Japan’ social networking space has surely changed a lot in the last 2 years.
There can be no doubt that chat app LINE (released in the summer of 2011) is the undisputed king in this area in Japan, boasting over 40 million domestic users.
At the same time, Japan’s once biggest real-identity social network Mixi has been going sideways as far as user growth is concerned. In September last year, I mentioned that Mixi lost the pole position to Facebook Japan for the first time.
And the situation is actually much clearer now: the site now boasts a total of 19 million monthly active users, as reported by Facebook Japan country growth manager Taro Kodama himself during Social Media Week in Tokyo.
Here is a timeline of Facebook’s growth in Japan so far:
May 2008
Facebook launches in Japanese (link).
September 2011
Facebook reports 5 million Japanese MAU (link).
March 2012
Facebook hits 10 million Japanese MAU (link).
September 2012
Facebook outpaces Mixi with 15 million MAU (link).
February 2013
Facebook counts 19 million users.
