As with the rest of the world, the Japanese are increasingly turning to social websites for sharing links and ideas online. While homegrown sharing site Mixi remains the most popular service with 20 million registered users, Facebook is coming on strong, and is the preferred social network in larger cities, where people adopt new ideas more quickly. Twitter is also hugely popular in Japan, likely due to its easy learning curve, and there are 9 million active users currently. When Google launched its Google+ social network here, they knew they had an uphill battle to win over users, especially since most Japanese still prefer Yahoo Japan for web searches, often equating the Yahoo front page with “the Internet.” Google was smart, though, and contracted with AKB48 to get all the members on G+. This brought in thousands of new users, though many are likely fake accounts made by obsessive fans looking to inflate the number of followers for the girls they like best. Incidentally J-List is quite active on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, so if you want to follow us and chat about stuff, please do!
Google+ throws down the AKB48 gauntlet..
