Facebook unpopular in Japan
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
For some reason Japan still has this image of being a technologically advanced nation. I guess regarding hardware and infrastructure they are still advanced, but when it comes to the web and software they are waaaaay behind. Both in what they build, and in what they use.
The iPhone didn't really take off until a full year after it went on sale here (2 years after the US), android phones are just now starting to be sold, Twitter blew up recently but that wasn't until it was already a household name in the rest of the world. Nearly all mobile websites here are written in a carrier proprietary subset of WAP/HTML. Most non-mobile sites are entirely flash. The most popular search engine is still Yahoo. Shift-JIS encoding is more widely used than the world standard UTF-8. The list goes on and on.
I've been living in Japan for 4 years so I can speak from first hand experience. Before I came here I had the same image of Japan, but after being here for a while I can tell you that your image of Japan is not how it really is.
The Nintendo and Walkman era has ended. I wish people outside of Japan would finally realize this and stop acting surprised when Japan doesn't seem to be following the latest tech trend.
1) South Korea is similarly more advanced than the West in some ways and less in others.
Large transportation infrastructure in South Korea is among the best I've seen, both because it is so comprehensive and because it is so new. So for example, the Seoul subway is easily comparable to the NYC subway in terms of size and coverage, but feels much nicer because it's so much newer. The stations are larger, the trains are new, etc. Similarly, Korean rail is easily as good as the best you'll find in Europe. The National Highway system is comprehensive, modern and easy to navigate.
Communications infrastructure is fantastic, easily the best I've seen. Very fast high speed internet everywhere, great mobile service, digital mobile TV in the subway, etc. etc.
Some infrastructure is not as good. In the well developed parts of the cities things like sewage aren't a problem, but you quickly drop off the development cliff as you head away from city center. Public restrooms are infrequent and typically dirty. If they have toilet paper, count yourself lucky. (However, the tap water is considered quite clean and drinkable by world health authorities even if the locals habitually don't drink it out of decade's old habit when things weren't quite as good). Farm areas are like farm areas anywhere, lots of dirt and plants and animals, but because of the difficult terrain, bringing modern mass farming practices has been very difficult and has left rural areas very undeveloped in relation to what you might find in the U.S. or Europe.
There's a huge disparity in things like construction quality. Some areas have impressive, modern buildings. Some areas (particularly older areas built up in the late 70s early 80s) look shabby and have issues associated with shoddy construction.
2) Software in the South Korea is...not as advanced as in the West, but from the sounds of it, in better shape than in Japan.
There's a pretty thriving games industry that's as good as any average or better than average western developed games. There's also a pretty sizable contract software industry. Mostly Western firms who've setup shop to take advantage of highly educated developers and slightly lower pay.
Though the Internet is high speed, for various reasons, almost entirely legal (that would involve thousands of words to properly explain and would probably require a dive into South Korean Social Security law believe it or not), browser technology and techniques are stuck with IE6 era sites. This means lots and lots and lots of flash everywhere to make things look good. However, the design work is about as good as what you'll normally find in the west. Nothing spectacular, they aren't pushing the boundaries of usability, but there's a sophistication in the sites that makes them equivalent to say reddit or amazon.
Here's two of the most popular sites http://www.daum.net/ http://www.naver.com/
I think one thing that helps is that the South Koreans have a strong tradition in graphic design and the arts that at least helps make things look pleasant even if the interfaces can be a little "off". But you can see it everywhere, mundane signs in the grocery store for example, are put together with harmonious color schemes and beautiful typography. It's wholly different than Japanese aesthetic (and Chinese for that matter), and seems to have made it's way onto the web more or less.
I've never really encountered encoding issues or the like, I guess most places have moved on to UTF-8.
Most people at home have older, less powerful computers, but laptops and netbooks are extremely common. Apple computers...I think I've seen one, one time. And *nix is almost unknown. iPhones are starting to get popular, but most people have phones that better work in South Korea since they also have digital TV reception (yes, it's broadcast over the air) and near field payment chips and such in the phones.
3) Facebook is not heavily used (if at all) compared to other social media sites.
I hope you'll take the time one day to write that up. Sounds fascinating.
To gain access to a website and get an account, you need to supply your social security number as a convenient unique identifier. This is all so that if you do something bad, like commit fraud, or distribute child porn or whatever, the authorities can figure out who did it (I know, I know, there's an entire debate about why using your SSN like this is a bad idea). In the States, the government goes through all kinds of gyrations to ensure separation of interests to protect personal privacy. The same level of privacy protection simply doesn't exist in South Korea. To my understanding, this SSN gathering requirement is required by law.
Further complicating matters, encrypted communications (via web browser) are mandated by law to use an ancient ancient activeX control (like 1998 ancient) implementing an encryption standard called SEED. Why this is is one of those funny historic happenstances. In the late 90's South Korea's internet buildout was booming and the necessity for encrypted communications (for things like online purchasing) was seen as imminently necessary. If I recall, the U.S. was not allowing export of 128-bit encryption technology, and the exportable 40-bit SSL was considered not secure enough. So the South Korean government, in the interest of promoting online business, brought KISA (their NSA) in to develop a homegrown 128-bit encryption system.
SEED was then implemented as an ActiveX control for IE6 and a plugin Netscape and the use of this system was enshrined in law.
As you can imagine, the wheels of government turn incredibly slowly, even in Korea, so lawmakers have never really updated this law. Once Netscape went away, all that was left was IE and thus the stubborn persistence of IE6 to this day.
As you can guess this has left most Koreans with huge security vulnerabilities on their machines, and outdated browser (who's inadequacies they try to fix with Flash) and myriad other problems.
Fortunately, this may all end soon as there's growing momentum for the government to take another look at the law and bring South Korea's internet users into the 21st century.
TL;DR version: If you want to use an online service in South Korea, you have to make an account, and to make an account you need to use your SSN, and since you don't want to transmit all that in the clear, you want to encrypt that number, and since you want to encrypt it you have to use SEED, and since SEED only exists as an ActiveX control, you are stuck with IE6.
Some more reading on it
http://seoulspace.co.kr/2010/03/09/ie6-no-more-not-in-korea/ (the comments are great) http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2009/09/123_52401.h... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEED http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60225
(sorry if I got some details wrong, this is just what I happen to recall, but should nail down the important points)
It depends. Your categorization is too coarse.
> Most non-mobile sites are entirely flash. The most popular search engine is still Yahoo. Shift-JIS encoding is more widely used than the world standard UTF-8.
I didn't know these 'facts'. Can you give me the details? Just out of curiosity, how did you know Shift-JIS is popular than UTF-8?
Yes it is course b/c that is not my area of expertise. Feel free to inject any information here.
> I didn't know these 'facts'. Can you give me the details? Just out of curiosity, how did you know Shift-JIS is popular than UTF-8?
Well I don't have any hard statistics to back up my statements. They are all simply personal observations.
However in Japan "moji-bake" (character encoding error) is an everyday phrase. Shift-JIS is mostly to blame. I think that's enough to show that it's still widely used.
And then there's the fact that you can't get a prepaid SIM in Japan without buying a phone to go with it. And the fact that Softbank is the only prepaid provider. And the fact that I wasn't legally supposed to have a prepaid phone anyway, because I didn't have an Alien Registration Card but was lucky enough to find a discount store that would overlook that.
Japan is VERY technologically advanced, but they often do things in a way that lacks any consideration for the world outside of their islands. The mobile phone debacle is a perfect example of this, because it affects so few Japanese directly. "Open" platforms like Linux, the Internet, and even Windows are largely regarded as hobbyist items, while Docomo and Softbank's closed, curated networks are reality for most Japanese. The recent film "Summer Wars" is an excellent expression of this.
I thought that was because the Japanese were unhappy about Han unification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Rationale_and_c...
Oh wait: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/technology/28yahoo.html
Because of this pressure, people need vents to express what they think about in private and the last thing they want is to connect these to their public persona, which would have much more severe social and business impact than in western countries.
Can anyone from Japan comment on these two?
That's just a speculation. But we need more data points anyway.