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09.28.2012

Mobile and Internet technology have reportedly assisted the unprecedented growth of social games in Japan, as well as in other countries populated by die-hard game players. New Japanese game companies like Gree, Inc. and DeNA are dominating the social-games market with their card-battle games that allow members to actively interact and influence each other’s gaming style. This development is making previous big players and console-game manufacturers like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft to reform and compete on equal footing with these dynamic newcomers.

The gaming industry is a huge one, with an estimated turnover of about $78 billion. However, the most interesting part of this issue is that the percentage taken up by mobile social games has increased tremendously from almost nothing a few years ago to about $4.36 billion a year. These statistics point to a progressive increase in this area of gaming industry, where Japan has reportedly held a leading position. Developers and companies marketing social games were, at earliest times, able to market their social games on most locally produced Japanese phones that allow graphics and game play structures. This was even before the invention of smartphones and other new generation of mobile telephony.

Seeing the possibility of becoming the leader in social games industry, Japanese gaming companies are modifying their games to meet the tastes of foreign (western) games players.  Take for instance: DeNA attested that the three games on its Mobage network—namely, card-battle game “Rage of Bahamut”, role-playing game “Blood Brothers” and battle game “Ninja Royale” are reportedly staying on the Top Ten of the best downloaded games on U.S. Chart for Google Play.

Responding to an interview in the just concluded Tokyo Game Show (September 20,212), Isao Moriyasu, the Chief Executive of DeNa confidently said that “We want to build social games up into an industry where it can become the next area of global strength for Japan.” The belief is that Japan is positioning itself as a viable leader in social-games with the expectation of commanding a lion’s share of the global gaming industry.

New Japanese game companies like Gree are considering acquiring franchises from large console-game players with the hope of bringing their console games into the social games world. In the pipeline are the deals between Gree and Konami Corps for its console game “Metal Gear Solid”; Ubisoft Entertainment SA for its “Assassin’s Creed”; and Capcom Co. for its “Monster Hunter”.

Social games also offer these new Japanese gaming companies the opportunities of monetizing their offerings through the sale of virtual goods, weapons and additional powers. As a sign of good things to come, Shin Unozawa, the Chairman of the Computer Entertainment Suppliers’ Association said that “I used to think the videogame industry moved fast, but this social-game market moves three times as fast.”

This observation is also reflected in the statement of Yoshikazu Tanaka, Gree’s CEO, who believes that smartphones will eventually offer better graphics, more processing power and bigger memory than other video game devices that are currently in use. However, he might also have been considering the challenges that increased gaming activities would bring to the gaming companies’ executives, who would have to worry about dealing with increased storage, memory, security requirements.

Invariably, social game developers would have to design the appropriate mechanism for storing their clients’ games so as to provide uninterrupted gaming procedures. To achieve this, it means they have to adopt cloud computing that would offer both the developers and the players the unique chance of storing their games’ data in the cloud. This will not only guarantee uninterrupted gaming activities, it will also add value to the joy of playing social games, since players will not need to worry about  losing any vital information or suddenly get bumped out of their games due to lack of adequate storage facility.

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About the Guest Author:

Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/

09.27.2012

Unlike in other Asian and Western countries, the social network sites in Japan did not commence until in 2003 with Goco as the pioneering network. A year after, Mixi came to the limelight, and was followed by MySpace in 2006, 2nd Life in 2007, then Twitter in 2008. Each of these social networks was a success one way or another. Each also shares common features and is distinguished from the rest with its unique distinctions.

Photo upload is among the primordial features of these networks, where the account owners and friends are able to view and make comments about the photos, and where everyone can connect to others through various levels of networks. There is also the community interaction. The blogging is another feat which allows account owners to express emotions and thoughts. Shout-out is a micro-version of blogging.

While at the beginning, the social media sites were only patronized mostly by teenagers and college students, the introduction of LinkedIn in 2003 created a new market—the professionals, entrepreneurs, and corporations. In Japan, the functionality of social media gears towards financial, informational, and physical gains. The social networks have become a source of useful information for job applicants, employers, and entrepreneurs.

Communication becomes an integral part of every social network. This communication feature was exemplified in the wake of catastrophes that struck Japan. These network sites were the platform of exchanging crucial information between the Japanese and agents of government for rescue operations, and between Japan and other countries for relief operations and other activities.

Facebook and Twitter Give Faces to Media Users

While only 58 per cent (based on comScore) of Internet users also use social media, the people who engage in social network activities did so anonymously. In a local survey conducted as of March 2012, the attitude in using real name today has been represented by 44 per cent in favor compared to 5 per cent a year ago.

The launch of Facebook in 2005 attracted high school students for age-relevant networking. Facebook slowly proves its worth to other markets especially the corporations and entrepreneurship, both of which realized they need to make changes in their strategies online to reach out to their liberal audience, who dare to reveal their real names in social network activities. In 2010, Facebook introduced an interface change plus an office in Tokyo.

As of March 2012, Facebook has 10 million monthly users, a figure double than in the last six months. These statistics put Facebook as the second most popular social network in Japan after Mixi with 15 million subscribers. Mixi, threatened with the progress of Facebook teamed up with Twitter. The duo has not disappointed their followers and subscribers thus far.

On the other hand, Japanese people are easily drawn to the features of Facebook and Twitter as they are able to connect to the other side of the world, and businesses reach out to their consumers more easily and quickly. Two of the popular social networks that served as a key tool for communications during the last earthquake in Japan were Facebook and Twitter.

Slow but Sure

Despite being a voracious technology consumer, Japan is a late bloomer in social networking. Japanese people are more inclined in gaming in different consoles including smart phones. A year before the country reaches a decade in engaging in social media, Japan promises a lucrative and competitive market. It breeds innovative ideas lucrative for a business for targeted markets. For example, as Japan is already saturated with mobile gaming platforms, Facebook takes advantage in providing effective tools for local business, a feature that is an instant success for local entrepreneurs. Facebook designed it that whenever someone signs up, all the largest Facebook pages appear on the “suggested pages.”

Meanwhile, Twitter, available in Japanese language two years ago, supports individualism, a characteristic of Japanese people. Best known as a micro-blogging site, Twitter provides an attractive platform for Japanese people from all walks of life.

The impact of social media from the Western world may be slowly surfacing in Japan. But not all as Japan, too, has its homegrown social media. At best, the social media in Japan will be reflective of its culture and history—rich, dynamic and colorful.

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About the Guest Author:

Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

09.26.2012

A country report on the state of cloud computing in Japan makes good reading. The country comes in at First place in the BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecard. This scorecard looks at accumulated points of several different aspects of cloud computing and then grades countries accordingly.  The various aspects considered were legislative readiness, anti cybercrime laws, management of intellectual property rights, interoperability, international harmonization of cloud computing rules and infrastructure and statistical indicators:

• Laws and regulations concerning collection and use of personal data – Japan has a Law for Protection of Personal Data since 2005. There is also a law on this subject that is specifically applicable to the public sector as well.
• Scope of coverage – the data privacy  laws are comprehensive and cover both private and public sectors well. There are certain relaxations for organizations that hold less than 5000 records, but these relaxations do not interfere with the basic provisions of data security.
• Compatibility with Privacy Principles of the EU data protection directives – Japanese laws are broadly based on EU directives and OECD guidelines. However, the exemption that Japan provides to small datasets is not part of EU or OECD guidelines.
• Japanese data privacy laws are compliant with APEC Privacy framework and Japan is a full member of the APEC.
• Recourse to legal remedy – there are clear legal remedies available to individuals. Article 13 of the Japanese Constitution lays down the groundwork for this and says that all people shall be respected as individuals. In the past there have been occasions when the constitutional provisions have been tested and upheld against the government.
• Role of independent regulatory agencies – while there is no single regulatory agency, every major government department has its own watchdog. These agencies can even ask for reports  from the private sector and issue orders for corrective action.
• Controllers of data are not required to register themselves with the government. In general, they are free to work independently.

Japan has an exceptionally high penetration of broadband. It is said to have one of the most complete broadband infrastructure in the world. By 2010, over 90% of Japanese homes had  broadband upload exceeding connectivity at higher than 30 MBPS. It also has the highest number of fiber to the home connections and the country has a stated target of covering 100% homes with fiber giving greater than 100 MBPS connectivity. These are not merely figures, when achieved they will allow cloud computing applications in Japan that much of the developed world can only dream of.

One great example of a cloud success story in Japan is provided by the migration of the Japanese postal service to use cloud computing. The Japan post network has 244,000 post offices and is considered to be the largest bank in Japan with more than 100 million clients. Prior to 2007, it was getting bogged down with a slowing network and application and was having problems servicing its six million insurance clients and 14 billion individual posted items.

A new solution was needed. Shutting down – even temporarily – was not an option and something transformative was required. After the postal service was privatized in 2007, a decision was taken to move to the cloud. A SaaS / Paas combination was chosen with some services being purchased as they were and others being written specifically for the postal service.

All 24,000 post offices were given connectivity and an iterative model of development was followed that allowed each of these to test the new services and offer comments in real time.

This shortened the development time considerably and enabled developers to respond to feedback in real time. One after the other, services were migrated to the cloud and the entire migration – consisting of billions of records were ported to the new service within the same year.

Of course,  much of the success can be attributed to the excellent infrastructure already available in the country. Cloud computing in Japan has pushed the level of service delivery to levels that are unprecedented for public offices anywhere in the world. Developers all over the world should take note.

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About the Guest Author:

Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.

09.25.2012

The early establishment of Twitter as a social media force in Japan and the meteoric rise of Facebook in the first two quarters of 2012 are two cases that should be studied in order to gain valuable insight into the Japanese market. Facebook went from having a tiny market share, barely breaking two percent, to recently overtaking the biggest local social media network Mixi with fifteen million Japanese users. For a while, this market seemed impenetrable. However, thanks to a strong marketing strategy, Facebook is on a clear upward trend and may conceivably overtake Twitter in the next year.

Culture is a big part of social media success in Japan

Japan is one of the most active countries online. While this should logically mean that social media networks like Facebook would have immediate success, the culture is such that it is easy to fail in the Japanese markets. This is because social networking is a very big deal in Japan and the Japanese social media giant Mixi seemed unstoppable only a couple of years ago. It is also important to know that sites like Mobage-Town and Gree, which combine social media networking with Japan’s love for video games, have a similarly large part of the social media network market share.

Taking a look at Twitter’s success in Japan

While domestic networks are important in Japan, Twitter became very popular early on. In fact, Japan is one of Twitter’s largest markets due to its popularity with more than eighteen million Japanese people. So, why did Twitter succeed almost immediately while Facebook stagnated? The fact is, Facebook had a time disadvantage.

When Facebook was just being founded, Mixi was already an important part of the Japanese social media market. Mixi was created as a Japanese version of Friendster, which was quickly driven out of the market by Facebook in the United States. However, in Japan Mixi thrived, along with the other social networks that are more game oriented. This was the first obstacle for Facebook, they were competing against social network companies that had years of advantage in a very particular market. Twitter entered the Japanese market back in 2008, rapidly adding Japanese language to its platform (the first non-English Twitter language, in fact), and offering a new option for social media users in Japan.

How Japan’s cultural considerations initially hindered Facebook’s advances

One of the main aspects of the main Japanese social networks is anonymity. Japan’s computer users value their online anonymity and there is a strong culture of creating online characters using pseudonyms and handles in order to stay anonymous online. Twitter also has this advantage, allowing computer users to hide their real life identity behind a user name. The main problem with Facebook is that it is geared towards interacting with friends, meaning that they need to know who you are in order to find you. Social media networks in Japan are, instead, centered around community pages that receive huge amounts of anonymous visitors. In these kinds of online locations, your own identity isn’t as important as with Facebook.

What can we learn from Facebook’s meteoric rise in Japan?

Ultimately, Facebook focused its efforts on adding features that would appeal to Japanese users. They strengthened their mobile platform, which had a huge effect on the social capabilities of this network. They also added small changes that were specific to the Japanese market. For example, blood type is important the Japanese (many Japanese people believe that you can glean a lot about a person’s personality from that person’s blood type), and Facebook in Japan added a way to share this information with your Facebook friends. While there is no question that Mixi still has more subscriptions and has a stronger mobile platform than Facebook, this social network is now competing actively against Mixi, surpassing it in PC users and in number of active users.

In short, social media success in Japan requires several elements that can work against newcomers or companies not knowledgeable about Japanese culture:

• Getting to know the well-established local social media giants and offering something that they are not particularly good at.
• Understanding the importance of localization. Not only with the language but with regional quirks involving website design and cultural considerations.
• Japanese social media users require a strong mobile platform. Any successful social media network in Japan will need to be portable and mobile most of all.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

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About the Guest Author:

Nida Rasheed is a freelance writer and owner of an outsourcing company, Nida often finds herself wanting to write about the subjects that are closest to her heart. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan and can be found on Twitter @nidarasheed.