How to Become Popular in One Easy Click!

Judging from my Facebook and Twitter accounts I can say that I must be one of the most popular people in the entire world. I have a massive amount of "friends" and "followers" (note religious connotations) and believe that I must be more popular than 97.4% of all people reading this blog right now. Bwa! Ha! Ha! Ha! Someday I will rule the world!

 EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD

Yeah! I've made the big time! I have almost 1,000 friends on Facebook (OK, only 850 or so, but who's counting?) and over 1,000 friends on Twitter. Woo-hoo!


But, gee, I sometimes really wonder who these people are. I also wonder how many of those people I have actually met in person in my life? Also, I wonder how they got my Facebook address... Surely we must be friends. Facebook says so. Of that 800 or so, I reckon I must have met at least 500 of them, right? No? 400? 250? 50? 

Would you believe, two of them and their vicious canine walking in the neighborhood?


I have a very hard time with people's names. I've always had a hard time remembering names all my life. I think most people do. But it is especially difficult for westerners in Japan (and China, Korea, etc.) It's really difficult especially for people like me because of my work; because I meet lots and lots of people. I might go to a meeting at some company and there will usually be me and I'll be introduced to 13 Japanese staff at these meetings. After the meetings, I won't remember anyone's name excepting the pretty girls - and I even have a hard time with that.


The introductions will go something like this: I'll meet my contact. He'll take me into a meeting room and there will be 13 Japanese people there waiting for me. They will all stand up and get in a line to give me their business cards. My contact will say, 


"Mike-san, this is Mr. Yamada....Mr. Yamamoto... Ms. Sugimoto... Mr. Sugimura.... Ms. Murakami... Mr. Kamimura....Ms. Kawamura....Ms. Yamamura...Mr. Muraoka.... Ms. Sugiura... Mr. Tanaka....Ms. Takasugi...." and, of course, there will also be a token Suzuki or Kobayashi thrown in there....


(I think it is a Japanese law or something that every company must hire at least 10% of their staff being people with names like Suzuki or Kobayashi...)  


After getting all these people's names cards and bowing my head, I will sit down and, being none for the better, will have remembered not one single person's name excepting: "Mike." 


It's like those paintings of Jesus at the last supper. You know the name of the guy in the middle but no one knows the names of the other 12 dudes.

Author's rendition of the Last Business Meeting at 

Japanese Company. That's me in the middle.

It's kind of like my Facebook or Twitter accounts. Who are these people?

Fact of the matter is that I'm having a hard time dealing with Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter and a group discount coupon service that is local here in Japan called Pompare. 


You might wonder why I join things like Facebook and Twitter. Well, my lame excuse is that because I work in marketing and the Internet business, I have to know what I'm talking about, so I joined these services. It's a sort of study. I need to know what they are all about and how to use them. I always bend the rules and see how far I can go before the suspend my account. Facebook has suspended me twice. Twitter hasn't suspended me ever (but that's OK as Twitter service is down and often unreliable anyway!) But I often find myself wondering why I even bother. 


From using these services, I often wonder what the reason is that many others joined too. Excepting that they are more interesting than TV... But that's nothing to brag about. I can get more entertainment out of a piece of bread and my toaster oven in one evening than I can get out of watching TV.


But, as usual, I digress...


First let me tell you about Pompare. Pompare is a crappy SPAM mailing system kind of like Groupon. Their business model revolves around sendng people SPAM in the hopes that they buy something. I think SPAM is a crappy way to do business and it shows with Groupon but at least Pompare has a portal where people can gather. That's why they will blow away Groupon in this country and why they aren't quite as bad as Groupon, but they still are a bit sucky.


They seem to be trying very hard to irritate me. 


Pompare, the group discount coupon service isn't really all that much trouble, I suppose. The problem is that no matter how many times I try to quit, they keep sending me emails. I've cancelled my membership now three times, but got another mail from them this morning.


Then there's Twitter. Why do people do Twitter? I think lots of people use Twitter like I do. I use Twitter to send out notices of original content and notices about stuff I've written at Lew Rockwell or this blog, or, perhaps for events. I see other people using Twitter to sell stuff and other junk.


I think a lot of people use Twitter and send out Tweets but does anyone really read Twitter? I doubt it. I also wonder what the value is of having, say, 35,000 people you follow and 35,003 people following you. It certainly cannot be a proof of popularity (especially since there's ads all over the place selling, "1000 Twitter followers for $14!" and things like that). Also, I mean, jeez, how could anyone be reading the Tweets of the 35,000 people that they are following? I can't even keep up on answering the emails from the 4 or 5 people who write to me everyday...

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

Here is my Top Ten referring sites to this blog. 

Do you see Twitter? Nope. Neither do I. 

Maybe I don't understand how this works? Help!

To make it clear, I believe many people use Twitter to send out messages and sell and promote, but I don't think very many actually take time to read Twitter. If people want to waste their time and read junk, then they'll use Facebook (actually, in Japan,  Facebook is an "also ran". The most popular of those sites in Japan are, Mixi, Gree, Mobage Town, etc.)  


Facebook also makes me scratch my head for many reasons. One, far too many people use Facebook far to often to link to some news article or editorial that they read on some other site. They don't link to some original content that they created or even pictures of them and their kid at a picnic or something. Why do they do that? I don't know. Can people's lives be so boring that they have nothing to write about? Since when was Facebook designed to use as a news aggregate site?


I use Facebook exactly like I use Twitter: To promote and draw readers to my useless blog. That's it. I don't want people knowing about my private life. I don't want to send people pictures of my son and me eating food at some festival in Japan. I only have only a handful of real friends in my life and that's it. I don't know where in the world all these people came from who are my "friends" on Facebook.


Maybe it was because of my job. When you work in the mass media and you intentionally work to build a cult of personality for yourself and your show and the members of your team and you want to "sell" and "promote" then, when you get requests from people to become "friends" then I have a hard time saying "No!" So, I always accept; it's just easier that way and I don't want to offend anyone....


But darned if almost every time I want to "add friend" (those few times) I get a message that says, "Do you know this user personally?" I even get these messages when I am recommended by someone who is my friend to become friends with that person.

This happens all the time. What's the point? If the receiver

doesn't want to "friend" me, then they deny or cancel, right?

Though, I must say, that the friend requests from girls who pose in their avatars showing lots of cleavage that look like they are selling prostitution services, well I always ignore them (of course, though, after checking their page!) I mean, what's the use in being a friend of a prostitute on Facebook fer chrissakes? I can understand being the friend of a prostitute in real life but in virtual world? I don't get it! Talk about blue balls!


So, now, if you look at my Facebook and Twitter, it looks like I am an extremely popular guy. Heck, I even have friends in Columbia and Brazil and the closest I've ever been to those places was Tijuana Mexico or the San Diego Zoo. I think I met a guy from Brazil once but he was a world famous soccer star named Zico or Rico or something like that so I doubt that he'd send me a Facebook friend request. (Heck, most soccer stars are too illiterate to even know how to use a keyboard or do the alphabet for that matter.)


I laugh when I see where on Facebook it says something like "you and so-and-so have ... mutual friends" and it shows a number. I think it should be more specific. It should be "mutual friends" and "real friends." It should say that "you and so-and-so have ... actual friends." And there would be a drop-down tab that would scroll up to five people in total and that would be it.


True friends will drop anything and travel to your side if you were in trouble and in need of help. Ninety-nine percent of all "friends" on Facebook, well on my Facebook at least, I don't ever recall meeting. You can bet that if you see someone's Facebook and it is like mine with several hundred friends, that we haven't met even a fraction of them and, if we walked past them on the street, or they us, we wouldn't recognize each other in a million years.


Facebook should have different categories: "Real Friends" (up to 5 ~10), "Friends" (maybe 20 or so), "Acquaintances" (maybe a few hundred), "People living on the same planet as you" (That would engulf 97.8% of all Facebook's current "Friends" category).   


I'm looking forward to the day when I can have my very own Facebook where no one can find me and I am the only one who can invite people into my own little world. I'd have about 4 or 5 dear friends and we can communicate heart to heart... Oh, wait a minute, we do have that. It's called email, the postal service or, even, that high tech wizardry know as a telephone. 


I'm wondering what is the purpose of this narcissistic Facebook type of nonsense that brags to the world look at me! I'm somebody! I have hundreds of friends!...


...Of which, 90% of those I don't ever remember meeting...


I am somebody. You are too. 100 ~ 5000 Friends on Facebook (the limit) means nothing. I'd rather have a core of 5 good friends who I can depend on in my life than 500,000 people whose faces I don't even recognize or they, me.


Instead of getting 100 virtual friends, get out of the house and try to make one real friend. Life is more important than sitting in front of a screen be it a TV screen or computer screen. 

Japanese People Like Privacy So Facebook Will Always Be an Also-Ran

As I wrote long ago, I seriously doubt Facebook can surpass Mixi or Gree in Japan. The Japanese like their privacy and Facebook doesn't address these concerns nearly enough. 


I suspect that if Facebook cannot dethroned either, it will be a failure in this country.


Actually, with how much of a problem hacking and stealing identities is these days, I am amazed at just how many people in the west put up so much personal information on Facebook.

Once again, I have found a recent article that supports my beliefs about Facebook not becoming number one in Japan and how the can't do so as the cultural differences are too great.


Let's face it, Mixi and Gree were made in Japan, they completely understand the Japanese psyche. Facebook doesn't. Also, one of Facebook's biggest sales points is that it let's you connect with people overseas. That is not a big point of appeal to the Japanese. 


Bloomberg reports:

Facebook Inc. may not overtake Mixi Inc. in Japan as the lure of connecting with friends overseas isn’t enough for users to switch services, according to the U.S. social-networking site’s biggest games developer.

Japan “is one place where Facebook may not end up being dominant,” Robert Goldberg, head of Zynga Game Network Inc.’s operations in the country, said in an interview in Tokyo. 

According to Nikkeisha research, only 3% of the Japanese public can converse in English. This is a huge reason why reconnecting with people in foreign countries doesn't really appeal to the Japanese; they can't communicate.

I think it is possible that Facebook could actually be a failure in Japan much like Pepsi-cola or Universal Studios. The article continues:

Mixi is better suited for Japanese users because it gives subscribers more control over who sees their content and personal data is more secure, President Kenji Kasahara said in an interview on Dec. 15. Users can also send Twitter-like messages limited to 150 characters, a service that began in September 2009 and isn’t available on Facebook, Kasahara said at the time.

Masashi Tokuda, a Tokyo-based spokesman at Mixi, said the company’s stance hasn’t changed since Kasahara made the comments.

Shares of Mixi declined 5.6 percent to 428,500 yen as of 1:25 p.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, compared with a 0.7 percent gain in the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average. Zynga is a closely held company.

Mixi’s monthly active users, subscribers who log in at least once a month, have reached 14.5 million as of Dec. 31, the Tokyo-based company said earlier this month. That compares with Facebook’s more than 500 million users worldwide and 24.5 million for DeNA Co., Japan’s biggest developer of social games for mobile phones.

"Japan is a unique marketplace and it is necessary to take care when bringing a global product and localizing it to the Japanese culture."

Mixi and Gree allow people to use pen-names and to hide their true identities. This is important to the Japanese. 

Facebook isn't going to change 2,700 years of culture in five years. It's crazy to think that they could. Facebook doesn't protect people's privacy enough and, recently, there has been lots of junk mail and people's account's being hijacked to send junk mail out.

Like I said, they might fail here. Many big guns have in the past failed. Of the companies successful in the west that have failed in the Japanese market, the list is long; Pepsi, Universal Studio Theme Park, eBay, Vodaphone, Carrefour, Burger King and many more. The most surprising thing about this list is that, even after the failures of big players with multi-million dollar budgets, the list grows longer everyday. 

Will it include Facebook someday?

The companies who failed in Japan, failed because they couldn't comprehend just how different Japan is from the west. On the other hand, the companies who succeeded like; Disney, Coca Cola, Goldman Sachs, Yahoo and Amazon, all hired Japanese companies to handle their product/service PR for the Japanese market. 

Facebook blew it at the start in Japan by not correctly localizing their service and they also lost 2 years by not having their service ready for cell phones. This allowed Mixi and Gree to completely capture the youth market.

I think you would hard-pressed to find a high school kid in Japan who uses Facebook... I know a few college kids who do (they all speak English).

Don't even get me started on Twitter

I have a Facebook account too. I am thinking about quitting it. But I haven't. Why? I connect with many foreign musicians through Facebook. It is useful for that. Facebook is great for foreigners. But for connecting to the Japanese? No. Don't need Facebook.

I certainly do not put any personal information on my Facebook account. I don't even have my correct birth date on it. I'd recommend that you eliminate all personal information on yours too.

So, like I said, I have been serious about quitting Facebook recently. Any readers in Japan who feel the same way?


This from Eye on Miami:


HERE IS FACEBOOK'S CURRENT POLICY ON USER CONTENT...LOOK AT LAST LINE: IT BASICALLY SAYS "PERMANENT RECORD!"

"By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content." 

Here's a great, humorous article entitled, "Facebook Sucks" that spells out the dangers of too much information and about not being cautious on Social Media.

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In Japan, Facebook is Second-Rate

The big Social Networking site in Japan is called Mixi. Don't bother trying to join it, you'll need to be invited by a current member in order to get in.

I know of a few people who do Facebook in Japan. I'd have to say that, amongst the people I know, that the ratio of Facbook users versus Mixi users is about 10 to 1 in favor of Mixi.

The Japanese people like things that allow them to have their own "clubs" Mixi is much better suited for that than Facebook is. Also Mixi allows people to use pen names. That is a critical issue in Mixi's success in Japan; Japanese people are much more strict about their privacy and do not like to tell the world who they are and where they live.

Mixi fits the bill for the Japanese.

The Japan Times confirms this:

"Facebook's service emphasizes connection to users overseas, stresses openness over privacy and doesn't reflect regional characteristics," Kasahara, 35, whose stake in the company is worth almost $500 million, said in a recent interview in Tokyo. "Our users value a social space that is like a living room — private, comfortable and personal."

Mixi, whose shares have tumbled 39 percent this year, is adding games and expanding into smart phones to revive earnings after profits fell for three of the past four quarters. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in July his company is focusing on expansion in Japan and Russia this year, increasing the pressure on the Japanese company to introduce new features to protect its lead.

Mixi, which began social network operations in 2004, has fallen 71 percent since its initial public offering in 2006. The company competes against Gree Inc. and News Corp.'s MySpace.

Closely held Facebook introduced simpler privacy controls in May and said it was reducing the amount of user information that is publicly available after lawmakers and advocacy groups complained that the service shares too much personal data.

Mixi gives its 22 million subscribers more fine-grain controls over who sees their content, such as allowing the users to disclose information to individual friends, Kasahara said.

Facebook spokesman Jonathan Thaw didn't immediately respond to a phone call and e-mail seeking comment.

Facebook is also not convenient to use on cellphones in Japan. When you consider the problems with privacy and that 90% of all cellphone users in Japan do not have a computer at home, then you can see where Facebook has big problems in Japan.... Not to mention that their "Spokesman" is too busy to answer a phone call or his e-mail for a comment from one of the oldest and most famous newspapers in Japan.

Hello Facebook? Yeah, what's the purpose of having a "Spokesman" that doesn't answer his email or phone calls? I reckon this is indicative of why your business hasn't really taken off here amongst the Japanese. Hire a new spokesman... Preferably one who speaks Japanese and understands the customs and business manners of Japan.

Facebook is sidelined in Japan as social network battle heats up

By AKKY AKIMOTO / Japan Times

In July, the number of active users on social networking site Facebook worldwide surpassed 500 million. More than 60 percent of Internet users in the United States have signed up with the site, and its presence has reached into almost every country on Earth. You might think that Facebook is taking over the world . . . if you speak English.

There are, however, a few regions where Facebook has not been able to penetrate the market as it has in the West. China, Russia and South Korea have all developed their own popular variants of the idea. Japan also has its own social networking sites and the top three: Gree, Mixi and Mobage Town, are currently in a battle that has become so fierce that Facebook might not even stand a chance.

Both Mixi and Gree began in February 2004, when tech-savvy Japanese were discovering social networking site Orkut. Both Mixi and Gree aimed to come up with a Japanese version of the popular social networks sweeping the West.

Mixi was thought of as Japan's response to Friendster. It came about when Web startup E-Mercury took one of its engineers off their employment- search service Find Job and assigned him to creating Mixi. To everyone's amazement, the site grew quickly and now boasts 21 million users in its network. Also similar to Facebook, Mixi depends on advertising sales for profit — while its main competitors do not.

Mixi continues to be innovative. Last week, the company announced two new features: Mixi Check and Mixi Check-In. Mixi Check is similar to Facebook's Share feature, while Check-In is similar to Foursquare, geo-tagging a user's physical location on the site.

For five years, Mixi sat comfortably at the top of the social networking tree, but last month Gree announced it had 21.25 million registered users. That number made Gree Japan's No. 1 social network.

Gree's success indicates a particular quality of Japan's market. Mixi was the only site among the top three to have established its fame on PCs. But in July 2007, the number of page views on cell phones topped those coming from PCs, essentially moving the battlefield for social network supremacy. Gree's success on a mobile platform is seen as one of the reasons it topped Mixi. After losing to Mixi initially in 2004, many had thought Gree would disappear. Its comeback started in late 2006 after the site pretty much abandoned its unpopular PC version (it still exists but traffic is at 1 percent of its mobile version). Gree inked a deal with Japan's No. 2 cell-phone carrier, KDDI au, and created a mobile version of the site complete with what the Japanese call kajuaru gemu (casual games), simple games for cell phones, and avatars.

Gree CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka said he studied Hangame, a South Korean online game portal, for inspiration when designing Gree's mobile reincarnation. The new Gree has been hooking new users with games such as fishing and virtual pets, all of which can be played for free (but which also have content available for sale to expand the scope of the games). The gaming strategy (and a TV ad campaign) resonated with Web surfers pushed Gree to the top. Recently, the site has started adding third-party social games in addition to expanding its long list of casual games.

The game strategy is being used by Japan's No. 3 social networking site Mobage Town. The site is run by DeNA, who also run successful online auction service Bidders, and was started up in 2006. DeNA also looked to Hangame as a model for Mobage Town. Despite its late start, Mobage Town has increased its user base to 20.48 million. One key factor in its success was enabling users to earn virtual money if they clicked on advertisers' websites. The social networking service provides their own casual games as well as third-party games. The most popular game it has at the moment, "Kaitou Royal," is similar to Facebook's popular "Mafia Wars."

Similar to the characters in "Mafia Wars," Japan's social networking sites are in a fierce competition for turf. DeNA is working with Japan's biggest website, Yahoo! Japan, to open Yahoo! Mobage, which is set to bring Mobage Town to Yahoo! Japan users. Both Mobage Town and Gree are spending copious amounts of money on TV advertising, even outdoing Toyota and Coca-Cola. The companies behind the two sites are also involved in a hiring competition, providing some workers with a maximum ¥2 million one-time bonus.

Where is all this cash coming from? While Mixi's prime source of income is advertising revenues, Gree and Mobage Town directly sell virtual items to their users. Their way of selling such items is different to the way Apple's App Store works. When purchasing something for the iPhone, customers are billed separately, which means they are able to see the charges on their credit card bill. With Gree and Mobage Town, most purchases made are folded into the user's telephone bills — essentially making them less noticeable. This approach has paid off, literally, for both companies and they have been able to lower their advertising prices in response, putting more pressure on Mixi.

However, a DeNA employee appeared at a Mixi conference last week saying Mobage Town and Mixi's services don't overlap and that some cooperation is possible. DeNA CEO Tomoko Namba has also set her target on Sony and Nintendo, hinting that they were old news. DeNA seems to be adapting a line of "you're with us or you're against us," and has reportedly told video-game developers that if they want to sell on Mobage Town, they shouldn't try to sell on Gree as well. The company has not confirmed this.

At its conference, Mixi also announced a partnership with China's Renren and South Korea's Cyworld. Initially, the three will standardize their platforms to allow third-party application providers (which Mixi calls SAPs) to run on the three social networking sites. This strategy is primarily against Facebook. It would be surprising if something big, such as a merger or an inter-platform networking feature, comes of it. This kind of thing, though, does appeal to domestic users. Facebook's global reach has been impressive, but its localization (especially in Asian countries) has been subpar. If Asia's social networking sites can step in and give the image of being able to network internationally, that could be enough to get users interested. However, seeing the approaching ceiling of the Japanese market must have Mixi, DeNA and Gree looking to expand. Indeed, DeNA and Gree could use their profits to grow overseas. With Facebook retaining a possible monopoly in the West, it could be that Japan's social networks see Asia as their best bet to form a challenge against the online behemoth.

Akky Akimoto writes for Asiajin.com, which is planning readers meetups in Singapore on Sept. 25, and Tokyo on Oct. 9. For details, visit asiajin.com. A Japanese version of this article is available on Akky Akimoto's blog at akimoto.jp


From Japan Times