This is the latest in the series of blogs based on the newsletters supplied by our research partner INterRIDE Inc.
Post-Earthquake SNS Trends
In an online survey of 1,891 social media users 1.9% answered that they started using Twitter due to the March 11th earthquake. Combined with those who already were using the service the total rises to 42.1%, almost double that of Facebook and not far from mixi’s 50.8%.
The same survey also asked users which SNS they found helpful following the catastrophe, and 63.9% said Twitter, against Facebook’s 34.7% and mixi’s low 26%. As Asiajin blogger Akky Akimoto wrote in a recent Japan Times column:
As mobile phone networks went down after the quake, people turned elsewhere to contact each other, and Japanese TV and newspapers suggested that social media, which by then basically meant Twitter, was a good alternative when disaster cut off other communication channels.
Figures show that the number of tweets on March 11th was 1.8 times higher than usual, and continued to be 20% higher than average in the weeks following the disaster.
Of course most people still got their information immediately after the quake from TV, not least because internet was not available at many places such as refugee shelters. However, the survey also revealed that television is still the most trusted medium overall and SNS and blogs are the least, even though their usage is very high among people in their teens and twenties.
These results are not surprising but it’s good to have some confirmation of how users were searching for information in the wake of the disaster. Though much in the media has been made of the population’s stoicism, attitudes will be affected, not only as regards social media but also in terms of general consumer behavior, as we researched in our new in-depth video report on “Japan’s new normal”.
Japan carriers unlock SIMs
It got sidelined understandably following the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, but a minor mobile revolution occurred when on the same day NTT DoCoMo officially announced it would allow SIM unlocking on its new phones, for a small fee.
For the first time in Japan we see the possibility of a separation between the phone and the payment plan. Despite leading in so much of its mobile technology Japan has arguably lagged in its services (or at least, their flexibility) compared to the rest of the world. It wasn’t just the carriers’ fault since the manufacturers were also reluctant to take the leap, worrying about the additional customer service costs it would incur.
Of course we still seem to be some time away from Softbank unlocking their iPhones and iPads, though ironically government pressure on the carriers to deactivate SIM locking was likely motivated by the arrival of the iPhone. In 2008 overall mobile phone unit shipments dropped by 18.7%; clearly something had to be done to stimulate growth again. The introduction of a wave of foreign and domestically manufactured smartphones is one step but this new development will likely be positive for sales too.
INterRIDE speculates that the influence on mobile marketing and advertising could be big, but at first we will have to see what kinds of users opt to unlock their phones and go free.
BitCash and mobage
In an interesting example of a tie-up between an e-money tool and online platform, gaming portal mobage was offering users the chance to exchange their BitCash for the site’s own points. BitCash is a “web money” that if purchased at Seven Eleven, could then be changed into “moba-coin”, mobage’s internal points, and 10,000 further users received 200 coins by lottery.
Quite a lot of this point-exchange goes on in Japan and it’s a great example of how services work together to offer loyalty deals to the widest possible number of consumers. Portals like G-Point or ChobiRichi allow people with points from Yahoo! or Rakuten to switch them to others either more specific (ANA miles) or general (T-Point, Edy, Suica etc.).
BitCash is used for online gaming, betting on the horses (one of the few cases of legal gambling in Japan), paying for digital music, or e-commerce.
KDDI opens book store
The shop in question is of course a digital one and ties into KDDI’s other entertainment services. Lismo Book Store is hoping to rival foreign e-book and digital publishing providers, and is specifically for KDDI au’s Android smartphone (much like the Lismo music services are for au users).
KDDI first started offering e-book services last December for its bible Leaf SP02 model but in April expanded it for the Android IS03, also adding SNS-style functionality such as user reviews. In the kind of analog touch that I personally love your downloaded texts are displayed on a “bookshelf” interface. Currently Lismo Book Store has around 30,000 titles for users, to increase to around 100,000 through 2011.
Japanese publishing is famously highly diverse. Whenever local bestseller rankings are compared with America or Europe, the proportion of fiction is quite a bit lower, with a much broader range of hits, including manga, self-help books, idol photo books and so on. It will be interesting to see if the digital book stores mimic this trend and if it affects the established keitai shosetsu (mobile phone novel) phenomenon, which accounted for around half of bestsellers at its peak in 2007.
Green-Fingerer Tweets
Finally, we all know that local users love anything cute.
Hakuhodo has got together with researchers from Keio University’s media design faculty to create fulife, a Twitter iPhone app that lets you grow flowers with your tweets. When you write messages you can plant seeds and rain then falls, making your garden come to life. This “flower communication” tool also allows you to pick your sproutings and send them as presents to your Twitter chums.
Twitter has seen success in Japan (even not taking into account its role in post-3.11 communication) but Hakuhodo is worried about its longevity, it seems, so this app is part of the Sustainble User Generated Media Project: How can we ensure that people continue using the platforms and contribute, especially in the Japanese market where typically users are highly reluctant to get personal?
Presumably making a cute environment that gets cuter the more you tweet is one solution. Revealing the target is supposed to be anyone from ages 5 and up to adult — quite a range!
You can do a quick search for who is using this app by looking at the Twitter tag #fulife.
