
Taking social networks abroad - Why MySpace and Facebook are failing in Japan - drm237
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/03/taking-social-networks-abroad-why-myspace-and-facebook-are-failing-in-japan/
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jrockway
Clearly it's because Mixi is written in Perl, and Japanese people love Perl!

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babul
Don't agree with the generalisation. Probably more to do with fact Mixi is a
better cultural fit and captures more of the essence and behavioural traits of
the people.

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jamongkad
Clearly his post was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. But then again it's hard to
read someone's intentions without the <tongue-cheek></tongue-cheek> tag. Maybe
it will be released once Arc has smiley support.

Edit: Japanese don't love Perl they love RUBY!

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dats
I work in Tokyo, and I've noticed the only people who seem to have Facebook
accounts are students who studied abroad and those who spend a lot of time
socializing with foreigners.

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vaksel
its because people are nationalistic, they think to themselves: "why should I
support american greed when I can get the same experience from a native site"

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cglee
Really? That's one of the last things I think about when using new services or
products.

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vaksel
That's because you are an American, the sites you go to are usually American
too. But the problem that comes with international companies is that they
think that translating the site is all it takes to adapt. Which is not the
case, the cultures are completely different and the sites usually fail to take
that into consideration.

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trezor
_But the Japanese market isn’t lost yet for MySpace and Facebook, despite
Mixi’s dominance. If millions of Americans don’t mind registering to multiple
social networks, why should the Japanese?_

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the trend was the opposite one? That
people are getting fed up registering at 100 different networks and sticks to
the few "big" ones they've already signed up for?

Ofcourse, I'm not going to pretend my behaviour is the norm, where mixi and
LinkedIn are the only networks I bother with. For local friends, timezones not
being an issue, phone and MSN works fine.

