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’