In addition to our popular Facebook page and the Tumblr I launched a few months ago, I have a fairly active Twitter feed, where I can chat and exchange ideas with readers from all over the world. Twitter has been a big success here in Japan, and every month 10 million users visit the Twitter homepage, representing 1.5% of the company’s users worldwide. I think Twitter has a lot to offer Japanese users. First, it’s ridiculously easy to use, unlike the more complex social networking site Mixi or video site Nicodouga, and it preserves anonymity, which is a must for Japanese users. Tweeting is a non-threatening way for Japanese users to practice their English with gaijin, or vice versa. While it’s quite easy to fit a lot of information into Twitter’s 140 character limit due the compactness of information in Japanese sentences, the character limit gives users an excuse to be extra lazy, using abbreviations like KTKR for kita kore or “this is it, I’ve been waiting for this.” One of the most popular terms on Twitter is the word nau, that is, the English word “now” written in hiragana rather than katakana as it should properly be, and the meaning is basically, “I’m currently at this location…” Incidentally, we’ve got a wacky Twitter cushion with the word nau on it, if you want to be like Japanese Internet uses.
Twitter is a hit with lazy Japanese net users.
