Warc - Ideas and evidence for marketing people | warc.com. Social Media Report 2012. 2012 has been a big year on the Japanese social-media scene. Twitter continues to ride high. Facebook has grown a lot, but newcomer Line seems set to overtake it. Social game companies Gree and Mobage have shifted their overseas expansion into high gear. And Mixi finally admits that it needs to try harder to understand what its members want. In this month’s column, we look back at the big battles fought in the Japanese social-media scene over the past year. Twitter Twitter’s new “Lifeline” feature was launched in September in Japan — the first region in the world to receive the service that suggests which official government Twitter accounts should be followed if disaster hits. Seeing how the popularity of Twitter surged in Japan immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11 last year, it is no surprise the service was developed here.
Along with positioning itself as an essential service in times of trouble, Twitter has been localizing new features from its global version into Japanese, with no dramas. Facebook Line Yahoo! Warc - Ideas and evidence for marketing people | warc.com. Adam Acar, Professor of communication & social media at Kobe city university of foreign studies | SlideShare.
Japan’s LINE social network could challenge global competitors. LINE is a cross-platform communication service and app, offered for free by Naver, from NHN Japan. The basic functionality allows users to send text messages and to make free calls with other users who have the app installed on their smartphones. The service launched just 13 months ago, on June 27, 2011, and its growth rate has been simply amazing, with 45 million users currently registered — 20 million of whom are in its homeland. The rapid growth of LINE is currently one of the hottest Internet topics in Japan. The 20 million registered Japanese users already makes LINE a real challenger to domestic social-network giants Mixi, Gree and Mobage, which each have around 25-30 million users. LINE initially started as a text-messaging service allowing users to text-chat with other LINE users or have group-chats with multiple users.
Three months after its launch, the ability to make free voice calls from smartphones was also added to LINE. Hands on with Line, the 60 million user strong mobile-social network from Japan. Line is a fast-growing new mobile-social network and platform from NHN Japan. It’s available now as a free download for iOS and Android devices, with additional in-app purchases for custom content such as virtual stickers. Although still relatively unknown outside of its native Japan, where it launched back in June 2011, as of this week Line had more than 60 million users, more than 25 millon of whom are Japanese. Industry watcher Dr. Serkan Toto has been following the growth of the mobile social network and platform. Chart: Dr. NHN Japan has been capitalizing on the popularity of its upstart social network, rolling out social games and a horoscope service in order to turn it into a social platform for other apps. At its core however, Line is a free calling and messaging app.
Once the user has some friends, they have a number of possibilities. The app’s monetization primarily stems from the sale of virtual “stickers” which can be posted into chat windows as a means of visual expression. Line, le réseau social japonais qui veut détrôner Facebook. Global Digital Culture: Cultural Differences and the Internet.