Social Media Japanese Style

There's an interesting piece in ClickZ on Social Media Marketing the Japanese Way.

The piece references Mixi, one of the most popular SNS sites in Japan, which launched in 2000, years before MySpace and Facebook. There's also GREE, another well known social media site that started in Japan. AS businesses are starting to adopt Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools for their social media marketing efforts, they point out that Japanese businesses have been monitoring and responding to these threads related to their business or products for more than 10 years. For example, 2channel holds the distinction of being the world's biggest BBS site with over 12 million users.

They list the various social media groups - see recap of their list below.

For PC and Mobile: Mixi and GREE, which provides display ads, text ads, and PPC and advertising opportunities.

Video and Photo Sharing Sites: According to comScore, the Japanese spend 187 minutes on average on YouTube. Nico Nico Douga is another popular video sharing site, with 17 million users, including over 770,000 premium account users.

Social Bookmarking Sites: Hatena and Livedoor are popular in Japan and are still growing their user base. Hatena bookmarks can also be shared via Twitter.

Blog Network Sites: Did you know that there are more blog posts in the Japanese language than any other language in the world. Popular blog network and service sites include Ameba and the Livedoor blog.

Mini-Blogging Sites: Twitter is growing in popularity and use. According to Nielsen's Report, Twitter Japan has a higher reach (16.3 percent) than Twitter U.S. (9.8 percent).

Micro SNS Sites: While micro SNS sites are not that popular in Japan yet, there are some steady services that let you create your own SNS site, some for free.