Japan may have produced the most tweets per minute. Twitter may have saved one local from a toilet mishap. Yes, everyone may seem to be raving about Twitter. But could the backlash be about to begin?
The media has been awash recently with reports of a part-time employee of a high class hotel tweeting about a celebrity couple apparently staying the night on January 11th.
Naturally this is rather intrusive and a clear breach of the hotel’s confidentiality. What actually happened? In truth, it’s fairly innocent.
“Aoi Takenaga” (@aoi_tkng, account now protected), a female university student worker, noticed J-League soccer player Junichi Inamoto and model Miho Tanaka in a restaurant inside the Westin Hotel, Tokyo.
[Image source The culprit later went online to Twitter and posted:
Junichi Inamoto and Miho Tanaka have come to the restaurant. Miho Tanaka’s face is so small and cute…Looks like the two of them will stay the night : )
「稲本潤一と田中美保がご来店 田中美保まじ顔ちっちゃくて可愛かった…今夜は2人で泊まるらしいよ お、これは…（どきどき笑）」
This almost immediately spread in the local internet stratosphere, before making its way into mainstream news. Needless to say, the tweeter responsible is no longer working at the Westin. (It later transpired that the couple were simply celebrating Tanaka’s birthday and may not even have stayed the night.)
While obviously embarrassing for the hotel, this might not seem such a big problem for westerners, used to an environment where entertainers regularly have their personal activities exposed for all to see. However, celebrity life and media coverage of it is much more controlled in Japan.
Moreover, the culture takes privacy very seriously and normal users also famously shy away for the most part from having real online identities. This is one obvious reason for Facebook’s stagnant growth here while other SNS where fake names and avatars can be used have gone supernova.
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