9/15/11

Social Media and Youth marketing in Japan

At Social Media Masters in Atlanta, I had a chance to speak with Mark Schaefer, who was presenting on the topic of Corporate Blogging.  I had recently put together some information on Social Media in Japan and it was top of mind, so Mark wanted to capture a few minutes of my time. I don't think of myself as the "International Expert" Mark promotes me as, but there is a lot of interesting research I happened to have just spent a bit of time on recently.

See below the video for some of the data points mentioned.

Here are a few charts and links to give you a better picture of Social Media in Japan as if compares to the rest of the world:

Social Networks Worldwide: It is no surprise that Facebook leads the way globally, one of the best representations of Social Networks around the world is Vincenzo Cosenza’s graphic. He has updated this regularly since 2009, it is great to watch the animated version watching Facebook take over the world.


World Map of Social Networks


Brazil, China, Russia, and Japan are the highly populated countries that are still the biggest non-Facebook countries, but Facebook penetration is still growing in all those areas. How much is Facebook growing? This chart from Pingdom puts it in perspective.



This chart was made when Facebook had 600+ Million users (around the end of 2010.)  Current stats put facebook users at over 750 million - which moves Facebook into the second position from the bottom, above the entire Internet population from 2002, and above the entire population of Europe!

Japan specifically, has not adopted Facebook to the level of the rest of the world. In the beginning of 2011, this chart from Comscore shows Facebook lagging significantly behind Twitter and Mixi - and look at the exponential rise of Twitter!


Mixi is not the only social network bypassing Facebook in Japan, here is another view of Social Network population in Japan by Asiajin. Including mobile networks, Facebook doesn't even make the list.

Gree is a very interesting network to keep an eye on. This year Gree bought the Social Media Gaming giant OpenFeint - increasing their userbase from about 25 million users mostly in Japan to over 130 million social media gamers around the world. OpenFeint has over 5000 social games running on its platform - it is going to be very interesting to watch how this new company impacts Social Gaming worldwide. Just don't mess with my Fruit Ninja game!! I'm addicted on my iPad. (Yes - relatively new....OpenFeint is not just Android - it runs on iOS devices like iPhones and iPads also.)


So,  back to the original conversation about Facebook and why it has not been widely adopted by the Japanese.  Adam Acar wrote a blog post entitled The Problem with Facebook in Japan which goes into this topic in pretty good detail - but here is a a few of his points:
  • The Japanese online community values anonymity. 
  • There is risk to having an authentic identity on-line - risk of offending a superior, risk of making a mistake and loosing face, etc....
  • Culturally, it is very difficult to reject on-line friend requests if it is not anonymous
  • Photo tagging, LBS, and other types of social interaction can be seen as an invasion of privacy
  • On-line relationships can reduce the distance between relationships - this can be a significant problem when dealing with work relationships where one person may have more power or influence than another
There are many others - it is worth visiting his blog and seeing if you agree with his assesment. The data certainly does.  (Although - youth in Japan are bucking the trend)

Here is another post from NYTimes also discussing Facebooks lack of adoption in Japan and some speculation on the cause. 

One of the mindsets in Japanese youth that is causing this trend to shift is the concept of  'Otaku' - roughly translated - it is being recognized within a social group as being an expert on a specific topic. 'Otaku' used to have a more nerdy/male stereotype but recently that has changed.  A quick google search on 'Otaku'  will introduce you to this concept and some of the adoption by Japanese youth and teens that it has shown.

Japanese teens and young adults are changing the culture - here is a great fact sheet that lays out how some of those attitudes are shifting. http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=622&catid=18




This is starting to get long, so I will cut it off here - there is so much that is exciting about Japan, youth, mobile and social networking in the region - I will definitely revisit this topic in the future.

Ja-ne (An informal way of saying Goodbye in Japanese, since you are all my friends....)

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