By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
I attended Startupdating #5 yesterday, an event in Tokyo that connects Japan’s web entrepreneurs with engineers looking for new opportunities. Speakers at the event were Hironao Kunimitsu (CEO of Gumi) and Taisei Tanaka (CEO of Geisha Tokyo Entertainment). Their companies are among the...
Japan’s biggest social network Mixi invited me (and a small group of about 10 other people) to a special event at their HQ in central Tokyo last night to introduce two new services that are unique for social networks worldwide. Mixi CEO Kenji Kasahara, COO Akinori Harada, CFO Fumiaki Koizumi...
Rakuten today announced it has inked a deal with Okinawa to support the Japanese prefecture in its “regional development”.
Okinawa will be allowed to use Rakuten to promote, among other things, special events and seasonal specialties to the site’s 70 million registered members.
How can Facebook Japan beat Mixi in Japan? It seems the Americans think one way is to differentiate themselves from Mixi is by urging users to register with their real names only. On Mixi, members are allowed to use nicknames and fake pictures on their profiles. Even though this makes it hard (and...
CyberAgent on Friday announced that its “Ameba Geinoujin-Yuumeijin” (“Ameba Talents-Celebrities”) blogging platform has hit the 9,000 user mark in January. This section on Ameba is exclusively available for bloggers “accredited” by CyberAgent as “stars”. Ameba Geinoujin...
How is Groupon Japan doing exactly? Daily coupon search service CP4U posted a study [JP, PDF] today, in which they analyzed the sales numbers of Groupon and a total of 146 Japanese clones in December 2010 and January 2011. The chart below (via Asiajin) shows that Groupon generated 1.1 billion yen...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry