Archive for October, 2009

Twitter launches Japan mobile site

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

Twitter has launched a Japan-based mobile version, hoping to penetrate a country where other US social networking sites including Facebook and MySpace have failed to capture much ground.

Japanese is Twitter’s sole foreign language platform so far, and the company’s efforts here indicate it’s serious about making it big in Japan – and eventually all over the world.

Twitter teamed up with Tokyo-based internet firm Digital Garage in early 2008.

It launched a Japanese-language platform for PCs in the spring of 2008, and hired a Japan country manager earlier this year.

“It’s an excellent opportunity for us to see where we can go in Asia in general because Japan represents a leading edge, with advanced mobile usage,” said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, who travelled to Tokyo for the launch. “Mobile is in Twitter’s DNA.”

The company will roll out the site in Spanish, German, French and Italian over the next few months, Biz Stone added.

The San Francisco-based company is also using Japan to experiment with ways to make money from features unavailable on its English language site, such as banner ads. It remains mum on how much revenue the ads have attracted so far.

Early adopters were largely male tech geeks, but the messaging service is finally gaining some traction in mainstream Japan.

Between January and June, the number of users jumped almost fourfold to 783,000, according to internet research firm NetRatings.

Japanese celebrities and politicians are starting to sign up. So are traditional media outlets like newspapers and radio stations as well as municipalities and companies eager to take advantage of Twitter’s marketing potential.

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Facebook, Twitter Continue Rising; MySpace Dips

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

According to the most recent Hitwise survey, Facebook has seen an impressive bump in traffic versus this time last year.For September 2009, the site claimed 58.6 percent of U.S. social networking tracking, a jump of 194-percent over the same period last year. Twitter’s increase, meanwhile, was downright absurd, jumping 1,170 percent over the past year.

Of course, it must be noted that Facebook was already rather well established this time last year, but the jump is quite impressive; in September 2008, Facebook recorded a 19.94 share, which increased to 58.59 percent for Sept. 2009. MySpace, by contrast, dominated the social-networking sites last September, with a 66.8 percent share. Since then, however, MySpace’s market share has plunged to 30.3 percent, still leaving it second in US traffic.

MySpace, however, still claims the lead in the coveted 18-24 age demographic, with 32.2 percent versus 27 percent for MySpace. Hitwise recorded a shift, however, with a 13 percent drop in the demographic for MySpace and a 10 percent increase for Facebook.

Twitter, by contrast, ranks fourth, behind Tagged.com. Last year, Twitter only represented 0.15 percent of the U.S. social networking space, growing to 1.84 percent for Sept. 2009. MyYearbook.com rounds out the top five.

However, more time is spent on MySpace than on Facebook, Hitwise found: 25 minutes 56 seconds, on average. That’s a drop of about three and a half minutes from the same period last year. Users spend 23 minutes on Facebook. Although Tagged.com ranks far behind both Facebook and MySpace in visits, the site still ranks second in time spent, with 25 minutes 17 seconds spent. For all of its enforced brevity, Twitter ranks fifth, with 15:52 spent per visit, a drop of 56 percent since last year.

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