Mobile social gaming's awareness high in Japan but few users agree to pay

A recent user survey of more than three thousand respondents in Japan by CA Mobile and Spire revealed interesting trends about the uptake of mobile social gaming on such sites as mixi, mobage town and gree. Here are some highlights:

• Awareness of mobile social gaming is very high with close to 70% of respondents indicating they have played some kind of game
• Spread of word is the most effective way to get new players onboard with more than 60% of those who played a social game citing friend's invite as a reason to join
• The most popular time for playing social games is just before going to bed (or actually playing when already in bed)
• Almost 60% of respondents spend no more than 20 minutes per access
• Majority of users plays free games, with only 4.2% of core users expressing willigness to pay

Source: Spire

Home-grown Ameba Now challenges Twitter in Japan

Freshly from the lab Ameba Now, the twitter-like microbloging service launched in December 2009, is gaining in popularity in Japan registering one million visitors in January, according to Nielsen's data. For the same period twitter in Japan saw 4.7 million visitors with an average user spending about 25 minutes on the site versus 6.5 minutes spent by Ameba user. Interestingly, twitter in Japan looks like a male-dominant service with 64% of its users being males while Ameba Now attracts 54% of female audience. Now, keep in mind that these numbers are for PC users and don't include mobile phone usage.

Cyber Agent, a company behind Ameba Now, is also running a popular blogging platform Ameba Blog. The ability to attract celebrities to use Ameba Blog service was a key factor for its popularity and if the same strategy can work for Ameba Now, it can present a serious challenge to twitter in Japan.

mixi abandons invitation-based registration

In a long awaited move mixi, Japan's biggest social network in terms of registered users, changed the rules for new member registration. Before, in order to register you had to receive an invite from your friend who was already on mixi. As of March 1st, it is no longer required. With this move mixi repeats the steps of Facebook and hopes to boost its memberships beyond of reach of the competition. It worked handsomely for Facebook and should work for mixi as well. However, it might backfire if Japanese users find it intrusive given their appreciation for privacy. Call it a cultural thing but some might hate to a higher degree than in the wedt the idea that their profiles can be searched by random people.


- Posted on the go

Japan social networks lure developers

Availability of games is the key differentiator for social networks in Japan. Before now they relied on in-house development or "selected" developers to launch games on their platforms. However, the situation is going to change as the likes of mixi, mobage, and gree are about to release their APIs and development programs. The site that will manage to lure more developers will get the competitive advantage over others in terms of the number of applications available to its users. In the latest news, gree went campaigning for developers promising among other perks funding from the newly established gree fund to the brightest of their kind.

- Posted on the go

Market for virtual goods poised for growth

When a 300-pound gorilla like Facebook enters the niche market it turns into mass market. According to Business Week, Facebook is testing its internal payment system to take control over the in-game purchases of virtual goods like clothing for avatars or tractor for your farm. If early success of Japanese social networks implementing virtual sales is any indicator, then we are witnessing a shift from an advertising-supported model to a more balanced revenue model for social networks. While only 1% to 4% of people currently playing on social networks spend money for virtual goods the trend may accelerate with Facebook promoting the new capability to its 400 million user base. With the planned 30% cut of sales of virtual game props Facebook might add up to $500 million to its coffers, according to
ThinkEquity cited in Business Week article. ThinkEquity predicts the sales of virtual goods to almost double this year to $1.6 billion in the US and this number could quadruple to $3.6 billion by 2012. We should learn more from the experience of Japanese social networks in getting revenues from the sales of virtual goods.

- Posted on the go

Report: state of mobile social networking in Japan

Over the course of 2009 I have accumulated some interesting stats about the mobile social networks in Japan that I would like to share with everyone. Please follow the download link to get the powerpoint slides from SlideShare.

Japan Mobile SNS Study 2010

Basically, the report is broken down into two parts: the mobile phone market update (drivers for SNS uptake) and the current state of mobile social networking in Japan. Some main points include but not limited to the following:

Part 1. Japan’s Mobile Phone Market Overview
- Japan mobile phone market is well developed with penetration rate standing at 89%
- Japan is dominantly a postpaid market
- In popularity mobile phones surpass personal computers and fixed line telephones
- 3G penetration stands at 95%, making Japan the leader in 3G
- Data usage is abundant with 84.3% of users having data plans

Part 2. Mobile Social Networking in Japan
- Social networking is on mobile radar but has plenty room for growth
- Most users access social networks from mobile
- Social network user demographics skew toward female users
- Good selection of games is an important attribute of successful social network in Japan
- Big three home-grown networks dominate the marketplace in Japan
- Mixi is a leading social networking site in Japan by a user base
- Late coming and lack of relevant local offering keep global brands at bay in Japan
- In Japan, real user identity is often hidden behind the virtual avatar
- Premium content and ad sales equally contribute to SNS revenue streams
- Battle for developers’ mindshare begins: availability of third-party applications will become a competitive advantage for social networks in Japan

Japan's biggest social network mixi opens mobile APIs

It was reported that mixi launched a mobile application platform with 104 games ready for download. The move follows earlier launch of the similar platform for PCs. Moreover, about 40 application titles on the announced mobile platform are designed to run seamlesly across mobile and PC platforms. I believe more apps should be made with that purpose in sight as the future in the platform-agnostic applications.


- Posted on the go

With 15 million users and 600 million PVs per day Mobage Town is sailing North

Kudos to the folks at Dena who run a successful social network Mobage Town. They've just reached a significant milestone by signing up fifteen million users. They started in 2006 by offering a standard set of social features for mobile phone users and later added a special focus on social gaming experience, which eventually proved to work...According to Dena, fifteen million users generate about 600 million page views in one day, with Mobage Town core users (40%) being in their twenties.

Mobage Town Milestones
05/2007	5 million users
04/2008	10 million users
07/2009	15 million users

Source: Dena

Japan's biggest SNS Mixi opens APIs for mobile Mixi

One might asks what took them so long? Nevertheless, Japan's biggest social networking service mixi announced it would provide APIs for its mobile version to third party developers to write applications. Early it did the same for its PC version. While in beta the mobile mixi will be officially open to outside developers in September. APIs to be open are as follows:

• Person & Friends API
  
• Activity API
• Persistence API
• Message API
• Community API
• Album API

Get a mixi presentation in Japanese here.

Source: mixi Developer Center via IT Media

Blogs and social networks are popular among Japanese mobile phone users

Survey takers at Impress R&D discovered that over 28 percent of respondents in Japan access blogs only from mobile phones. At the same time, over 15 percent of users access social networks using cell phones as their mere tools. 

Source: Impress R&D

Mapii Beta released – Loopt on steroids?

Location-based social networks are popping up all over the world targeting mobile phone users as the most suitable group because of their on-the-go status. Knowing your friends’ location nearby you, gives you more opportunities to hang out with them without advanced planning. Local businesses are the main beneficiaries of such ad hoc beer get-togethers or girlfriends’ shopping sprees. Japan’s mapii, a social mapping service, understands the lucrative potential of location-based advertising and that’s why it is planning to offer itself free of charge. It is crucial for such services to grow their user bases to attract local advertising budgets. Clean UI and ease-of-use come as important factors in differentiating yourself from rivals. Mapii bets on Flash-based maps for clean graphics and combination of GPS and cell tower location data for precise information. By using cell towers’ location data mapii ensures its spread into non-GPS phone base. Users will also receive notifications posted by other users about interesting events in the radius of ten kilometers around user’s location. If you’re in Japan, check them out from your keitai: http://mapii.jp.

Source: K-Tai.Impress.co.jp

Mobile marketing: showcasing clothing collections on 3D avatars

Japan’s Any, a PC/mobile social network focused mostly on women, is offering fashion brands an innovative way to promote their clothing collections. The idea is to send Any’s users virtual gifts like fashion outfits. The reason why this idea maybe brilliant is that Any’s users are 3D avatars who resemble the looks of their owners (a user sends her picture and Any creates an avatar based on that picture). The sent clothing pieces can be tried on by avatars giving their owners an ability to look in a three-dimensional view how the new collection would fit them. With more than 300 thousand women onboard Any is in a sweet spot to strike advertising deals with fashion houses aiming at brand-hungry Japanese female buyers.

Source: PlusD IT Media

Related mobile marketing articles:

• Japan mobile ad spending up 59.2% in 2007
• AdMob eyes Japan’s mobile advertising market
• Mobile advertising in Japan: $236m spent in 2005

Social network GREE grows to 4 million users

GREE claims to be the first social network to be launched in Japan. The company has grown to 4 million user base since its launch four years ago. GREE sees its success in delivering appealing content such as user interests-based interactivity (Music Corner service), games (online-based 3D golf), news made accessible from both the PC and mobile phone. The company has a partnership with KDDI au, which recently announced that two million of its mobile phone users are GREE members. GREE has a goal to increase its user base to 10 million in near future. While GREE maybe the oldest social network on the block it is not for sure the most popular in Japan. The most successful rivals include Mobage Town and mixi social networks.

Source: GREE press release (Japanese)

Related articles:

• Mobile social network Gree adds another million users
• Mobile social network EZ Gree grows to one million users
• Study: mobile social networking usage in Japan

Mobile social network Gree adds another million users

Last August we reported that mobile social network Gree on KDDI au had reached a milestone of one million users. And now it is time to update that data with another million to a total number of two million users, which roughly constitutes 2 percent of Japan’s total wireless population.

Source: KDDI au press release (Japanese)

Teacup connects mobile users with Second Life

Software developer teacup introduced a technology that allows Internet users to chat in real time with Second Life dwellers without being logged in into Second Life world. There are two conditions in order to be able to do that: first, you must point your PC or mobile phone browser to teacup’s run community chat; second, at the moment you can only communicate with those from Second Life who are currently staying at Japan Resort virtual island, the fifth place in Second Life in terms of traffic, according to teacup. Teacup says they created a special avatar in Japan Resort that serves as a medium to establish connection between Second Life and the outside world users.

I went to teacup’s Second Life chat room to see how it works and was pleased with the results. All you need is to enter your nickname before entering the chat room. Inside, it looks rather like a very simple text chat room with multiple users shooting up messages at each other at once. At the time there were around six people chatting, two were from Second Life and the rest accessed from mobile phones.

I can see one huge benefit of this service – to be able to chat with your Second Life buddies on the go or at least away from your home PC, if you dare to do it on your work computer.

Source: Teacup news release (Japanese)

Mincle bets on GPS + Maps + SNS mix to attract users

Another newcomer to mobile social networking space is betting on a mix of location-based services and social networking features to win end-users’ hearts. A mobile software developer Future Scope has just started mincle (word origin: a phonetic mix-up from English mingle) – its mobile social network site. The high penetration of GPS-enabled phones makes it possible for such service to launch in Japan.

The main idea behind mincle is a mobile social mapping – pinpointing, saving, and sharing user’s favorite locations with others in real time. Pictures with tags and comments can be also added to a given location. Another point of mincle is its openness for browsing to unregistered users.

Source: CNet Japan (Japanese)

Mobile virtual hangout Chipuya Town recruits tenants

Mimicking Tokyo’s shopping and entertainment Shibuya district, a Flash-based mobile virtual world Chipuya Town is getting ready for beta launch in September this year. Right now MediaGroove, a developer of Chipuya Town, is campaigning to sign up advertisers. To lure businesses MediaGroove offers virtual boutiques, space for promotional events, truck advertising, and distribution of virtual flyers. The rent pay starts from one million yen ($8,359) a month and higher for boutique.

Dwellers of Chipuya Town will be able to walk in two-dimensional streets chatting with each other and earning points by clicking on ad banners or through referral fees. Dull pages will be substituted with personal rooms with furniture and clothes bought on earned points. Nevertheless, user profiles, blogging and texting features will also be available. Mobile phone users of all three Japan’s national carriers can join mobile virtual world of Chipuya Town free of charge.

MediaGroove came up with a solid idea but it is facing a chicken and egg dilemma. To become an attractive target for advertisers Chipuya Town’s streets need to be crowded with residents, but growing the community to significant numbers may take some time.

Source: IT Media (Japanese)

Mobile social network myMTV selects Japan for debut

Viacom decided to test mobile social networking waters in Japan with a bang - claiming to be the "first in the world to offer simultaneous video and page-browsing on mobile." I'm not sure how it works in reality but can suggest it splits the screen in two parts.

Among other perks users will be allowed to use artwork by Japanese designers to decorate their personal pages and provided with access to the feature programming from "MTV's library, such as Pimp My Ride, and Japanese productions such as Usavich."

"The service is ad-supported and free to consumers, and is available on all three of Japan's mobile operators, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank Mobile," according to C21Media.

Mobile social network EZ Gree grows to one million users

Launched in November last year mobile social network EZ Gree is growing in user numbers with an accelerating speed. Having hit 500K milestone in March 2007, EZ Gree’s user base passed one million in July.

The mobile version of Gree is offered in a partnership with the second largest carrier in Japan KDDI au who plans to integrate its other mobile data services, including LBS, into the Gree platform. At the moment, besides the ordinary social networking stuff, EZ Gree’s users can send each other html-rich emails (Deco-mail) and play Flash-based mobile games.

Source: KDDI au press release

Study: mobile social networking usage in Japan

Rakuten Research and Mitsubishi Research Institute have jointly published the results of the online-based based survey (2,400 respondents) examining the usage of mobile services by Japanese phone users. Conducted in late December 2006, the survey mainly focuses on the phenomenon of social networking services (SNS). It found the following:

• The awareness of social networking is 69.8%, understanding - 40.6% and participation rate - 19.6% of respondents.
• The SNS participation rate is the highest among young people in their 20’s and gradually decreases with older generations.
• 48.5% of respondents are aware of mobile SNS, while 21.3% understand the true meaning of it and only 5.5% participate in mobile social networking.
• In contrast with SNS, the mobile SNS participation rate is the highest among young people in their 10’s.
• 78.6% of respondents are members of mixi Mobile social network, followed by Mobage-town (12.8%), EZ Gree (7.7%), and Gocco (3.4%).
• 78.6% of respondents rely on PC-based SNS as their main destination, while see the mobile version of the same SNS as a complimentary tool. Only 6.0% rely solely on mobile SNS.
• Interestingly, when asked why respondents don’t want to use mobile SNS, the seemingly obvious response about cellphone’s tricky operation came only third (33.0%) after not so obvious response of having no time (41.3%) and expected high mobile data fees (39.8%).

Source: Rakuten Research

Mixi Mobile is getting one hundred million page views per day now

January 15 was quite remarkable for mixi Mobile – on that day the number of page views in one day hit one hundred million. According to mixi’s management, the measures such as enabling mobile messaging for all members, allowing invitations via sending out QR codes and implementation of new mobile site design, helped attract mobile users.

As a result the number of mixi Mobile members has reached 2.3 million in December 2006 and it is being increased on a twelve thousand new members per day rate. Below is a demographical profile of mixi Mobile’s user base:

Source: CNet Japan

Mobile social network Mamasa targets at mommies

Mobile social networking market in Japan is undergoing further segmentation in pursuit of marketing opportunities. The latest example is the launch of Mamasa mobile website that identifies young mothers as its main audience. Mamasa’s founders - Kimuratan and Xavel.com - hope build a solid user base by encouraging members to share information regarding pregnancy, child rising, fashion and other questions through mobile blogging. Xavel.com, an operator of fashion website for young women girlswalker.com, plans to attract some of its 680,000 user base to start using Mamasa, while Kimuratan will team up with 170 stores across the country to promote the website. Below are some examples of girlswalker.com's mobile channels:

Can Goliath MySpace defeat David Mixi?

As MySpace seeks to penetrate Japan's market by teaming up with Softbank, Mixi is confident it won't be affected much by this move. According to Financial Times' article (Dec.6, 2006), Mixi starts targeting Japan's baby boomers to expand its user base, whose 80% is now constituted of subscribers aged between 20 and 34. The invitation only social networking site Mixi is a dominant player in Japan recruiting under its banner more than 6.5 million users who have created 900,000 online communities. It ranks only second after Yahoo in popularity in Japan.

The confidence of Mixi management is based on the fact that "about 6.8m Japanese will celebrate their 60th birthdays over the next three years." Based on market researches and survey data, Mixi thinks newly retired people will become active members of its network by uploading travel pictures and writing "blog-style" diaries and participating or organizing online communities that can range from "sky watching" to "love of sleep" interests.

Besides being "demographically removed from the average user of MySpace", Mixi has other unique features that make it very attractive to Japanese users. First of all, it is mobile-friendly, with 2bn hits coming from cell phones and only 750m from PC users. For comparison, about 1.4 million mobile customers logged onto MySpace using the wireless Web in September 2006, according to Telephia. Obviously, to succeed, MySpace needs to address the mobile internet and has a fully-functional mobile version available to members of all Japanese mobile operators. Instead, MySpace announced the launch of localized PC version in March 2007, while it is not clear whether the mobile version will also be operational at that time. Additionally, the partnership with Softbank assumes the exclusivity of the offering to Softbank's mobile users, while Mixi is open to all cellphone users with Internet access. Among other lacking features of MySpace is the invitation only nature of Mixi that appeals to Japanese users who cherish the sense of privacy and exclusivity. It is yet to be seen but there is a big chance that MySpace will repeat the negative experience of eBay and other many global brands of entering Japan market if it won't learn about the local market.

DoCoMo last to jump on mobile social networking bandwagon

Just the very next day after I wrote the post about DoCoMo's lack of mobile social network offering, as DoCoMo announced a partnership with Rakuten, the biggest online shopping portal in Japan. Besides the Internet auction services for mobile phones and PCs, the companies will also offer a social networking service (SNS). The service called Okutomo (which in translation from Japanese means Auction Friends) is scheduled for launch on November 20th.

While Okutomo will have all the features of regular SNS such as user profiles, blogging, comments, and avatars, the main focus of it is on the commercialization by tightly integrating the service with the mobile auction platform jointly offered by DoCoMo and Rakuten. Users or auction friends who get to know each through the auction process will be able to view each other profiles and products they are selling, which should encourage users to share information about particular products and purchase the items based on other users' reviews, not on product's mere description. Okutomo users will be also able to create tags for easy search and matching similar products and inviting auction friends to create groups based on similar interests. The newly created groups can even limit the auction to be held within the group members only. I can envision Japanese otaku (refers to an obsessive fan of any one particular hobby) creating special interest groups and trading their collectibles along with social networking.

Mobile social networks are coming to Japan

Japan is experiencing the hype of mobile social networking. This week, MySpace and Softbank announced plans for a 50-50 joint venture to bring the popular Internet social networking site to Japan.

Next, on the wave of this news, another US company - Gemini Mobile Technologies - announced it would power 3D mobile communities of Softbank's service S! TOWN. The Gemini platform, called eXplo, will enable 3D chatting, shopping, and other S! TOWN community features via cell phones. Gemini also announced that its multimedia messaging software, the HyperScale Messaging Center, and its HyperScale core technology are the engines behind an additional new Softbank Mobile service, Arrange Mail.

On the domestic front, KDDI is about to launch EZ GREE mobile social network, the deployment of which is scheduled for November 17. While the subscription to EZ GREE is free, users will need to have a data plan with KDDI. EZ GREE is a mobile version of the GREE social network site that has been popular for some time in Japan. The mobile version will be linked with other services and applications from KDDI's portal such as EZ News Flash, au My Page, horoscopes and game scores or various test results. Users will also be able to decorate their profiles, messages and mobile diaries with pictures, smilies and frames.

Only NTT DoCoMo remains silent about its mobile social network plans. While it is not too late, they should snap a partnership deal with mixi - the most popular social network site in Japan in order to not be left behind. Once, they have already lost a leadership in mobile music services to KDDI au.