Galapagos: Japan’s mobile web has always been different than in the rest of the world. This primer tries to explain why: Over one billion cell phones have been sold worldwide in the last year, but in the US or Europe, the mobile Internet is still catching on relatively slowly. There even was...
Facebook Japan: Why They Haven’t Beaten Mixi So Far
Facebook Japan has a hard time winning against the country’s No. 1 social network, Mixi, so far. But why? Sized at an estimated $5.6 billion in 2007, Japan boasts one of the biggest online advertising markets in the world – a huge potential just waiting to be tapped by foreign social networks...
Facebook’s co-founder taken to Tokyo Venture Beat by yours truly
I met Facebook‘s co-founder and former CTO (until May this year) Adam D’Angelo yesterday in Tokyo. Adam came to Japan on a private trip. He was “guided” by his long-time friend Matyas who recently graduated from the California Institute of Technology and can speak perfect...
11 Venture Capitalists+me in the Japanese woods
OK, not of all these people were VCs. Some of them are also presidents of web companies. And we were not really in the woods but in the amazingly beautiful Fukui prefecture, hometown of Taisuke Fukuno. All this under the umbrella of Venture Beat, to my knowledge the most influential network in...
My 3rd Techcrunch article+USA trip to TC 50
My 3rd article on Techcrunch is now online, this time I blogged Mixi. The Japanese version can be found here on Techcrunch Japan, the French version on Techcrunch France. A blogger published an unofficial Chinese translation. Although the company is worth $1 billion, almost no one outside Japan...
Primer On Mixi: What Makes Japan’s Biggest Social Network Different?
Mixi is a made-in-Japan phenomenon: how did they acquire millions of users, go IPO and keep down Facebook in Japan? Japan’s biggest social network is called Mixi, launched in February 2004 by the company of the same name. Drawing in one in five web users in the country, Mixi now boasts over 15...