What Facebook needs to know about Japan

Facebook recently announced that it will launch "Facebook Japan" targeting 20 million SNS users in Japan. Will they be successful? Well it will first need to understand the unique user preferences.

Mixi (pronounced "miku-shee"), the most popular existing Japanese SNS with 18 million users, is very different from Facebook. When you log in, you will first notice that Mixi is completely anonymous. Most people (in my experience more than 95%) do not use their real names. Also, they do not use recognizable pictures of themselves as their profile pictures. Instead, they pick pictures of their dogs or some funny pictures they randomly found on the internet. Mixi even has a feature called “Footprint” which tracks people who "mixi-stalked" you when and how many times.

All of this is very different from Facebook. In Facebook, users not only publish their real names and email addresses but also choose to disclose their phone numbers and real addresses and regularly put up pictures and tag themselves. While Facebook tries to differentiate themselves with this sense of reality, the same concept may not be accepted in Japan. Only with the features that make Mixi highly private, Japanese users feel safe to use SNS. Facebook needs to understand that Japan is a very small community. When you disclose just a little bit of information of yourself- whether it's where you went to college or what neighborhood you live in- you will easily be spotted. Japan is about the size of California with 70% of the land covered with mountains and rivers. Nearly 1/2 of the US population living in 30% of California's land- that is how small Japan is and how closely people live with each other.

I do believe, however, that Facebook has an opportunity for a very different reason. Japan is extremely fast-changing in any industry. You never see people wearing clothes from last year on the streets in Tokyo. People renew their cell phones when newer models come out. We get bored so quickly so being new is always good. In fact, it was reported that many mixi users have been visiting the site less than they used to. They are getting bored. If Facebook can capture the bored crowd in Japan while providing enough security, it maybe able to grow quickly by cannibalizing mixi users.