Social Network Services are huge in Japan. About 45 million Japanese use at least one of the more than 102 available SNS. However Social Network Services in Japan are still one of the fastest growing online services in Japan and new niche SNS are emerging on a regular base.
Recently so called ‘Oegaki-Chats‘ gain a lot of attention and popularity. ‘Oegaki’ is a Japanese term for “to draw” or “to scribble” and ‘Oegaki-Chat‘ stands for communities where users can share their artwork or communicate through paintings.
The most popular drawing community is ‘pixiv’. Launched in September 2007, ‘pixiv’ now has more than 600,000 registered members, 3 million submissions and about 500 million page views per month (February 2009). Users can share their illustrations and get feedback through ratings or user comments. Most of the illustrations are anime, manga or video game related. Drawings can be uploaded in 3 groups: 2D (e.g. Photoshop creations), 3D (e.g. Poser creations) and analog (e.g. writing brushes). Therefore ‘pixiv’ promotes ‘ComicStudio’, a professional manga drawing software with a special pen tablet. Additionally all uploaded images are organized in an extensive tag structure.
The ‘pixiv’ community grew very fast and top-rated artists even receive a cult like status be fans. Meanwhile there are several live events with competitions throughout the year and exhibitions are held and famous artists give demonstrations. Between February 27th and March 1st 2009, Pixiv held their first convention, ‘Pixiv Festa’, at the East Design Festa Gallery in Tokyo’s Omotesando with exhibitions of 145 different artists.
In October 2008 ‘pixiv’ launched a new community called ‘drawr’. This flash-based system enables users to draw directly in a web application via mouse or pen tablet. This new service is very simple to use, has no search function or tagging system at all and targets a younger user group than ‘pixiv’. Former users of ‘pixiv’ can log in with their existing accounts, but all images and comments can also be viewed without sign-up on both mobile and PC browsers. The interesting feature is that comments can only be made through handwriting or paintings.
Very similar to this community is ‘tegaki blog’. ‘tegaki’ stands for “handwriting”, therefore all images and also comments are also in handwriting. The default widescreen comment field can be changed to picture size in order to reply in whole images. Some artists also use the comment field to write complete manga short stories or continue picture series of other users. There is no real search function except of through tags in this page. All tags are user generated graphics and are managed by users themselfes. In September 2008 ‘tegaki blog’ had 126.000 registered users and 90 million page views per month. Registered users’ age group ranges from early 10s to later 20s.
In early 2008 the Flash Engineer Munehara remembered that when he was in school every student used to write and paint on the blackboards during holidays. Just for fun, he programmed a simple page, now known as ‘kokuban.in’, where you could just write on a blackboard (Japanese: “kokuban”) and save your painting.
By accident some schoolboys found his page on the internet and spread the word. In the next holidays season his page got stormed by thousands of high school students. Today there are more than 100.000 registered users. While in the beginning more than half of the users were Junior High students, today there is a wide range of users. Women in their 40s and man over 65 are the biggest user groups behind school children. The success of ‘Kokuban.in’ can be seen under nostalgic aspects for elderly, but is mostly in its anonymity and tolerance for users who are not good at painting. Everybody can post everything, share it and get a feedback.
Conclusion
SNS drawing is a recent phenomenon that is still at an early stage but already attracts hundreds of thousands of users. We expect this movement to grow much stronger in the next months to come. It is likely that big SNS service like mixi and Gree will start to add these drawing features in the near future. With the latest touch enabled handsets, mobile drawing clients will also start to appear soon. Crowdsourced designs, drawings and idea sketches could open up a new field of opportunities for brands and future business.
In the late 80s Japan had seen one of its worst economic events in its postwar history: the burst of the asset price bubble which threw the country into a recession which latest over 10 years. And now a new bubble is ready to burst: the classic media advertising bubble
Now in 2009 Japan is facing again a time of turmoil. Everybody talks about the global recession hitting Japan, the strong Yen killing exports, bank and loan crisis forcing a down-sizing in Japanese companies. All this results in less money available to spent on purchases and less money available for companies to invest in marketing and advertising. Companies have to spent their budgets more efficient. In reality this means a move away from classic media (print, TV, radio) towards new media (web, mobile) offering a better ROI for the money spent. While this is also true for many other countries in the world, this development in Japan is like a ticking time bomb which will explode real soon
Three agencies to bind them all
Dentsu, Hakuhodo and ADK are regarded as Japans biggest ad agencies with an estimated combined market share of over 70% (rough estimate). Print and TV ads and media connections are what turned these agencies into media giants and personal connections with the clients helped to feed these giants over the years. In fact a big part of the success can be attributed to these “personal connection” approach: wining and dining its clients, entertaining them at nightclubs or even offering their offspring a job at their agency. Working together with the same agency for years including sweet bonuses like free golf trips, nice presents and pretty girls can be tempting. And it seems to work, as many of Japans biggest companies still rely on these agencies for most of their advertising needs. These “needs” are channeled by the way the big agencies do their business: buy ad space on TV and in Magazines/Newspapers and sell this space including the ads to the client. Miraculously this system has been working now for over 30 years. This gives the impression that Japanese consumers still live in a world of classic mass media consumption and that the internet just plays a minor role. At least this is what the agencies want to believe and maybe also their clients. But reality is quite different:
Japan already is a digital society
In 2006 the average Japanese consumer for the first time spent more time online than reading magazines or newspapers. Japanese are the most active bloggers on this planet, turning Japanese into one of the most frequently used language for blog entries worldwide. Japan also has one of th e highest mobile broadband saturation as well as the cheapest high speed broadband connections globally. In fact Japan is one of the top 5 leading digital societies in the world today. Mobile SNS platforms like Mobage have over 10 million users and access to popular websites can reach billions of pageviews.
Big agencies seem to live in a different century
It looks like most agencies turn a blind eye on reality and keep pushing most of their clients money into TV and magazine ads while Japanese consumers already moved on to the new media world. The idea of the family gathering around the TV set to watch their favorite show or a Saturday main event together is a blast from the past. Today very often the TV is nothing more than a white noise in a Japanese household which gets turned on in the morning and gets turned off after midnight. But TV commercials are still big business in Japan. The reason why the agencies and clients are still pushing for the same old thing? Because it worked so well in the past and as long as nobody outside finds out about the truth its all right. And who makes sure nobody finds out about it? The company who provides the measurement data of the campaigns:
Media control is no longer “king”
One of Japans biggest institution for measuring the reach of TV and print ads (and in the end the overall success of a media campaign) is far from being a neutral institution. In fact it is “owned” by one of the three big agencies! Unlike ad agencies in other countries the strong skill of the big Japanese agencies is control and not creativity. Now with Japanese companies facing an overall economic crisis, clients need to rethink how to spend their advertising money. The trend clearly goes towards online advertisement/promotion, offering one of the best cost/performance ratios. So instead of pushing through another expensive TV commercial Japanese marketers have to move their budgets to online. This even goes beyond classic display advertisement: Car makers launch their own SNS services, food manufacturers let internet users create their next cup ramen soup product for them and beverage makers start to offer mobile multiplayer game portals. Marketers are more and more looking for digital creativity combined with measurability. This is one reason why the big ad agencies in Japan are so afraid. No more fiddling around with the numbers or some wild guessing. The internet was born out of numbers and it can offer numbers better than any other media. It provides a detailed performance record of media activities ranging from simple eyeballs to detailed purchase conversion ratios.
Real data is the new king
For example IPTV makes it possible to track and trace the viewing behavior of every single user. This provides much more valuable and valid data than a -perhaps biased- research panel of a few hundred viewers. Now with services like KDDI Hikari TV, JoostTV, Yahoo BB TV or even YouTube this is possible. What users are watching for how long and when can be measured without any problems. The performance/value of actors, shows and ads could even be measured in real-time when users start to “opt-out” by switching channels or turning off the system/application. (Intra-broadcast performance, chapter performance) Providing personalized ads/special offers or recommendations based on individual viewing patterns is already being tested by several companies. All in all (real) data is the new king and the new currency. There is no way to “pretend” or “assume” anymore. What counts are just facts and these facts have the power to disrupt a whole industry.
The big players are left in the cold
The internet is -in a way- the antithesis of “media control”. You cannot “own” the internet, unlike classic media. And this sends shivers down the spine of the big ad agencies in Japan who were used to “own” the media (or at least the space in the media), make a fortune out of their “possessions” and worst case spin-doctor data about viewer/reader consumption.
Lights are on “red alert”
Of course it needs to be mentioned that the big agencies are aware of this shift and in the last years some departments tried to acquire small and mid sized online agencies, online portals, create spin-off or weave partnerships with other global partners. But still there seems to be a big majority living in a state of denial. Only a very little percentage of the big agencies business and overall revenues are generated through online communication activities (roughly less than 10%).
A revolution is knocking at the door
Given the economic downturn Japan is facing right now, the classic advertising bubble burst will happen much sooner than expected: In April the new fiscal year starts and companies report their annual profit. Around the same time also advertising strategies and media budgets get fixed. And classic mass media might not be a top priority anymore!
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The eBook market in Japan keeps growing. Japanese who were famous for their high consumption of printed media use more and more digital media. Today 82% of all eBook are read on mobile phones. According to the ‘Keitai Hakusho 2009’ (impress R & D) the mobile e-Book market was 290 million dollars in 2008. 65% of all eBooks were mobile mangas (comic books) and mostly consumed by young men. For Japanese women mobile novels are really popular now.
The latest surveys conducted by Japan Internet.com K.K. and Research Plus show that the mobile novel market is changing very quickly. Two surveys, the first in October 2008 and the second in March 2009, focused on mobile novel and Japanese women in their 20s, 30s and 40s.
Compared to half year ago the usage of mobile novels went up 9%. Today 24.3% read mobile novels on a regular base, compared to 15.3% in late 2008. The most popular mobile novel site is still ‘Mahou no island’ with a market share of 38%. But that’s a big loss compared to a half year ago. Many new novel sites appeared in late 2008 and now have a combined market share of 35%.
Most content of ‘Mahou no island’ and other ‘mobile novel’ sites is produced user-created content. The satisfaction with this content deceased a little bit (-2%) but is still very high (58.9%). By far the most popular mobile novel genre is still ‘romance and love’ with 61%, followed by ‘mystery’ and ‘fantasy’ with only 8%. Research Plus even calls the new media ‘mobile novels’ the new ‘Harlequin’, referring to Harlequin Enterprises Limited, the world leading publisher of series romance and women’s fiction.
That is one of the results from a survey conducted by P+Nest Research Institute on two of their mobile partner sites. Within 1day 1001 female and high school and junior high school students voluntarily participated in a mobile survey about personal homepage usage.
In Japan young people use the word ‘hompe’, the short word for homepage, not only for homepages but also for profile services and SNS on the mobile web. Users can write user profiles, diaries, bulletins and even novels and contribute to each other in real time.
The usage of ‘hompe’ is extraordinarily high in Japan, especially for young girls. Asked about “how many of their friends and classmates have a ‘hompe’?”, 37.7% of female junior high school students and 47.9% of high school students answered: “all of them”. Everyday 45.6% of junior high school students and 48.6% of high school students spend at least 1h updating their own sites or writing real time contributions to other sites. The purpose of writing ‘hompe’ is slightly different between female junior high and high school students. 45.1% of junior high school students’ intention is to “communicate with their friends”. Contrarily female high school students seem to get more self-centered and individual after they turn 16. Their purpose for writing on ‘hompes’is to keep “individual records about themselves” (48.6%). Communication is still the main purpose. But while it’s more like active “chatting” for junior high students, high school students tend to write it more like an egocentric ‘blog’. They write about themselves as an ‘idol’ (star) and want others to be interested in them. Their participation in others gets more passive.
The most popular mobile ‘hompe’ service site is homepe ‘＠peps!’; most used profile sites are ‘Chip!!’ and ‘zentraku profile’
honeyee.mag is one of the most exclusive lifestyle magazines in Japan. Hiroshi Fujiwara, the founder of this magazine, gathers around some of the most creative people of metropolis Tokyo and reports about the latest trends in fashion, lifestyle and design. Recently a special edition of his magazine was published focusing on iPhone usage in Japan (‘About the iPhone at Hanimagu’ – Everything You Always Wanted to Know About iPhone – But Were Afraid to Ask). Many famous creatives like the musician Shinichi Osawa (Mondo Grosso), creative director Koichiro Tanaka (e.g. Uniqlo iPhone app producer) and many others designers, photographers, creative directors etc. where interviewed and an iPhone user survey was conducted. The following data is only mirco data but it gives some interesting insights in the interests and user behavior of Japanese iPhone users.
1. Fast buyers – Japanese wanna have it first!
When the iPhone was first introduced to Japan in July 2008, long lines waited for days in front of the Softbank shop in Omotesando. As reported in the “iPhone Sales in Japan” article on March 3rd, sales and interest in iPhone as a mobile phone decreased drastically after the first month. The survey from honeyee.mag confirms that situation clearly: 84% of iPhone users bought their iPhone in the first month after its release; only 16% purchased it in the following 7month.
2. Burdens: Carrier or Email change required
“Mobile Number Portability” was introduced in October 2006 and allows to keep the same number when changing mobile carriers. In case of the iPhone only 33% used that possibility. Different to other mobile phones the iPhone didn’t support address book and data synchronization with Japanese phones. Also a new iPhone-only email address, that was different to normal Japanese email addresses had to be taken. Many problems occurred, messages couldn’t get send or received, were broken or blocked by other carriers. Knowing of the different nature of the phone you can say that those who purchased the iPhone were mostly Apple fans or gadget geeks, who bought it also they had ongoing contracts with other carriers.
3. In Japan the iPhone is ‘only’ a second phone
Japan is the most advanced mobile society in the world and Japanese handsets are still world leading. Due to the fast development of new phones and the fast changing rate of handsets, usability, content and service improved very much over the years. The iPhone was a big revolution in the West and enhanced mobile communication on 3G networks worldwide. But in Japan the iPhone was technically no revolution at all. At the time of its introduction about 90 million of 103million mobile phone users in Japan already surfed on 3G networks for years, had high-end handsets for several generations and were used to many features the iPhone doesn’t have (QR-code reader, “osaifu keita” [mobile payment], free mobile TV [1seg] etc.). Especially the carrier menu and rich Japanese content, Japanese were used to have for many years, are missing. “It’s a nice gadget to brows PC websites and play games but it can’t be compared to a Japanese phone”, was a common statement. Therefore Japanese use the iPhone as a second device, more like a PDA than a mobile phone. For Japanese the iPhone is “hard to use as a mobile phone”. Only 55% of iPhone users in Japan use it as a main phone.
4. Japanese like special colors
Another point the survey reveals is that 72% of Japanese iPhone users possess a “black iPhone”. That is not surprising because only the 16gb model is available in white and the price for the 16gb version was very high (80.520yen = 823$). Considering that, you can say that Japanese tend to buy a special colored white phone when they purchase a 16gb version. Japanese like to have a variety of designs and colors to choose from. In Japan all carriers introduce 3 times a year 10 to 20 new phones in a huge variety of colors. So Japanese are spoilt to chooses an individual color and design for each phone they purchase. Never the less there are also a lot of Apple fans (Macintosh, iPod etc.) in Japan. Many Japanese like the simple design of the iPhone but would like to have more color and design variations like the aluminium body of the new Macbook or the color ranges of the iPod nano series.
5. iPhone = ‘Expensive gadget’
The above mentioned high purchasing cost of the iPhone (till the “iPhone for everybody” campaign) and the expensive flat rate plans for PC site browsing, compared to other Japanese phones, gave the Japanese an image of the iPhones as an expensive gadget. Additionally 45% of iPhone users think that the monthly charges are high. Those who felt that the prices are high also pointed out, that especially the 3G package prices increase extremely when they travel abroad. 33% of the questioned people use the iPhone abroad. Also the Japanese iPhone contracts by Softbank have special price plans for international usage, some users have additional contracts in other countries. Those who don’t have additional contracts and didn’t inform themselves about the costs, report that they were shocked about the extrem high prices for data transfer. When abroad, map applications like Google Maps are one of the most used features.
6. iPhone users are Mac users
81% of iPhone users in Japan are using Macintosh computers. Of course the conducted survey specialized on creative people who are more likely to use Macintosh computers for work or at home. But if you are used to the Mac OS it’s very easy to adapt to the interface of the iPhone and you are more likely to have interest in the Mac OS-based iPhone. For the average Japanese mobile phone user, who mostly don’t even have a computer at home it’s difficult to use the computer-depending iPhone. Contrary most people in the “hanikamu” community (creatives featured or working in fields touched by the honeyee.mag) are usually very busy creative people. The usage of MobileMe, that very useful service to sync different devices over the air, is very high in this work field. Although the charges for MobileMe are seen as too expensive, 62% are active users and will keep on using this service also if the price doesn’t change.
7. Case protection is low
Worldwide most of smart phone users protect their phone with a case. For Japanese mobile phones have already a unique design and color and should be build sold. Phone stripes (“keitai straipu”), photo stickers (“purikura”) and attachable glitter (“kirakira shiru”) are used to personalize the device. The idea of putting a phone in a case is very new in Japan. About 40% of Japanese don’t like the idea of hiding the beautiful design of the iPhone. That’s a very high ratio compared to other countries.
8. QWERTY-Keyboard stays unused
For foreigners in Japan it’s a pain in the ass to write English on a Japanese phone or to search net web. There is nothing like a T9 text input method and also the latest touch screen phones don’t have a software qwerty-keyboard. In Japan 62% of the creatives prefer the Japanese “ten key pad” instead of the full keyboard (Probably the ratio at normal users is much higher). Japanese are used to the “ten key pad” from previous phones and the buttons of the full keyboard are seen as too small. It normally takes some time to get used to the touch keyboards of the iPhone, but Japanese who try it out only once, experience many key misses and are frustrated very quickly. For that reason the rumor spread quickly that the iPhone is hard to use for Japanese.
9. iPhone = iPod with internet and phone functions
The appeal of the iPhone is that it’s “an iPod that can also be used as a phone”. It is very usefull to download songs directly over wifi or puchase them in the mobile iTunes on the go! 84% of Japanese iPhone users use the iPhone to listen to music on a regular base. But some complain that the screen freezes sometimes when listening to music while browsing the net on safari.
10. ‘BlackBerry No!’ – ‘G1 Yes!’
When you talk about smart phones a year ago you primarily talked about the BlackBerry first. The high interest in the iPhone in Japan should implement also a high interest in the latest Black Berry Storm, just released abroad, which is now also equipped with a touch screen. But actually 62% of Japanese iPhone users conducted in the survey don’t show any interest in the BlackBerry. Contrary to the relative low interest in the Black Berry there is a high awareness in the Android based G1 from T-mobile, that just came out in America. 62% are interested in the new Google Phone G1. The G1 seems to be a better value due its additional hard keyboard, touch screen functionality – no multitouch function like the iPhone – and the support of MobileMe. But concerning about the design the iPhone is much more attractive to Japanese users than the G1.
11. 100% Satisfaction
The Japanese users are totally satisfied with their iPhone. As an entertainment tool for music, video and games, as a business tool for company mails and data transfer, the iPhone is a gadget with the perfect balance between work and play for Japanese. Also the many available applications, rich content and different ways to play around, Japanese creatives love the way of usage of the iPhone. It hasn’t been long since the iPhone was introduced to the Japanese market. Now everybody is keen on seeing the next developments of the iPhone. Quit all of iPhone users are happy with it and want to keep on using the same kind of device. 95% of iPhone users will defintely buy the new edition of the iphone as soon as it comes out. Also the current iPhone is enough for most of the users, they wish to have a bigger memory, a copy and paste function and a higher resolution camera in a new iPhone.
