Asiajin links to a visual representation of Japanese social media. I don’t get the color scheme, or the non-smoothed WinXP text, but it is nice to get an overview of the various services in use in Japan. The authors note the lack of Japan-based international sites but my question is how does one crack the Japanese Social Media Prism?
Some international sites are represented and some not. For more than a year now there have been print books about Twitter available in major bookstores. The buzz was so amazing that Twitter released a Japanese version last year, the only localization other than English. Facebook also rolled out its Japanese-language interface last year, but was a far-too-latecomer, completely losing out to the dominant domestic social network site Mixi. Flickr, a Yahoo! property with no Japanese-language interface, is also not widely known in Japan. Yet its video equivalent YouTube is extremely well-known but did not make the list. Delicious, also owned by Yahoo! isn’t on the list, has no Japanese interface and does not seem to be in competition with Hatena Bookmarks. Does Yahoo! Japan keep out the international Yahoo! properties? Why would they do that when they do not offer equivalent domestic services?
I need more data to figure this out. Sounds like a job for What Japan Thinks.
Related: See more international social prisms
