Taking social networks abroad - Why MySpace and Facebook are failing in Japan | Hacker News Reader

Taking social networks abroad - Why MySpace and Facebook are failing in Japan

techcrunch.com

18 pointsdrm2379 comments

Clearly it's because Mixi is written in Perl, and Japanese people love Perl!

Don't agree with the generalisation. Probably more to do with fact Mixi is a better cultural fit and captures more of the essence and behavioural traits of the people.

Clearly his post was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. But then again it's hard to read someone's intentions without the <tongue-cheek></tongue-cheek> tag. Maybe it will be released once Arc has smiley support.

Edit: Japanese don't love Perl they love RUBY!

I work in Tokyo, and I've noticed the only people who seem to have Facebook accounts are students who studied abroad and those who spend a lot of time socializing with foreigners.

its because people are nationalistic, they think to themselves: "why should I support american greed when I can get the same experience from a native site"

Really? That's one of the last things I think about when using new services or products.

Are you Japanese?

That's because you are an American, the sites you go to are usually American too. But the problem that comes with international companies is that they think that translating the site is all it takes to adapt. Which is not the case, the cultures are completely different and the sites usually fail to take that into consideration.

But the Japanese market isn’t lost yet for MySpace and Facebook, despite Mixi’s dominance. If millions of Americans don’t mind registering to multiple social networks, why should the Japanese?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the trend was the opposite one? That people are getting fed up registering at 100 different networks and sticks to the few "big" ones they've already signed up for?

Ofcourse, I'm not going to pretend my behaviour is the norm, where mixi and LinkedIn are the only networks I bother with. For local friends, timezones not being an issue, phone and MSN works fine.

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