comScore: Facebook And MySpace Still Lagging In Japan
Jason Kincaid
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According to data released today by comScore, both Facebook and MySpace still trail Japan’s leading social network Mixi.jp by a wide margin, despite recent pushes by both networks to expand in the country. While Facebook’s Japan site has grown three fold in the last year, it still has only about 4% of the users that Mixi does (538,000 versus 12.7 million unique visitors in June).
The data confirm TechCrunch contributor Serkan Toto’s post last week that described why the two networks are largely failing in Japan. Toto explains that much of the problem stems from Facebook and MySpace’s late entry into Japan - it took both of them years to release localized versions, giving Mixi time to establish a stranglehold on the market.
According to Toto, another contributing factor has been a lack of changes made by MySpace and Facebook in response to Japan’s cultural differences (although both Facebook and MySpace argued that we missed key emerging partnerships and products they are developing). In Japan, many users are more concerned with security, privacy, and to some extent, anonymity - things that Mixi has placed more emphasis on than Facebook or MySpace.
Cool, the same Comscore that say that Google will loose their earnings numbers based on their great earnings number. Or the same ComScore that says that TechCrunch.com is 75% female.
Well, Facebook and MySpace might not have the higher percent of visitors in the country, but they might still continue to grow over time and may get a higher unique visitor rate in the future.
http://blabtech.blogspot.com
And I care because…?
you wouldn’t walk into a Chinese restaurant and complain that they only serve Chinese food would you?
wasnt there a post about this on sunday
techcrunch is teasing myspace and facebook..lol
Yet again this report seems to completely ignore the traffic in the mobile space, which, for most intents and purposes, IS the Internet of Japan. How come Mobage is entirely missing from that list of stats? Does it take into account the mobile traffic of Gree, which has most but shifted its main focus to mobile? If you really took those and a whole bunch of other mobile-specific sites into account, I doubt Facebook or Myspace would even show up in the top 5.
take a look at % Change of a Gree… is that means Gree loosing it’s MOBILE audience? Nonsense People have to had go to someone else… to whom? To a Facebook or MySpace maybe? It isn’t seems to be close to reality So my bet is ComScore have some shitty data especially what concerns mobile stats
The anonymity issue mentioned in the last paragraph is definitely a factor. People don’t usually use photos of themselves on mixi (choosing photos of famous people, pets, or characters instead), and even with this anonymity there is a part of mixi called “ura” mixi which is an underground aspect of the community so that people can be even more anonymous.
Facebook and MySpace have also failed to provide people with a reason to switch. Nothing to move people out of their mixi inertia.
Lastly, if you want to do anything in Japan you have to have a mobile presence and it has to be good. That’s why Google has worked to set itself up as the default search service on cell phones here (except for on Softbank owned by Yahoo Japan).
People here want anonymity, and they want to be anonymous from the comfort of their cell phones.
I think its a bit silly comparing Facebook, My Space to a localised version of social networking in Japan. Does Mixi have any stranglehold in the US or Europe. No pointing comparing.
Well for me it seems that Myspace is playing the right cards in western world with partnering with the political cases and even in Japan it should play the same.
http://urbanread.com/news/mysp.....-mydebates