Facebook's CEO Marc Zuckerberg personally traveled to Tokyo to announce the launch of the Japanese version of his super-successful social network. Actually he came for just a day (on May 20th), gave a few interviews telling why Japanese people should join Facebook and left.
It goes without saying this is not the way to go in this country. Just translating Facebook into Japanese (by over 1,300 native speakers) will not help much as well.
Difficult environment for Facebook
I have put together some reasons Facebook will have a hard time gaining a siginificant market share in Japan here. Fellow blogger Takuya Homma adds a few thoughts, most importantly the need of a kick-ass mobile version of a Facebook Japan. This is totally correct, given the fact that the number of users of Japan's largest SNS Mixi accessing the site via their cell phones exceeds 50%. Moreover, a lot of their members use the site as a blogging platform.
Zuckerberg also said in one statement Facebook is known for its safety since people are using their real names. Well, first of all this is not necessarily true. Everybody and his brother can set up a Facebook profile using any name. Secondly, the majority of Japanese users of social networks would HATE to reveal their identity and post photos of themselves online. Just look at Mixi: How many members demonstrate this behavior there? Almost no one...
So in my view Facebook faces a very, very hard time on the Japanese market. At least Zuckerberg came the long way from the USA to show his face - he didn't travel to my home country Germany when Facebook launched the German version a few weeks ago...
Update:
Lisa Katayama (a US-based writer and journalist) wrote an excellent article on Facebook Japan, which can be found here.
5/22/2008
Facebook is now available in Japanese, CEO Zuckerberg says in Tokyo
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7 comments:
One plus for Facebook in Japan is that it should attract a (significant?) number of English speaking Japanese users which are extremely in demand with recruitment companies (see giant banner from CareerCross on Facebook).
LinkedIn is already somewhat established with this demographic as well though, and there will probably be a large overlap in users.
Came to visit or just happened to be passing through? If those rumors of him taking a global vacation to escape the negative environment of his VC backers getting rid of some of the management who are also his friends have any basis in reality, who knows.
It is an interesting cultural point as to whether japanese internet users are ready for and wanting a Facebook style "real person" SNS. How much of this is tied to desires for pseudo-anonymity and how much will be a backlash aginst the problems caused by pseudo-anonymity will be key. Also, the image/data intensive nature of Facebook does not lend itself well to a mobile version, unless the user cutoff point is keitai with 3G/HSPDA capabilities. The assumption that users will have that capability may become true in the next 6-9 months however.
Facebook does seem to be widely used by Japanese studying English, however, who more or less seem to use it in a usual manner from my experience.
This is great. Now, we can communicate with the Japanese exchange students that visit every year at my school.
Actually, Facebook has a mobile version that makes it possible to do just about everything (aside from applications). For me, I access it from an iPhone (www.iphone.facebook.com). Not too sure about other mobiles, though!
I personally find Facebook a lot better than Mixi because I am able to search for my friends and use my contact list to find every single friend I have. On Mixi, I have to know the pseudonyms my friends use.
Facebook Mobile works on Japanese phones too (in HTTP mode). I find the lack of applications to be its best feature!
Very interesting what you mention about the cultural differences such as the "real identity" concept. I think it's very true in Asia including Vietnam my country.
Would appreciate it if you'd write some update on how it goes after nearly a year now. I couldn't read Japanese however very curious about SNS-development in Japan.
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