, and recently, there has been an unusual series of prank photos posted by various part-time restaurant employees. Sometimes the people responsible are customers as well, but in almost every case the results are pretty embarrassing. Below you can see some examples of some prank photos that an assortment of foolish kids have posted on Twitter. In many cases, the people behind these incidents are teenagers. News of such cases has appeared on TV, which appears to be spawning more and more dumbass kids to imitate the behavior. In an extreme case, one steakhouse was forced to shut down after waves of complaints were made to the restaurant. In Japan, these sorts of pranks also contribute to an unfounded fear of social networks as well. Now there are even websites and Twitter accounts that keeps people informed about these incidents. And as you might expect, Naver Matome, has a round-up of these viral photos too. These pranks on social networks are becoming more and more of a problem, with no sign of…

In Japan, the word ‘Enjo” refers to when something goes viral on social networks for all the wrong reasons. Twitter is the most common environment for such unfortunate incidents, and recently, there has been an unusual series of prank photos posted by various part-time restaurant employees. Sometimes the people responsible are customers as well, but in almost every case the results are pretty embarrassing. Below you can see some examples of some prank photos that an assortment of foolish kids have posted on Twitter.

In many cases, the people behind these incidents are teenagers. News of such cases has appeared on TV, which appears to be spawning more and more dumbass kids to imitate the behavior. In an extreme case, one steakhouse was forced to shut down after waves of complaints were made to the restaurant. In Japan, these sorts of pranks also contribute to an unfounded fear of social networks as well.

Now there are even websites and Twitter accounts that keeps people informed about these incidents. And as you might expect, Naver Matome, has a round-up of these viral photos too. These pranks on social networks are becoming more and more of a problem, with no sign of ending. Even planking is better than this.

MaxValue-icecreamA customer lies on ice cream. (photo via. Hamsoku)

BurgerKing-EnjoBurger King employee dives into leftover hamburger buns. (photo via m9l)

PizzahutPizza Hut employee using pizza dough as a facial mask. (photo via. 2ch)

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Yahoo Japan to bolster search results with NHN Japan’s Naver Matome

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Today Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) and NHN Japan held a joint press conference to announce that the two internet giants would be working together to integrate NHN’s Naver Matome curated content into Yahoo Japan’s search results. The intention is to bring a human element into Yahoo Japan’s search, thus creating a sort of hybrid search experience. For those of you not familiar with Naver Matome, which began back in 2009, my colleague Yukari gave a wonderful overview of the curated service earlier in the month as part of our ‘Japanese internet in depth’ series. Yahoo Japan will also set up a specifically designed search engine for curated Naver Matome results. That engine will also be deployed to Naver Matome in order to provide a better search experience. Work on this project will begin in April. As you can see in the chart below, Matome’s growth has staggering, currently with 41 million visitors a month and over 1.2 billion page views per month. It’s growth over the course of 2012, in terms of monthly visitors, has out-paced even Facebook and Twitter. Needless to say, today’s deal ensures that the platform still has some growing left to do.

nhn-japan-yahoo
Yahoo Japan president Manabu Miyasaka, NHN Japan president Akira Morikawa

Today Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) and NHN Japan held a joint press conference to announce that the two internet giants would be working together to integrate NHN’s Naver Matome curated content into Yahoo Japan’s search results. The intention is to bring a human element into Yahoo Japan’s search, thus creating a sort of hybrid search experience.

For those of you not familiar with Naver Matome, which began back in 2009, my colleague Yukari gave a wonderful overview of the curated service earlier in the month as part of our ‘Japanese internet in depth’ series.

Yahoo Japan will also set up a specifically designed search engine for curated Naver Matome results. That engine will also be deployed to Naver Matome in order to provide a better search experience. Work on this project will begin in April.

As you can see in the chart below, Matome’s growth has staggering, currently with 41 million visitors a month and over 1.2 billion page views per month. It’s growth over the course of 2012, in terms of monthly visitors, has out-paced even Facebook and Twitter. Needless to say, today’s deal ensures that the platform still has some growing left to do.

twitter-facebook
Monthly visitors of Naver Matome, Facebook and Twitter.
(comparison of November of 2011 and November of 2012, in unit of 1,000 visitors)

naver-matome-growth
Monthly pageviews of Naver Matome (in unit of 100 million pageviews)

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Japanese curation site Naver Matome boasts 41 million users, cures information overload

SCORE 1,555 Yukari Mitsuhashi Yukari Mitsuhashi
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This is part of our ‘Japanese internet in-depth’ series (RSS). Stay tuned for more features that aim to explain what makes the internet unique in Japan. Naver Matome is a very simple curation platform that launched back in July of 2009. To date it has accumulated over 41 million users and over 1.2 billion page views per month. The platform is now operated by NHN Japan (perhaps best known as the company behind the Line chat app) after a merger with Naver in November of 2011. On the site, users are able to create pages that bundle images, links, and videos under a topic of their choice, ranging from dieting, to politics, to web services. There are many reasons behind the platform’s sucess including its friendly user interface, the wide genre of topics curated, compatibility with different social networks (especially Twitter), and strong SEO for both Yahoo and Google with 70% of its traffic coming from the two search engines. But above all, Naver Matome helps users overcome information overflow. This is especially true for the younger generation, which is Naver Matome’s biggest user segment 1. Many young people have never subscribed to newspapers, and for this reason Japan’s Nikkei,…

naver-matome

This is part of our ‘Japanese internet in-depth’ series (RSS). Stay tuned for more features that aim to explain what makes the internet unique in Japan.

Naver Matome is a very simple curation platform that launched back in July of 2009. To date it has accumulated over 41 million users and over 1.2 billion page views per month. The platform is now operated by NHN Japan (perhaps best known as the company behind the Line chat app) after a merger with Naver in November of 2011.

On the site, users are able to create pages that bundle images, links, and videos under a topic of their choice, ranging from dieting, to politics, to web services. There are many reasons behind the platform’s sucess including its friendly user interface, the wide genre of topics curated, compatibility with different social networks (especially Twitter), and strong SEO for both Yahoo and Google with 70% of its traffic coming from the two search engines.

cosplay-matome
Curated cosplay on Matome

But above all, Naver Matome helps users overcome information overflow. This is especially true for the younger generation, which is Naver Matome’s biggest user segment 1. Many young people have never subscribed to newspapers, and for this reason Japan’s Nikkei, one of the country’s largest newspapers, has partnered with NHN to allow the use of texts (up to 200 characters) and images from the digital version of the newspaper in the hopes of attracting younger readers.

The total number of Matome pages now exceeds half a million. But what is the motivation for users to create these pages? Many users do it to earn pocket money. In November of 2010, Naver Matome began an incentive program, where some very popular Matome users with around half a million page views per month could receive payments as high as a few hundered thousand dollars.

Narumi is an example of popular curator with over 2.3 million monthly page views. Some topics he has created include:

Some curators specialize in tech, others in sports. Many of the curated topics are in fact very interesting and inspirational, although there are also many meant to be simply light or humorous.

Sometimes old articles from my personal blog get retweeted, and it’s likely that Naver Matome is contributing to that. The curators on the platform are great hunters of information, assisting others who may have difficulty finding relevant content. I hope that in the future traditional media can find a way to cooperate with Naver Matome and take advantage of the curation platform rather than seeing it as a threat or potential copyright violation, as some currently do.

Naver Matome is a unique corner of the Japanese net, and if you can read Japanese, you’re sure to find something you like over there. Enjoy!

  1. The 20 to 29 demographic accounts for 34% of users, and 15 to 19 makes up 16%↩

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