

Facebook is Japan's LinkedIn - pwim
http://www.tokyodev.com/2011/01/23/facebook-is-japans-linkedin

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atgm
Maybe I'm too close to the subject matter, but the article seems to gloss over
a few things...

1\. Mixi essentially IS Facebook; they've constantly been updating and adding
things to the interface that make it more and more facebook-like. All they
need to do now is take all of the feeds they've made and integrate them in
popularity/chronological order.

2\. The communities he talks about are the same as Facebook groups. You can
make friends in either one, though mixi communities tend to have topics people
talk in more than in most Facebook groups I've seen.

3\. Mixi not only allows you to control who your friends are, but also allows
you to see who's visited your profile (and when!). It also allows you to
delete your OWN footprints from visiting other people's profiles a few times
every month. On top of that, you can see how recently someone's been active on
Mixi. It's terrible (great?) for OCD stalkers.

Perhaps this author's article is based on selection bias; though; of all of
the people I know on facebook who are Japanese, a number of them are Japanese
people interested in English or who have been to America -- they largely use
it for the same reasons that everyone else in America does: to keep in touch
with friends and post stuff. Others are simply Japanese people using it with
pretty much only Japanese people: they seem to do the same thing, without the
influence of Americans "teaching" them the "right" way to use facebook. I also
have a few professional acquaintances that I'm friendly with; they use it in
the same way as the people I mentioned before.

Perhaps the professional accounts the author is encountering are accounts made
solely for professional use. Some Americans I know do that as well, since
there really ISN'T a requirement that you use your real name.

~~~
pwim
You're right on these points. Mixi is basically the same from a functionality
perspective, and what kind of activities they perform. However, there is a
nuanced difference with the degree of sharing.

Also, Japanese who have been abroad defiantly do use it differently. One
example is photos. I notice Japanese who have been abroad or have lots of
foreign Facebook friends share far more photos than those who haven't.

Perhaps my article overplayed the professionalism of Japanese Facebook
account. The accounts I've seen aren't on par with LinkedIn on their focus
towards being professional. However, I get the feeling that Japanese Facebook
users are much more conscious of what non-friends will think of their account
than western users are.

~~~
atgm
I'll definitely agree about the photos -- Japanese people with foreign friends
or who have been abroad are also much more aggressive with the photo tagging.

I wonder how much of that is just Facebook, though; when I started using
Facebook heavily about a year ago after having an account since the beginning,
I was completely lost about how to upload/tag/organize pictures. Facebook
wasn't much help with its cluttered interface.

As far as self-consciousness, I don't think it's necessarily a Facebook
thing... Mixi users are just as self-conscious and "groom" their profiles to
be just-so -- the same for their profile pictures, which are their public
face. I would argue that it's more a facet of Japanese society than of
Facebook in particular.

I sort of think that the Japanese Facebook population of frequent users is
still a bit too small to judge, too...

Edit: I meant to say this before, but mobage and gree are both much, much more
popular with people under 18 than adults in my area. I wonder how much of that
has to do with the commercials.

Edit 2: I just realized this, but I wonder how much of LinkedIn's lack of
popularity has to do with the conservativeness of business culture in Japan in
general. I mean, they have standardized forms for resumes and personal history
here.

------
elvirs
Facebook is Japan's nothing. It is not that well known in Japan.

~~~
patio11
I know a few Japanese people on Facebook: those married to foreigners. There
are practical limits to the scalability of this customer acquisition method.

[Edit: I need to remember not to make Japan jokes because people take me
seriously. FB accounts are also popular with Japanese people with recent
experience abroad and those with many foreign friends, at least in my social
circles in central Japan (like Kansas, minus the white people). Of
approximately 70 people at my previous day job, two admitted to having
Facebook accounts when asked for a show of hands at a meeting, and one of
those was me.]

~~~
qq66
> There are practical limits to the scalability of this customer acquisition
> method.

:D

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koichi
The ONLY Japanese friends I have on Facebook are entrepreneurs and biz
professionals. Pretty much lines up with this article if you ask me.

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freedrull
_Facebook requires users to use their real name._

I don't use my real name and neither do many people I know.

