The world leaders in social networking sites are having trouble breaking through to Japanese users.
Social networking giants Facebook and MySpace have been making concentrated efforts to break into the Japanese market. Yet, according to a recent study by comScore, both platforms still lag significantly behind Japan’s leading social network platform Mixi.jp.
“While Facebook’s Japan site has grown three fold in the last year, it still has only about 4% of the users that Mixi does (538,000 versus 12.7 million unique visitors in June),” reports Jason Kincaid for TechCrunch.
According to an earlier article from TechCrunch, both platforms failed to adapt culturally to the Japanese market. “One of Facebook’s unique selling points is the usage of real names and photos in profiles,” wrote TechCrunch reporter Serkan Toto in early August. “This may be true but it’s exactly what Japanese web users usually try to avoid. And they already have a high-trust, invitation-based social network anyway: Mixi.”
Clearly, in order to make a mark in foreign markets, companies must have a crystal-clear understanding of the consumers’ culture. Successful localization takes cultural and local marketing factors into account in order to build sites that will fly in the target locale. Contact Language Translation, Inc. for more information about our ten-step localization process.
Betty Carlson
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