Can Facebook Be a Contender in Japan? Probably Too Late.

In Japan, Facebook is small potatoes. In this country, Mixi, Gree and Mobage-town blow Facebook out of the water.


As Asahi Newspaper reports:

Facebook's global membership is about 30 times the size of Mixi's, Japan's largest social networking service, but the tables are turned if you look at Japan membership alone. Mixi has about 20 million registered users, and competing services like Gree and Mobage-town are not far behind.

According to the research company NetRatings Japan Inc., there were an estimated 2.93 million Facebook users in Japan as of last November.

I have three daughters. Two of them do Facebook, Gree and Mixi. The youngest daughter only does Gree. I think it is important that the youngest is not interested in Mixi and only Gree...

Of the two daughter who do Facebook, they told me that they only do it because they are half-American, went to school in the USA, and, as such, their US friends do Facebook. They added comments like they don't have any Japanese friends who do Facebook.

Come to think of it... I only have a few. I have thousands of "friends" who do Mixi.

I have another child who is going to international school here in Japan. I do notice that the mothers of the children of those schools do Facebook, but I haven't noticed my wife doing Facebook with her Japanese friends who reside outside of the "foreign community" in this country. With them she does Mixi.

In my (most possibly confused) opinion, I think it is too late for Facebook in Japan. People over 25 do Mixi; High School kids don't do Mixi and do Gree or Mobage. Why do the younger people all do Gree or Mobage? Because data shows that 98% of all 16-year-olds and up in Japan have a cellphone. 90% of those people do not have a PC.

Services like Gree were built specifically for Japanese young people using cell phones, not PC. This makes them have a massive advantage over a service like Facebook that was built for PC then has to be adapted to cellphone; not to mention the cultural problems that a system created in the USA has to overcome in tackling Japan.

Facebook lost their chance in this country when they first arrived and failed to recognize that this is a cellphone country and that few people have PCs in their homes. It is too late to catch up now.

It is an error that companies from the west have made repeatedly over these last 40 years (think Pepsi Cola, Universal Studios, E-Bay, Pay-Pal, etc...) These companies came into Japan thinking that they could do business the same way they had always done in the west, but they failed.

Now, it's too late for them in Japan. 

I do not see why Facebook thinks they will be different this time. No. I think history will repeat itself again. 

Alan Greenspan, the United Nations and the $134.5 Billion Scandal!

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers
Right after that jaw-dropper about Japan's red-ink, here comes this one that, if true, has implications even more shocking for Japan and the world.

Do you remember that bizarre story about the two Japanese guys who were caught trying to smuggle $134.5 billion dollars of bonds out of Italy in June, 2009? The story was even more strange in the fact that the two Japanese were carrying diplomatic passports. Read here about strange inconsistencies with the original story.

Since the two men were carrying diplomatic passports then that made their arrest illegal and it also made it VERY illegal for the Italian government to have confiscated those bonds. Of course, the corporate media soon pooh-poohed this story and it disappeared down the memory hole. After two days there was nary a mention of the incident and no follow up in the news at at. It was like the two Japanese guys and the bonds just vanished.

Well, it seems that, after this incident, the allegations are that the Italian government tried to sell those bonds to the Chinese government who said they would buy them if, and only if, Italy would guarantee them. Italy backed down because they realized that such a guaranty would bankrupt the country.

Then the Italian government recruited the help of a Vatican banker  named Dal Bosco. They offered him $100 million dollars to help them unload the bonds but the deal was blocked.

But here that story is back again with an even more bizarre twist: It is now being rumored on the blogosphere that former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon are involved with this fraud and it is about to explode on the international news scene again!

Greenspan's involvement has to do with protect the criminal racket known as the Federal Reserve, Ban Ki Moon seems to have some involvement with an international criminal organization known as the Office of International Treasury Control (OITC).

Check this out:


UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon has been implicated because the OITC has defrauded at least three countries and an unknown number of individuals by claiming to have UN backing. The UN never, until the current investigation began, denied its affiliation with the OITC. Investigators are now awaiting a formal response from Ban Ki Moon because, they say, he personally tried to help Dal Bosco cash the bonds. The UN, the BIS and the Federal Reserve Board all now say the OITC is a fraud.


Investigators in the US and the UK have now confirmed the two Japanese were fooled by a group headed by Alan Greenspan into bringing the bonds from Italy to Switzerland. Greenspan’s cabal was planning from the very beginning to seize the bonds and cash them.　

If this is true, then this could be one of the biggest financial scandals in history. It seems too bizarre to be true... But then again, I often say, "You just cannot make this stuff up as truth is stranger than fiction!"

See original article here.

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Keywords: diplomats, Italy, Marketing Japan, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, China, Alan Greenspan, Mike Rogers, United Nations, Ban Ki Moon, Fraud, scandal