SNS as a fasion

I wrote a few days ago about the decline of Japanese biggest SNS, Mixi. I guess it is not unique to Japan, after all. This morning, San Francisco Chronicle writes about the early signs of "diaspora" from MySpace.

San Francisco Chronicle article

It is not that MySpace will go down, but looks like it will "peak out" before long. Hearing comments from "This Week In Tech" podcast, they were talking about their young daughters don't do MySpace anymore, because it is "so 20 minutes ago". Just as people migrated from Friendster to Orkut to MySpace, they may eventually migrate to Facebook or Ning or whatever new, when it is out of fashion.

If SNS is a fad like clothes and shoes, then these new sites have to make money quickly while it is fresh. Their ability to quickly gather advertisers will be critical for their survival.

(Photo by sorayui via morguefile.com)

Japanese 20 something abandoning PC?

March 1, 2007

This topic is going around in Japanese blogosphere lately, sparked by a Japanese magazine FACTA article.  Using NetRatings' survey data last November, showing the constant decline of the ratio of people in their 20's among the PC-Web users from home, the article analyzes that the young people in this age category only use mobile phones for their Web surfing purposes, and it signifies the new "digital devide" in Japanese society.

This age group has been (not born but) raised with high-functionality cell phones in Japan, and are more accustomed to use cell phone.  The writer's concern is that if these young people cannot afford to buy PC and don't learn to type on full keyboard (or do not wish to use PC because they don't know how to type), then they will be forever confined into the limited functionality and passive Web experience on cell phones, instead of participating positively on Web intelligence.  As a result, their status in the intelligence society will be fixtured on the bottom and will have little chance to rise up.

I don't know if the analysis is true or not, but according to the discussion on 2-channel bulletin board, there may be some truth in it.  Lots of people agree that young people don't like to use PC, or cannot afford PC, and they all like to use cell phones.  However, the source statistics show that kids under 19 are taking up PC pretty quickly - maybe because they still live with their parent.  Some people point out that the stats is about the use from home, not in the office, so maybe 20-something are just using their office PC's.  Or... 20-something generation was first exposed to cellphone culture early on, when PC broadband connection was a luxury, while U-19 have home broadband connection since they first learn to type...

Anyway, interesting statistics.

MediaFLO and "One-seg" - Japanese "mobile TV" myth busters

March 2, 2007

Verizon just started long-awaited mobile TV service based on MediaFLO technology.  I have been curiously watching so-called "One-seg" service, a rather strange mobile TV phenomenon in Japan, and would like to point out a few observation that might help to predict how MediaFLO will pan out in the U.S.

"One-seg", short of "one-segment", means that it is one of the 13 segments of digital broadcast spectrum, and that this one-seg is dedicated to mobile use.  The service started in April 2006.  It uses a separate radio spectrum (UHF band) from cell phone conversation, and in that sense is similar to MediaFLO, but has a very different business model; the service is run by broadcasters on ad-supported basis (=free), and therefore there is no revenue stream to mobile carriers, unless users press the links to data communication that appear on the screen.  I called it "strange phenomenon", because nobody makes money (broadcasters currently don't get additional payment from advertisers for One-Seg broadcast, either) but the service is going on, anyway.

Aside from such differences, consumers' behavior and expectation probably are not so much different between the both sides of the Pacific, so I have looked at some consumer surveys in Japan.

Many of the publicly available data are from the period when the service was still young (spring-summer 2006), and we have to be careful about it.  There are some contradicting reports, but one thing that is almost uniform in all the surveys and matches to my own observation as well is that the main users belong to "35+" generation.  People give me two kinds of explanation; one is that the one-seg handsets are expensive, and young people cannot afford it, and the other is that young people don't watch TV anyway and naturally are not interested in One-Seg either.  I think the truth is the combination of both.  Now after almost one-year after the release, One-Seg handset prices are coming down, and I am waiting to see some new statistics to come out.

Another interesting thing is that how actually consumers use it.  You would think that they watch One-Seg on commuter trains or while waiting at the meeting point, to check the baseball games or their favorite show.  While some surveys show that is the case, others says that the majority of use occurs in the users' home, rather than outside.  Kids occupy home TV with video games, or wives are glued to melodramas with their favorite Korean star (that Korean heartthrob boom is dying off now, thogh), while daddies have no other place than his own bed to watch the ball game on his own teeny little screen.  It is hard to determine which is the "majority" from the existing numbers, but I can easily see those poor daddies really exist in large numbers.

I cannot really determine if "One-Seg" service is successful or not, because the only hard number we can publicly obtain is the number of One-Seg enabled handset shipment.  While the shipment number is steadily climbing, both TV broadcasters and mobile carriers are rather quiet, and I hear only complaints from those providers.  But they keep selling those handsets, and it is rather strange to me.

Sources:

Nikkei NET

BizMarketing Survey

CNET Japan

Macromill

Goo

Stringer vs. Sony - and cheers for Iwatani

March 3, 2007

This morning's Wall Street Journal's article about Sony's problems, based on Howard Stringer's interview by Yukari Iwatani Kane, is a superb article.

Wall Street Journal article (requires subscription)

My husband (who is a Japanese IT journalist) took it as a WSJ's continued pro-Stringer campaign, but I read it as a very balanced, fair article about deep-rooted problems in Sony's corporate culture, its clash with the changing market conditions, and its struggle to cope with it.  It also gave me an impression that while Stringer's idea about the company direction makes perfect sense, people who criticize his style also are understandable in some ways.  I can easily see that he is under an enormous pressure, and particularly in front of Japanese management and press, he gets frustrated and is not comfortable enough to open up, but that does not totally justify he flushes out his complaints to foreign press.  I remember he did the similar thing shortly after he took Sony CEO position.  It worries me a little bit if he can push his message across in this type of manner - if this article is his premeditated act to shock the inside resistance.

Aside from the contents of the article, I am so happy to see Yukari Iwatani Kane writes in Japan now.  I met her several times in tech conferences untile a few years ago, when she moved to Tokyo, and even before I knew her in person, I had always liked her articles.  While there are lots of English articles about Japan, few are actually written by Japanese writers, or at least writers who are natural in Japanese cultures.  Yukari was raised and educated in the U.S., but she speaks perfect Japanese and understands it as a Japanese-background person.  And she writes great articles.  This article could have been a stereotype "backwards Japanese corporate culture" vs. "advanced Western management" story, with an obvious cynicism against Japanese managers, but thanks to her professional tone, I believe the article has escaped from such stereotype and focuses more on Sony's particular management and corporate strategy problems.

It certainly writes about a bad news for Sony and for Corporate Japan, but I still think it is great to have someone write about it in such a professional and fair manner in English on major international press.

Different SNS cultures - Japan, US and Korea

Japanese top SNS, Mixi, equivalent of MySpace in the U.S., is said to be in decline for the past few months. While there are lots of debates whether the stats actually reflect the reality, for example use from mobile phones are often not included in the numbers, many agree that Mixi's registered users hit the ceiling in the middle of last year, and the average staying time is declining.

Yuji Mori writes in his CNET Japan blog that he is currently working on joint international research to compare users' SNS behavior in Japan, US and Korea. He has found differences in the SNS culture among those world's most sophisticated net users.

He feels that Japanese Mixi culture calls for a heavy commitment, and often cases people feel choked by this thick relationships. I have also read elsewhere in the past that in Mixi (in which I don't participate), you are expected to respond very quickly to any comments made by your "friends", and if you don't, commenter feels you are rude. In "mobile-centric culture" in Japan, you can upload your comments from your cell phones anytime, and thus it fuels this "excessive expectation." To me, it sound familiar - old-time, rural village mentality in Japan was sort of like this. As a result, many people drop out entirely when they start to feel tired of this constant pressure to respond. Only remaining people are hard-core users, which tend to be small in numbers.

In Korea, even with their "mobile-centric culture" similar to Japan, Mori says that uploading entries/comments from mobile phones to SNS is not as popular as in Japan. I found it very interesting. And he thinks that both in Korea and US, SNS is used as the place for self-expression, rather than the relationship maintenance tool, and members don't necessarily expect someone to respond each time they post something.

I have been thinking that the next wave of mobile data usage in the U.S. would be the use as the uploading tool to SNS and other Web2.0 applications, taken from my experience in Japan, but this article made me think twice. Maybe SNS uploading may not become mainstream elsewhere other than Japan.

Source: CNET Japan blog