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Japanese youths love Line. But is social fatigue setting in?

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Japanese mobile marketing research company Livigen conducted a survey of 200 students about their usage of social network applications. When asked about which social network apps they use most frequently, 65% of respondents answered Line, 29% said Twitter, and 5% Facebook (see chart below). Back in August at its ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ conference, Line Corporation announced that among its 230 million registered users to date, 47 million come from Japan. That’s a pretty hefty figure considering that the country’s population is about 130 million. When asked why they prefer Line, many students responded that most of their communication with friends happens there, phone calls are free, and its an easy way to get in touch with friends. Students who favor Twitter cited its ease of use, the ability to read tweets by celebrities, and the general wide variety of information, stories, and photos. Students who like Facebook say they like to find out what friends are up to, and they also like how it helps them keep in touch with friends overseas. Looking at the social space outside of Japan, we have seen quite a few reports this year about ‘Facebook fatigue’. This may also be true for social…

LINE_Hello_Friends_2013_Japan_0483

Japanese mobile marketing research company Livigen conducted a survey of 200 students about their usage of social network applications. When asked about which social network apps they use most frequently, 65% of respondents answered Line, 29% said Twitter, and 5% Facebook (see chart below). Back in August at its ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ conference, Line Corporation announced that among its 230 million registered users to date, 47 million come from Japan. That’s a pretty hefty figure considering that the country’s population is about 130 million.

When asked why they prefer Line, many students responded that most of their communication with friends happens there, phone calls are free, and its an easy way to get in touch with friends. Students who favor Twitter cited its ease of use, the ability to read tweets by celebrities, and the general wide variety of information, stories, and photos. Students who like Facebook say they like to find out what friends are up to, and they also like how it helps them keep in touch with friends overseas.

Looking at the social space outside of Japan, we have seen quite a few reports this year about ‘Facebook fatigue’. This may also be true for social networks in Japan, and not just for Facebook either. Livigen asked Line users if they feel and fatigue toward using the mobile chat service. 8.5% responded that they feel a strong sense of fatigue, while 16.5% answered that they felt somewhat tired of it. That’s a total of 25% showing some weariness. As for heavy users of Twitter, 15.5% responded that they feel some fatigue, while 7.5% said the same for Facebook.

socialnetworks-students-Line

Line and Twitter are both popular among young people, but for Facebook, kids tend to open an account as part of their job-hunting process. Although kids are connected with their friends on Twitter, its ‘at-your-own-pace’ characteristic allows for a more loose connection. In contrast, all notifications you get on Line (messages, stamps, invitation to Line game, etc.) are addressed to you specifically, and people often feel more pressure to respond.

Admittedly this survey used a very small sample, but Line is undoubtedly the dominant communication tool among kids in Japan. The closed nature of this social network provides comfort and security that many mainstream users want.

Closed can be good, but is it too closed? Figuring out the right distance to put between friends is mostly a responsibility left to the social network users. For now, Line appears to have hit the sweet spot for Japanese users, but it remains to be seen whether it stays that way.

How we socialize online is, of course, always changing.

In Japan, dumbass kids go viral shooting dumbass photos

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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)

New iPhone Twitter client from Japan lets you send stickers!

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Readers may recall back in April when we featured the very clever Stamp Messenger, an app that lets users send animated stamps in Facebook messages. Since then, of course, Facebook has added support for its own stickers, although they’re not especially impressive. But the company behind Stamp Messenger, Tokyo-based Pickles Inc., has been busy with something else in the meantime. Now it is bringing Asian sticker fun to Twitter via its new app PicTwick. It’s an iOS Twitter client that, in addition to having a slick design, lets you send sticker images to your friends quickly and easily. Check out our demo video above to see how it works. It’s a media-rich experience, supporting the in-line display of photos and video from 13 different services, including Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Tumblr, Path and more. And for those who like a customized Twitter client, PicTwick includes 11 different colorful skins – although so far I find myself liking the wood finish of the default theme very much. You can also load your own backgrounds from a wide selection, or even load your own background from your camera roll. But it should be noted that viewing these stickers outside the app…

Readers may recall back in April when we featured the very clever Stamp Messenger, an app that lets users send animated stamps in Facebook messages. Since then, of course, Facebook has added support for its own stickers, although they’re not especially impressive.

But the company behind Stamp Messenger, Tokyo-based Pickles Inc., has been busy with something else in the meantime. Now it is bringing Asian sticker fun to Twitter via its new app PicTwick. It’s an iOS Twitter client that, in addition to having a slick design, lets you send sticker images to your friends quickly and easily. Check out our demo video above to see how it works.

It’s a media-rich experience, supporting the in-line display of photos and video from 13 different services, including Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Tumblr, Path and more.

And for those who like a customized Twitter client, PicTwick includes 11 different colorful skins – although so far I find myself liking the wood finish of the default theme very much. You can also load your own backgrounds from a wide selection, or even load your own background from your camera roll.

But it should be noted that viewing these stickers outside the app is not as smooth as it is from within PicTwick. Users will see a web link with the sticker, as well as links that encourage you to download the application. (Update: It looks like you can view them on Twitter, but not in direct messages) [1].

It’s still a pretty solid Twitter client though, even if you never send a single sticker. So if you’d like to try out PicTwick for yourself, you can get it for free over on the App Store. (h/t Weekly Ascii)

pictwick_sticker pictwick_ash

pictwick_support pictwick_skins


  1. I’d also love to see List support, although I expect that wouldn’t be a priority for Pickles.  ↩

Japan’s love of ‘Now’ on Twitter, and the app that ranks top trends

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Keyword Now is a very simple website that allows you to find the most talked-about topics in Japan. As Twitter became more popular, people started ending their tweets with the word ’Now’ as a way to express what they are currently up to. The site crawls the web every hour to find out what’s popular, and lets you see the trends by hour, day, or by week. By tapping on a particular topic, you can further search Wikipedia, Youtube, Twitter, or find images. You can also see a list of related news articles for a given topic, removing the hassle of searching and finding relavent news yourself. Keyword Now is interesting in that it reveals that people are still very much influenced by TV and old media. Many of the topics that appear in the app’s trending list comes from TV shows being broadcast. For example, this morning in Tokyo, there was a talk show called Sawako no Asa, or Sawako’s morning. The guest today was well-known violinist Taro Hakase, and his name appears in the top ten hourly rankings. This one-stop news app is very simple. It can be really handy as a way of keeping up to date…

KeywordNow

Keyword Now is a very simple website that allows you to find the most talked-about topics in Japan. As Twitter became more popular, people started ending their tweets with the word ’Now’ as a way to express what they are currently up to.

The site crawls the web every hour to find out what’s popular, and lets you see the trends by hour, day, or by week. By tapping on a particular topic, you can further search Wikipedia, Youtube, Twitter, or find images. You can also see a list of related news articles for a given topic, removing the hassle of searching and finding relavent news yourself.

KeywordNow-app

Keyword Now is interesting in that it reveals that people are still very much influenced by TV and old media. Many of the topics that appear in the app’s trending list comes from TV shows being broadcast. For example, this morning in Tokyo, there was a talk show called Sawako no Asa, or Sawako’s morning. The guest today was well-known violinist Taro Hakase, and his name appears in the top ten hourly rankings.

This one-stop news app is very simple. It can be really handy as a way of keeping up to date on the latest happenings, since the app covers anything from world news to politics to gossip – so you’ll have no shortage of material for chatting at the water cooler at work, for example. I can also imagine people using this app to find topics for the popular curation site Naver Matome .

Keyword Now is available on the web, as well as on iOS.

4 creative online marketing campaigns from Japan

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Yesterday we wrote about how Japanese beverage company Suntory is leveraging Facebook to collect user feedback to develop new products. Many other Japanese companies are using online tools in interesting ways as well. And here is a short list of a few of the more creative examples we have found. 1. Build your own ice cream cake ¶ Suica card is an IC card that many Japanese people use for payments on their commute. View Card, the company behind these pass cards, has collaborated with Lotte Ice for a one-day promotion. Recently, there was a Twitter campaign where users combine 18 Suica Bar watermelon slice popsicles to create a whole watermelon 1. On July 27th View Card gave consumers who signed up for a Suica card (with a credit card feature) 18 popsicles to create this unique ice cream cake (see photo below). 2. A year’s worth of burgers ¶ Mos Burger is a popular hamburger franchise in Japan. The company differentiates itself from other fast food chains with its made-after-order fresh food. Beginning on August 1st, the company started a Twitter/Facebook photo contest asking people to post photos that make them smile. Winners will receive various awards, including a…

Yesterday we wrote about how Japanese beverage company Suntory is leveraging Facebook to collect user feedback to develop new products. Many other Japanese companies are using online tools in interesting ways as well. And here is a short list of a few of the more creative examples we have found.

1. Build your own ice cream cake

Suica card is an IC card that many Japanese people use for payments on their commute. View Card, the company behind these pass cards, has collaborated with Lotte Ice for a one-day promotion. Recently, there was a Twitter campaign where users combine 18 Suica Bar watermelon slice popsicles to create a whole watermelon 1. On July 27th View Card gave consumers who signed up for a Suica card (with a credit card feature) 18 popsicles to create this unique ice cream cake (see photo below).

suika-icecream-cake

2. A year’s worth of burgers

Mos-BurgerMos Burger is a popular hamburger franchise in Japan. The company differentiates itself from other fast food chains with its made-after-order fresh food. Beginning on August 1st, the company started a Twitter/Facebook photo contest asking people to post photos that make them smile. Winners will receive various awards, including a Mos Card which you can use to buy a year’s worth of Mos Burgers (a signature burger at the franchise). 320 yen per burger times 365 days would total 116,800 yen (or about $1,175) worth. Not bad!

3. A life supply of snack bars

This is a campaign currently being held on Japan’s biggest online mall, Rakuten, asking consumers to decide on their favorite two snacks. If you were to chose one snack for the rest of your life, which one would it be? The two snacks competing are both a very popular among Japanese people: Happy Turn and Umaibo. In fact, Umaibo is so popular that there are even Umaibo mobile games. Anyone who has liked the Rakuten Facebook page can participate, and one winner will be chosen for each snack. For a bag of Happy Turn, the appropriate consumption per month according to the manufacturer is three bags, so the winner will receive 3,600 bags, or enough to last for 100 years.

Rakuten-ultimate-snack

4. More heat, more money!

Georgia Coffee is manufactured by Coca Cola Japan, and the brand recently held a campaign on Twitter, awarding a daily winner with a cash prize and a box of Georgia coffee. The company launched a special website where it posts Georgia- and summer-related topics per day, such as ‘What words would you use to toast with a super cold can of Georgia?’ The amount of cash awarded is decided by the hottest recorded temperature in Japan that day, with 10,000 yen being awarded for every additional degree over 30 degrees celcius. So if the hottest temperature is 36.6 degrees, the winner will receive 70,000 yen (or $700).

Georgia-Campaign

  1. ‘Suica’ means watermelon in Japanese, and this is a popsicle that takes the shape of a watermelon slice.

10 fun photos popular on Twitter Japan

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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.

A chalk drawing on a blackboard.

The truth about My Melody, the popular Sanrio character.

A digest manga of a popular NHK TV show.  

6000-year-old skeleton couple found in Iran.

Strawberry-flavored ramen noodles found in Aomori prefecture.  

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

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

A truck in a little trouble.

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

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

Japan tech this week: Startups pitching, Gungho winning, Facebook liked

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We’ve had another fun week here at SD, doing our best to bring you interesting tech stories going down in Japan. But in case you missed any of it, here’s a wrap up below. Readers on mobile might want to check them out over on Readlists or in ePub format. If you’d like to get this weekly summary plus other bonus content, we hope you’ll check out our shiny new newsletter here. Featured Niconico Douga: Japanese online video site puts discussion front and center Smapo: Can Japan’s answer to Shopkick fend off new competition? A fine line: Shantell Martin projects freestyle performance art Japan’s Gungho Entertainment is winning at home, but will global gamers get it? Business Japanese reality show will ask contestants to live the Amazon life 5 Japanese studios team up to create online anime platform for overseas markets Messaging app Line partners with Nokia to accelerate global expansion Microsoft rolls out huge teaser ads for Surface tablet in Tokyo Gyao and Gree team up to invest in animation content development Design The future of libraries? In Japan, elevated study pods encourage conversation Japanese startup turns oversized greeting cards into an unlikely digital business Fun apps Ewww! Japanese…

We’ve had another fun week here at SD, doing our best to bring you interesting tech stories going down in Japan. But in case you missed any of it, here’s a wrap up below. Readers on mobile might want to check them out over on Readlists or in ePub format.

If you’d like to get this weekly summary plus other bonus content, we hope you’ll check out our shiny new newsletter here.

Business

Design

Fun apps

Standout startups

Other notable stories

Docomo publishes ‘Twitter Local Yellow Pages’ for Japan

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Japanese mobile carrier NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) has announced a new ‘Twitter local yellow pages’ mobile site in cooperation with Twitter Japan and local radio stations. The new mobile site, accessible at tw-yp.jp, will include recommended Twitter accounts, sorted into the categories of food, shopping, sight seeing spots, local reports, celebrities, and sports teams. Drilling down into each category, the listed recommended accounts can be further browsed according to Japan’s prefectures and cities. The intent here is very much in the same spirit of Twitter’s suggested users function. It aims to provide assistance to first time and beginner Twitter users who might not immediately know where they can find relevant information after signing up. In theory, this will help Japanese Twitter users stay better connected with important Twitter broadcasters in their local areas, a service which should prove valuable in the event of local emergencies when critical information might be disseminated through those channels. While the service is intended to be a mobile site, it is also accessible by PC. Docomo and Twitter Japan have working together as partners since May of 2011.

twitter-yellow-pages

Japanese mobile carrier NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) has announced a new ‘Twitter local yellow pages’ mobile site in cooperation with Twitter Japan and local radio stations.

The new mobile site, accessible at tw-yp.jp, will include recommended Twitter accounts, sorted into the categories of food, shopping, sight seeing spots, local reports, celebrities, and sports teams. Drilling down into each category, the listed recommended accounts can be further browsed according to Japan’s prefectures and cities.

The intent here is very much in the same spirit of Twitter’s suggested users function. It aims to provide assistance to first time and beginner Twitter users who might not immediately know where they can find relevant information after signing up.

In theory, this will help Japanese Twitter users stay better connected with important Twitter broadcasters in their local areas, a service which should prove valuable in the event of local emergencies when critical information might be disseminated through those channels. While the service is intended to be a mobile site, it is also accessible by PC.

Docomo and Twitter Japan have working together as partners since May of 2011.

twitter yellow pages

twitter yellow pages