THE BRIDGE

tag pdc okinawa

Japan really likes ‘Like Me’ avatar apps

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A while back when I reported that Ponus’s awesome tower defense game Battle Cats had made it to the top spot in the Japanese App Store, the game was soon after bumped off by a strange looking app called Like Me! Let’s make a portrait – Doodle version [1]. I didn’t make too much of it at the time, as I’m personally not such a fan of these dinky avatar-making applications. But it looks like lots of people in Japan like it, because Like Me (Doodle) has been hanging around as one of the top 5 free iOS apps ever since. It turns out that the developer, PDC Okinawa, has two other apps in its ‘Like Me’ series, including one that lets you do anime style avatars, and another one called ‘yurukawa’, which creates portraits in a sort of loose, unrefined style [2]. All three are doing respectably well in the entertainment category, with Doodle in the top spot, Anime at number eight, and Yurukawa at number 25 (see rankings above). I gave it a quick run run-through and found that creating your avatar is pretty simple. You can create your face using a wide selection of face parts, and…

like-me-apps
Japan app store ‘entertainment’ category, Mar 5, 2013

A while back when I reported that Ponus’s awesome tower defense game Battle Cats had made it to the top spot in the Japanese App Store, the game was soon after bumped off by a strange looking app called Like Me! Let’s make a portrait – Doodle version [1]. I didn’t make too much of it at the time, as I’m personally not such a fan of these dinky avatar-making applications. But it looks like lots of people in Japan like it, because Like Me (Doodle) has been hanging around as one of the top 5 free iOS apps ever since.

It turns out that the developer, PDC Okinawa, has two other apps in its ‘Like Me’ series, including one that lets you do anime style avatars, and another one called ‘yurukawa’, which creates portraits in a sort of loose, unrefined style [2]. All three are doing respectably well in the entertainment category, with Doodle in the top spot, Anime at number eight, and Yurukawa at number 25 (see rankings above).

doodle
Doodle
like-me-anime
Anime
yurukawa
Yurukawa

I gave it a quick run run-through and found that creating your avatar is pretty simple. You can create your face using a wide selection of face parts, and there are also special items that you can buy in-app if you’d like to make your avatar look extra special. Like Me Doodle is also doing respectably well in the top grossing charts, so apparently that virtual item strategy is working to some extent.

I’m not certain if their current popularity is entirely organic or due to some special campaign. There’s at least some cross promotion between apps. But for now, Japan appears to really like this Like Me series of apps. While the applications are in English, and could potentially grab some popularity abroad, I don’t expect PDC to try to market them outside Japan — although it would be nice to see it try.

For a closer look, check out their promo video for Like Me Doodle below.


  1. Catchy name, right?  ↩

  2. Technically, the company’s refers to itself as ‘pdc okinawa’ with no caps. Go figure.  ↩