Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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.

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