from the inside, looking in

Japanese Blog and SNS stats from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications April 25, 2006

Apologies for the rather stale nature of this post. 

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) released its half-yearly statistics tracking blog and SNS user numbers on April 13th. 

The MIC reports 8.68M registered blog accounts (at 53 of the major Japanese blog service providers), and 7.16M registered accounts on social networking sites (at 21 of the major Japanese social networking sites). (BSP and SNS lists are available on the Japanese version of the press release)

Rather predictably, meaningful analysis of the numbers is virtually absent in the press.

 The MIC press release itself uses the term "登録者" which would be rendered as "registered users", but the word "user" is potentially misleading, as there is evidence that bloggers 

Additionally, the number of active users is not mentioned. (In a report by the MIC last year, blog user numbers were given as 3.35M with 0.9M listed as "active" users as of March 2005)

At the Feed Business Conference held in March, the speaker from Technorati Japan mentioned that their data showed that for active users the average number of blogs they had was approximately two. I have 3 accounts at various BSPs provided in the list (all of which are dormant), and that doesn't include this blog. An acquaintance who is active in local politics (he is a councellor for the ward I live in) has 3 or 4 blogs mirroring the same content. 

The same goes for social networking sites. I have accounts at Mixi.jp, Gree.jp and Yahoo!360 in various degrees of use, with accounts at several other sites as well.

Furthermore, Livedoor has begun bundling SNS accounts automatically to all new Livedoor accounts. (They announced that they had surpassed Gree.jp as the 2nd largest SNS, but I wonder how many users signed up to Livedoor for some other service and are counted in the statistics although they have never accessed the Livedoor SNS?)

It would seem that the published numbers need to be handled with care, especially since the number of sites surveyed has also changed since the last figures were published for Sept 2005.

Yet I have yet to see any reporting which mentions these caveats when talking about the blog and SNS trends. I wonder if the media thinks it would detract from the hype they are trying to generate? 

Japanese SNS site “N@VIO” and comparisons to LinkedIn April 23, 2006

N@VIO is being compared to LinkedIn by SocialNetworking.jp a blog which is about, well, social networking. N@VIO has been receiving some press in Japan lately due to the exposure of LinkedIn in the US press.

N@VIO is operated by Humanworks Inc., an HR services company, which also operates this: http://job.navionet.com/
I don’t think the comparisons are valid.

Firstly, N@VIO is an open SNS site, anyone can join. LinkedIn requires an introduction from a member.

This is a fundamental difference.

Secondly, N@VIO is, according to the CEO of the operating company, a site which aims first and foremost to link students (read prospective employees) and companies. [Indeed, the SNS features (blogs, communities etc) seem to me to be either an afterthought, or bait to attract users who are matched to prospective employers.]

LinkedIn is about linking professionals (who actually have some business experience, or at least that is the idea), even though much of the revenue may indeed come from job listings. LinkedIn is a focused site with little in the way of features beyond linking people.

Seems to me that this particular piece on socialnetworking.jp is basically an infomercial, as there is little in the way of analysis. This is a pity, because we could do with sites offering some insight into local trends in this area which is receiving a lot of attention.

Livedoor delisted April 17, 2006

April 13th (thursday) was the final day of trading for Livedoor and Livedoor Marketing, which have been delisted as a result of the scandal which surfaced back in January.

Livedoor ended its final day on the MOTHERS exchange at JPY94, down JPY7 (-6.93%) from the day before. LD was trading at around JPY700 when the scandal broke (and was just a shade under JPY800 in mid-december), and as low as JPY55 in mid-feb.

On the other hand, Livedoor Marketing was up JPY34 to JPY310 (+12.32%). LM was above JPY6000 when the scandal broke, but was as low as JPY215 as recently as early april.

The effect of the Livedoor scandal on the Tokyo Stock Exchange was illustrated by the fact that trading volume on MOTHERS on the 14th was approximately 6.63 million shares, compared with 63.42 million shares the day before. Livedoor and Livedoor Marketing had still accounted for more than 3/4 of the trading on MOTHERS even though trading of the two stocks was limited to just one hour between 2pm and 3pm to keep transaction volumes manageable for the TSE system which was running out of capacity. 

At one point after the scandal broke on Jan 16th, Livedoor stock accounted for 97% of all transactions on MOTHERS and 45% of all transactions on the TSE.

The trials of the corporate officers who were arrested are to begin as early as next month. Horie is still denying all charges, and it is expected he will be tried after his ex-colleagues go before the courts and plead guilty.

On a related note, what happened to the investigation of the death ("suicide") of the guy from HS Securities who was involved in the scandal?  Haven't heard much about that in the media lately, have we?