Despite Google’s impressive search engine, there is another player that surpassed Google in Japan. Now Google Japan became no. 3 in terms of most popular sites among users in Japan, while FC2 is now second and Yahoo! Japan still holding the largest market share. According to FC2’s blog entry (in Japanese), they’re now no. 2 based on the data that compiled from Alexa.

FC2 was launched in 1999 and thereafter, achieved exponentially growth and currently has 400 million users throughout the world. FC2 is well-known as a blog service provider that allowed its users to create blogs with 1G of online storage free of charge. Moreover, the freedom to redesign an individual blog has therefore attracted many bloggers to use FC2 blog engine.

Mobikade, a popular ad-funded mobile social networking site has launched in the U.K. today. It is a mobile SNS and free games site jointly organized by Global Network Solutions Europe and Excite Japan. The general thinking is that the mobile concentration of the U.K. population is very high, i.e. six million according to a statistical report in U.K. and thus, it has emerged as the first target market of Mobikade’s overseas venture. To talk about Mobikade’s features, it is a full-fledge mobile site that comprised of games developed from Japan, Korea, US, and the Europe, mainly the puzzle games such as Sudoku and some of the casino games. In addition, Mobikade offered users the freedom to create their own private groups, where they can share photos, blogs, and interest among themselves. Meanwhile, it also tapped into the rising popularity of Twitter by offered the Twitter-like micro-blogging feature, the personal mobile space to be provided to every users in order to keep track what’s new in one’s life, in the posting title that entitled, “What’s up now?” What sets Mobikade apart is the market-retain scheme, i.e. the point system that reward the users with every move made by them. Users have the chances to win Sony PlayStation 3 Console, iTube, Louis Vuitton and other prizes if they have accumulated for more than 1,000 points or above.

Inevitably, Mobikade has a big goal in mind, with the short-term goal to acquire 200,000 users by March 2008, and with plans to expand into other European markets such as Italy and Germany.

You can visit the Mobikade U.K. site by clicking here.

Foxkeh is coming to you from Japan right now. Currently have two version of web pages, one is in Japanese language and the other one is English. It was a development of Mozilla Japan, a cartoon even cuter than the usual Fox that we familiar with, assume that we used Firefox as our main browser on the web. It is a little creature that developed with the aim of making Firefox accessible and for viewing in the Japan market, as told by CEO of Mozilla Foundation. Also, you can read the full article about the future plans of Mozilla by clicking here.

Currently the Mozilla Japan has prepared the extensions for the Foxkeh, with banners, wallpaper and the developing documentation as well. However, maybe you don’t realize, Foxkeh was more than a cartoon character, it go penetrate the worldwide market starting from Japan, educate the younger generation to start using Firefox browser when they first touch the Internet, smiling on the ground, and does the things an ordinary salesman that couldn’t do in a daily routine job. Sometimes cartoon know more than an ordinary salesman about the buying psychology, in this case, the human side of selling the Firefox services.

Below is the short clip of “GetFirefox.jp” I embedded from YouTube.

Recently, I have posted that the top-tier Japanese Baidu domain name was registered by another company in Japan, now Baidu Europe and even Korea, their targeted market were also been registered by someone else. Is this the act of cybersquatting? Though we believe the freedom of the Internet, but what’s the implications of the aforesaid conduct for the Internet and the company itself?

Source: http://baidu-europe.eu/?p=services (accessed on 6 May 2007)

Source: http://baidu.kr/ (accessed on 6 May 2007)

eyeVio, a new social networking and video sharing site with the slogan “my life, your emotion” owned by Sony has launched in Japan today. However, as I visited the site and trying to get a first grasp of it, I noticed that they have posted a report (as shown below), i.e. system failure that caused by power problem happened in the data center as at 18:20.

2007/04/27 システム障害のご報告
本日18:20分過ぎ、データセンター内の電源トラブルのためシステムがダウンしました。現在、電源の方は対策を実施済みです。引き続きアクセスのしにくさの改善に全力を尽くします。ご不便かとは存じますが、どうぞよろしくお願いいたします。

2007/04/27 ただいまアクセスが集中しております
ただいま、アクセスが集中し、つながりにくい状況になっています。現在、対策中です。ご迷惑をおかけしまして申し訳ありません。

2007/04/27 本日よりeyeVio一般公開です。

eyeVio is an Ajax based social network web 2.0. When you visit some of the member profiles listed in eyeVio, you’ll find the well-designed, highly customized, and the features, appearance, as well as the functions of this web application is favorably received not only by the Japanese people, but the Chinese people as well, albeit that it just officially rolled out to the market this morning 10a.m. One of the profiles that I visited, e.g. KIKI, her page has allowed the public to view, vote on, and a personal short clip, thumb up, score points, i.e. appraisal value have been integrated with the page. Some famous people have also set up their personal profile on eyeVio and this included the yoga Master Duncan Wong; I even read that he is teacher of choice to Madonna, Sting and Demi Moore. In addition, the special feature offered by eyeVio is the videos can be download through the use of walkman, PSP and iPod, but television will be in the future, according to this article. Though the loading of each member profile is slow, eyeVio has achieved nearly 1,000 members so far. I even came across the landing page with the following message appeared in the midst of writing:

ただいま緊急メンテナンスを実施中です。復旧までしばらくお待ちください。

利用者の皆様にはご迷惑をお掛けしますが、ご理解ご協力のほど、よろしくお願いします。
(Urgent maintenance)

eyeVio, can be registered by using any email address. If an user use Gmail address to register, this email address will become the login address for his/her eyeVio account. Users can set their videos to be “private”, and file uploading is restricted to 150MB. Moreover, eyeVio staff monitor the videos posted by the users 24/7, i.e. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Any video that violate the copyright issues or any harmful content found on eyeVio, it would be deleted instantly. Currently, videos can be viewed on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari browsers.

In fact, eyeVio is another social network venture of Sony as Sony Pictures Entertainment has bought Grouper.com in August last year, according to this Japanese news.

Google Transit, released in December 2005 and still a lab project under the umbrella of Google has expanded to Japan. Google Transit Japan (as picture shown in the below) basically is a public transportation information especially trains at your finger tips.

Started in Japan at 23th April this year, the launched of Google Transit that integrated with the Google Maps’ services is pretty new to the Japanese people, according to nikkei BPnet. Not only the departure and destination station names were input in the service. The availability of shortest route, address and any landmark were also included in this Google Transit Japan. For some destinations such as Tokyo 東京 and Fukuoka 福岡 where the huge demand is there for the public transportation, it is no surprise that Japanese people would use their cell phones to track those transportation information through the offered of Google Transit.

The other day I came across a new site created by Microsoft Japan, besides Windows Live Sushi as profiled in my another post, Windows Live Sushi Launched in Japan. This new site is called My Live Story. A same concept that can be found in both of these two sites; flash interface, similar designs in terms of color and each of the object can be click and it will bring you to the personal particulars of the object. However, both sites were being designed with utterly two different layouts. As I visited My Live Story, I could found all the famous and ordinary people in Japan, with the individual background stated by Microsoft Japan. Moreover, you also can find some famous Japanese book authors, artists, musicians, architects, students, nurses, and etc on this site.

It seems to me that Microsoft Japan is creating a seamless user experience for Japanese in Japan. To get around this, Microsoft Japan has decided to use the web design technology that we never seen at Microsoft’s home pages before in other countries. But I still wonder can Microsoft Japan deliver the contents in a promptly manner in order to attract the Japanese users.

An April Fool’s joke by Microsoft Japan? Not really. I just came across Windows Live Sushi, a new search engine with the Flash animation interface developed by Microsoft Japan. Though highly customize, localize, amazingly attractiveness could be found on the landing page of this Live Sushi, but the most important element behind the sceneline was Microsoft Japan has taken the proactive approach in refining its search strategy. As usual, you can enter query to the Windows Live Search and there are several categories such as consumer products, unidentified objects, Japanese dishes, transport, plants, and etc. that you can choose for in this search engine. The results deliver will very much like the sushi is being served on the plates through a conveyor belt moving in front of you at a Japanese sushi restaurant. You can pick the sushi (image) that you want by clicking on the image. As you click on the sushi (image), it brought you to a page comprised of the introduction of that particular image, with the related search results, i.e. 3 results in a row at the bottom of the page.

Simply put, a brilliant idea invented by Microsoft Japan.