Facebook Wins Relatively Few Friends in Japan | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Wins Relatively Few Friends in Japan

nytimes.com

17 pointsjonburs13 comments

From someone who uses mixi, I can comment on a few reasons as to why they'd prefer it against Facebook:

* The Japanese are big fans of anonymous

A lot of big sites in Japan are that way because of their anonymous nature. 2ch is HUGE in Japan, because you can write whatever you want and for a majority of users it's all anonymous. Yes, you can make yourself known to others, but it's highly frowned upon. Another site that utilizes this is Nico Video, a site which lets users comment on videos anonymously.

Mixi holds to that as well, though a bit differently. There are many users who utilize pseudo names to mask their real identity (myself included in fact). What you can hide from others is customizable in a very simple way. Your birthday, where you live, what your hobbies are.

Then all your content has privacy controls as well. Everytime you post something you can decide who gets to see it. Your friends, your friend's friends, a specific group of people, or no one. While facebook allows this as well, my opinion is that Mixi makes it very easy.

* It's about going with someone you trust

The Japanese are big fans of going with things that are close to their circle of friends, or very established. Mixi is a Japanese company that originally started as an invite only service. That's a big part in helping it spread. "Hey my friend invited me so it must be cool since I trust what my friend says" kind of mentatility means people are more likely to signup and the effect spreads. While mixi is no longer invite only, they require a registered cell phone number (there are other ways but few people speak of them for fear of their abuse). This keeps things "inside Japan" further increasing the comfort of use.

As for the features, mixi emphasizes "friends of friends" relationship. When you visit someone's profile, it shows if they're connected to one of your friends. "Hey this person is friends with my friend, so they should be all right" becomes the frame of thought. This gives users a comfortable way to expand their network with people that share their interests (there are exceptions of course).

Not sure how to search for people to become friends with? mixi has a feature called 足跡 (translation: footprint) which lets you see who has visited your profile page. It also shows you if someone is a friend of one of your friends. These views usually come from people who are interested in something you said, or a friend told them about you. This means there's even a higher chance that the person shares your interests, and it's easier to become friends.

* The Japanese are HUGE cell phone users

Someone already mentioned it, but mixi has an interface tailored to the cell phones provided by major carriers. They recently made one for the iPhone as well. As having a mobile site is a bigger deal over there, it was part of the architecture from the start.

There are other reasons as well, but I think these are the big ones for users.

If I were running Facebook, I don't think I'd want to be considered as competing with Mixi, Gree, and Mobage. A lot of people use Mixi almost as a blind dating service, and that's not really what Facebook does.

I'm not much a fan of Facebook, but I could see them picking up there if they really push the photo sharing and contact list aspects of the service, though. For a lot of my Japanese friends on Facebook, I could probably tell you every meal they've eaten outside their house since they've joined. Partnerships with Purikura wouldn't be an altogether bad idea, either.

The first thing anyone does when they meet in Japan is transfer contact info over infra-red. It'd make a lot of sense to integrate it with "friending" on Facebook, since as it is, changing your address means e-mailing your entire contact list, and losing your phone means losing contact with anyone who doesn't e-mail you regularly. There's definitely room for them there - they'll find it if they're actually committed to learning how things work there.

I would suspect they could easily gain ground once they get some people working in Japan to get all the cultural "quirks". I don't use facebook myself, but everyone around me seems to use it quite a bit, Japanese as much as foreigner, but that's mostly relatively young population.

I've never transferred my contact info over infra-red. I do however have an enormous pile of meishi (business cards). You are right that many more people in Japan use their phone provided email address rather than a service like google or yahoo. I've had that "your phone email address and your personal email address don't have to be the same" talk with many, many people.

One factor not mentioned in the article is that a large portion of the Japanese internet population has been accessing the web through their cell phones for years. The web as viewed on those phones is unlike those seen on computers or on modern smartphones. For example, NTT DoCoMo, one of the major Japanese cell service providers, launched its i-mode web service in 1999. Competing providers KDDI & J-Phone soon launched EZweb & J-Sky, respectively. By 2006, these services had already amassed 80 million subscribers.[0]

I highly doubt Facebook supports any of these services, which can make it very difficult to break into the Japanese market even if they get all the cultural kinks ironed out and pay some celebrities to endorse them.

0: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/I-mode

When I access Facebook from Japan it's at least trying to promote such a service to me: http://i.imgur.com/zpaAz.png

Yeah, that looks like it. Note the "There is a long way to go but most basic functionality is there." Sounds like they only recently started working on it, and given the difficulty of unseating entrenched social networking sites, I'd say Facebook's got their work cut out for them. They'd have to provide something that's clearly not available from the existing sites.

The best way to do this would probably be to convince the Japanese of the value in being a member of a social networking site connected to your real life, since competing with existing services on their own turf is going to be very difficult. However, I don't know if the Japanese would be interested in such a service.

This is a valid point, but I think it's changing. I spent October to December in Japan, and the iPhone is HUGE there now (whereas a year ago, I didn't see one). I'd guess that 30% of the people I saw on the train used an iPhone.

I live in Japan and often access FB through my cheap, simple Softbank phone and service.

Unfortuantely, I can't take screenshots but FB has done a great job of making it easy to use. It even leverages various common emoticons as icons for everything ranging from "Home" to "Search" to "Messages".

And btw, it wasn't always this way; they made the change earlier this year.

I think Japanese people prefer to use Japanese companies when possible, just like Americans prefer American products over made-in-China products. "Loyalty" aside, the user experience ends up being better, because the users and developers are the same people.

One of the biggest differences between mixi and Facebook is that on mixi the trend is to stay relatively anonymous, i.e. with a nickname that your friends would recognize but someone googling your name would miss. It's possible that this might have an effect on facebooks uptake in Japan.

Also, an easy way to link your mixi account would be an obvious way to get people to cross over.

There's a cultural issue here. Real name is the core of Facdbook's success. That's what set it apart from MySpace. The novelty of MySpace quickly wore off after the first few months making fake online friends, but Facebook had your real friends from real life that you actually want to talk with.

Hopefully Goldman Sachs will be able to arrange for a treaty to be signed with Japan requiring their citizens to sign up for Facebook or be fined.

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