Social Media in Japanby

@adamacar

Assoc. Professor of Communication at KCUFS

2011 Published the first academic study about the Tohoku earthquake

2008 Published antecedents of social networking behavior, cited more than 40 times

2006 Conducted one of the earliest studies about facebook

History of Social Networks

Source: Boyd & Ellison, 2007

Social CapitalWe have a natural tendency to build functioning networks which usually

result in physical, informational, financial or other forms of gains.

Communication ImperativeWe are born to communicate and we are driven to maximize

our communication satisfaction and interaction.

.7= Correlation between perceived social support and happiness

– RESEARCH• Efficient and convenient communication• Curiosity• Desire for popularity• Relationship building • relationship maintenance. (Urista et al. (2009)

• a) social network surfing • b) social investigation • c) social connection • d) shared identities • e) content and status updating. (Joinson, 2008)

• diversion (pass time, break, escapism), • personal motives (self presentation, impression

management)• informational motives (information seeking, information

sharing, surveillance, social investigation, social sneaking). (Sejrup, 2009)

Surveillance(information gathering)

Connection(social bonding)

My Study

• Conducted in 2006, published in 2008• The size of online social networks is larger

than real life social networks• Females spend more time social networking• People with high self esteem don’t add

strangers to their network and might even have smaller circles.

How about Japan?

History of Social Networks in Japan

GOCO 2003

GREE & MIXI 2004

MYSPACE 2006

2nd Life

2007

Twitter 2008

Facebook 2010 (Interface change & Toky

o Offic

e)

March, 2012, N:1000

To kill time To have fun Get info about my interest area Contact w. friends Easily communicate w. friends To find out about the news To get relaxed To tell others what I am up to To check what my friends are up toTo relieve stress

March, 2012, N:1000

March, 2012, N:1000

Because of the earthquake?...no

Unique Japan #1

Secure twitter accountsAlmost nonexistent anywhere else in the world

In Japan around 8%

Unique Japan #2

Twitter core usersAre actually more

introvert than other fb or Mixi users

Unique Japan #3

Facebook is seen more like social

MEDIARather than a

social network

Unique Japan #4

It’s RUDE if you post a photo on Facebook and then do not respond to every single comment on that photo

Unique Japan #5

People post

individual messages more than community related messages

on Twitter

Unique Japan #6

Compared to the US People post more

about TV and less about sports/news/politics on Twitter

Unique Japan #7

Twitter core users usually have lower self esteem and don’t easily trust others.Similar to the 2channel crowd.

Unique Japan #8

Most brands

don’t allow fans to post on their brand pages on Facebook.

Unique Japan #9

Traditionally the

highest blogger per capita in the world and has the world largest nickname based Forum: 2channel.

Unique Japan #10

Location based services (even though promoted by Mixi, Facebook and of course Foursquare) are not likely to pick up because of security concerns…

Last thing…Japan is Hard to predict.

The power of social conformity is higher than perhaps any other country in the world.

Thank you…

Did you know?Yesterday, 250 million photos were uploaded to Facebook, 864,000 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube, and 294 billion emails were sent.

No one saw it was coming, including…

• Facebook wanted to spend a huge chunk of its resources to found a separate P2P sharing site in 2004 instead of focusing of basic sns functions.

• Google, the worlds richest and biggest website didn’t care much about and invest in Orkut.

• 6 Degrees.com was not discovered by many of us and just went out of business.

• People thought Friendster was a dating site even though its features were pretty much the same with Facebook.

• Better communication skills• Better English Skills• Better Presentation Skills• Better business Skills• Better leadership skills

MARKETING COMPETITION JAPANTwitter:@mcJapan

Facebook: search marketing competition Japan