Influential Japanese Love Twitter
1 Jun 2007 (Fri)ACCORDING TO TWEETVOLUME, recently announced by Biz Stone, many Japanese seem to love Twitter:
A Japanese IT journalist confirms this in an online article in April, Twitter booms in Japan / Twitter from Skype. Nobi has been seeing more and more early adopters getting on board with Twitter. He wrote:
“I also started to see the third wave of Japanese early adopters have started using Twitter around yesterday. Seeing Orkut, Gree and mixi case, this could be the most critical group of all. Both Orkut and Gree captured some people of this group but they couldn’t keep momentum among them. This group of people are knows computers and Internet but they are not necessarily following latest trends in web technologies and services.
“This is a very colorful group and includes several big and significant clusters. One big cluster is Mac-fanatics in Japan. their occupations, generations and taste varies widely but they are very well connected through some extremely popular Mac web sites. They also tend to have closer relation with media, famous people, etc. thus are somewhat influential.”
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Posted by J.K. in Japan, News | 12 Comments |
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Hi,
I’m a Mixi user in Japan and am yet to start using twitter.
I’ve just put up a page with English translations of Mixi core pages to help non-Japanese sign-up and see what Mixi is all about.
http://gaijinwomen.com/how-to-use-mixi/
Now, time to check twitter!
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:43 pm
sorry but what’s the benefit of twitter?
June 4th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Hi, Leon. What specifically do you like about Mixi?
Hi, StockTube. Check out Wikipedia’s entry on Twitter and one of my posts, “More Good Ways to Use Twitter”.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:36 am
JK:
Best thing about Mixi is the atmosphere I think, tends to be much more friendly than MySpace.
It’s easy to integrate your own blog feed into Mixi and it’s Japanese… for some that won’t matter, but for anyone who wants to extend their friendship circle or already has contacts in Japan it can be quite fun.
StockTube:
Ye, I can’t seem to convince myself to sign-up to twitter or any of its clones yet… the reason I feel I should is from listening to tech podcasters who say they use it, but I think Leo Laporte said he officially left Twitter because it was annoying… don’t quote me on that though
June 4th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Hey, the “Leo Laporte” on Twitter is a fake! O_O
Interesting! I won’t say that I love Twitter. But I like the fact that it’s so simple to use and followers can choose receive messages via the Web, IM or sms.
By the way, Mixi is not without its problems too, right? According to Wikipedia, there is such a thing as “Mixi tsukare”, a psychological state of a Japanese youth experiencing a sense of tiring from using Mixi and voicing a desire to discontinue using Mixi and finally deciding to terminate the Mixi account.
Also, btw, while many people rave about Second Life, apparently many Japanese don’t like it. In the “7 reasons why SL is ‘not’ popular in Japan” post, Preetam Rai cited:
June 4th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I was probably wrong abuot Leo Laporte, but I hear people who get started and maybe don’t know how to turn off notifications get flooded with them…
OK, I’ll but the bullet (here goes a few more hours a day!)
Any recommendations for Twitter clients on the Mac?
Oh, I don’t know about the Mixi tukare thing… then again I’m 25 so probably way out of touch with the youth of anywhere until my baby girl grows another 15 years or so….
I know you can use Mixi on your Japanese cell phone like my wife does and can imagine how people get tired from it, but the way Japanese teens are glued to their phones, if they’re not tired from Mixi, they’ll be furiously typing at something else anyway
June 4th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I don’t use a Mac. So, have no recommendations. Actually, there’s no need to try Twitter when you’re happy with Mixi. Sounds like they have similar features. At least, both can be used on the cell phone.
June 4th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
According to the recent Sunday Times feature on Twitter (in which I was quoted), Singapore is the second fastest growing market for its services, after Japan.
We may not outnumber the US users, but our numbers are growing!
June 4th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Wow! You use Twitter at least 10 times a day. Good for you.
With the right group of friends, Twitter can be really handy.
My closer friends are from an older generation. To ask them to go on Twitter could be almost unthinkable. Believe it or not, I’m the only one from my circle(s) of old friends that’s blogging actively! :-p
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
How do you get on Mixi?
August 29th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Thanks for the tip about Mac fanatics and Twitter. I’m on a Mac now, here in Hiroshima and my Mrs is a Mac fanatic while I’m just getting keen on Twitter!
I like the way it is so easy to switch into Japanese mode – actually, I’m leaving my Twitters settings permanently on Japanese since you can still send English Twitters, no problemo!
Follow me and I’ll reciprocate!
http://twitter.com/hirohurl
DH
May 21st, 2009 at 8:25 am
I think mobile texting is easier for Japanese…because one Kanji charater can mean an entire sentence, whereas english you have to type everything out. Oh, and everyone has mobile devices out here, even little kids.