B.Lab

Tonight I got turned onto Google Trends and started to have a look at 3 big SNSes for the Japanese region (obviously Mixi is the biggie but I wanted to see how Facebook and MySpace were fairing). The way it works is that you can see what sites people visited or searched next after the original search. From that we can get some idea what specific site users are interested in the most and what sort of social media mix you could consider when running a campaign in Japan. Another tool I’d like to use more in the future is Google Insights which lets you compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.

With gaijinpot, metropolis and japantimes.co.jp coming up the top three, Facebook appears to still be a predominantly foreign SNS in Japan. While I had heard news that Facebook was becoming more popular with Japanese since the Japanese interface started in May 2008 which can actually be seen in the spike at that time, the trend related words still show more searches by non-Japanese. This may change though if FB continues to gain popularity among Japanese. The graph shows Facebook growing which appears to sync with the global trend.

Mixi.jp has a particularly local Japanese social media loving audience as seen by all the blog communities (like ameblo, ameba, yaplog, livedoor) and user generated or ranked content sites (like cyzo, niconico and oricon). This a lot different than both the MySpace and Facebook user who doesn’t seem to be as interested in blogging or Japanese content. It would be interesting to analyze the difference in Japanese blog communities in the future. Also note in the graph that Mixi is in a slow decline in popularity.

This trend results clearly shows MySpace in Japan being used by music lovers. The other sites are primarily indie music sites and music shop sites. Compare this to Facebook and you have a completely different sort of user base and completely different set of interests. MySpace growth is pretty flat and possibly is in decline. The decline begins in June 2008 so it could be coinciding with the May launch of the Japanese Facebook.

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