When it comes to familiar social networking, though, the rest of the world isn't necessarily addicted to Facebook. Different countries have their own online procrastination tools. With that, I will talk about Japan's "place for friends":
mixi.jp is Facebook from The Land of the Rising Sun. Mixi was created in 2004 by entrepreneur Kenji Kasahara, and dominates 80% of the social networking market in Japan. As of 2008 there were over 21 million registered users on the site.
Some features of mixi sound familiar to us Facebook users: members can upload albums and photos, write on each other's profile, play games, update statuses on the news feed, write in a diary (like "notes"), and many others.
A feature called ashiato ("footprint") lets a user know who has looked at their profile, which could actually be an average Facebook user (aka stalker)'s worst nightmare.
The differences beyond that, though, may show a little insight into the Japanese psyche. Unlike Facebook, in order to register for mixi, you need to have a valid Japanese cell phone number. This rule actually bars anyone who does not live in Japan access to the website. Japan has a history of being a closed-off country, which had refused contact from the western world until 1854. Even today, the country can sometimes be seen as a xenophobic society, illustrated by many examples: Just one being the refusal to allow anyone else from another country to join their social websites.
This is so interesting, thank you for sharing! I have heard many stories about Japan being shut off from the "rest of the world", mostly concerning the internet. I guess the only "downside" would be that they can't have "friends" from outside Japan on their social website. Other than that, I think it's a great thing that they are their own people. They share a lot with the rest of the world so it is nice to hear that they are still keeping some to themselves.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I am culprit to being addicted to facebook. And I too have heard of other countries having their own versions of social networking sites. I myself, had the Brazilian version called Orkut. This is a site that goes through google and I discovered it because a lot of my friends are Brazilian. This was my secondary site and did not have many friends on it, but used it more to keep in touch with people that I met in Brazil. As for being compared to the Japanese version, Orkut is DEFINITELY not closed off to the rest of the world. When I first created my page my privacy settings were not set up properly and I was getting friend requests from people in Morocco and India. I think that the idea of a social networking site is very cool and they are useful for people to keep in touch with each other. But I definitely agree that some people take it to a new level and they can be a bit creepy. All in all i enjoy facebook.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of Mixi requiring a legit phone number. This way it limits who can use Mixi and the users know the demographic of users, and who is posting the content. Sounds a lot better than facebook where anyone and everyone can post the most inane nonsense and have people "like" it. Great analytical post and commentary on modern communication. Good read.
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