Facebook unpopular in Japan(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
Facebook unpopular in Japan
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/technology/10facebook.html
10 comments
Re: mobile websites -- I guess there's an "early bird gets the worm" problem here. About ten years back the story was that Japan was rushing ahead of the rest of the world because everyone had amazing mobile phones that could browse the web and process micropayments. The latter's still kind of cool, but perhaps delaying mobile internet adoption until regular HTML worked has helped other countries in the long run.
> I guess regarding hardware and infrastructure they are still advanced
It depends. Your categorization is too coarse.
> Most non-mobile sites are entirely flash. The most popular search engine is still Yahoo. Shift-JIS encoding is more widely used than the world standard UTF-8.
I didn't know these 'facts'. Can you give me the details? Just out of curiosity, how did you know Shift-JIS is popular than UTF-8?
It depends. Your categorization is too coarse.
> Most non-mobile sites are entirely flash. The most popular search engine is still Yahoo. Shift-JIS encoding is more widely used than the world standard UTF-8.
I didn't know these 'facts'. Can you give me the details? Just out of curiosity, how did you know Shift-JIS is popular than UTF-8?
> It depends. Your categorization is too coarse.
Yes it is course b/c that is not my area of expertise. Feel free to inject any information here.
> I didn't know these 'facts'. Can you give me the details? Just out of curiosity, how did you know Shift-JIS is popular than UTF-8?
Well I don't have any hard statistics to back up my statements. They are all simply personal observations.
However in Japan "moji-bake" (character encoding error) is an everyday phrase. Shift-JIS is mostly to blame. I think that's enough to show that it's still widely used.
Yes it is course b/c that is not my area of expertise. Feel free to inject any information here.
> I didn't know these 'facts'. Can you give me the details? Just out of curiosity, how did you know Shift-JIS is popular than UTF-8?
Well I don't have any hard statistics to back up my statements. They are all simply personal observations.
However in Japan "moji-bake" (character encoding error) is an everyday phrase. Shift-JIS is mostly to blame. I think that's enough to show that it's still widely used.
My Japanese mobile phone would occasionally silently fail to display an email message (forwarded to the phone's Softbank address, naturally, since I couldn't get data access without a contract plan) because of the character encoding.
And then there's the fact that you can't get a prepaid SIM in Japan without buying a phone to go with it. And the fact that Softbank is the only prepaid provider. And the fact that I wasn't legally supposed to have a prepaid phone anyway, because I didn't have an Alien Registration Card but was lucky enough to find a discount store that would overlook that.
Japan is VERY technologically advanced, but they often do things in a way that lacks any consideration for the world outside of their islands. The mobile phone debacle is a perfect example of this, because it affects so few Japanese directly. "Open" platforms like Linux, the Internet, and even Windows are largely regarded as hobbyist items, while Docomo and Softbank's closed, curated networks are reality for most Japanese. The recent film "Summer Wars" is an excellent expression of this.
And then there's the fact that you can't get a prepaid SIM in Japan without buying a phone to go with it. And the fact that Softbank is the only prepaid provider. And the fact that I wasn't legally supposed to have a prepaid phone anyway, because I didn't have an Alien Registration Card but was lucky enough to find a discount store that would overlook that.
Japan is VERY technologically advanced, but they often do things in a way that lacks any consideration for the world outside of their islands. The mobile phone debacle is a perfect example of this, because it affects so few Japanese directly. "Open" platforms like Linux, the Internet, and even Windows are largely regarded as hobbyist items, while Docomo and Softbank's closed, curated networks are reality for most Japanese. The recent film "Summer Wars" is an excellent expression of this.
Shift-JIS is still widely used here, how widely used I don't know and I don't work on projects where we deal with character encoding so much anymore so I don't bother to keep up. But it does make some sense that it would still be used because, if you stick to Japanese characters, it is more space-efficient than UTF-8.
I know this is sort of not relevant, but can someone comment and compare/contrast South Korea to Japan in terms of the parent's comment?
I spend a bit of time in South Korea and can say this:
1) South Korea is similarly more advanced than the West in some ways and less in others.
Large transportation infrastructure in South Korea is among the best I've seen, both because it is so comprehensive and because it is so new. So for example, the Seoul subway is easily comparable to the NYC subway in terms of size and coverage, but feels much nicer because it's so much newer. The stations are larger, the trains are new, etc. Similarly, Korean rail is easily as good as the best you'll find in Europe. The National Highway system is comprehensive, modern and easy to navigate.
Communications infrastructure is fantastic, easily the best I've seen. Very fast high speed internet everywhere, great mobile service, digital mobile TV in the subway, etc. etc.
Some infrastructure is not as good. In the well developed parts of the cities things like sewage aren't a problem, but you quickly drop off the development cliff as you head away from city center. Public restrooms are infrequent and typically dirty. If they have toilet paper, count yourself lucky. (However, the tap water is considered quite clean and drinkable by world health authorities even if the locals habitually don't drink it out of decade's old habit when things weren't quite as good). Farm areas are like farm areas anywhere, lots of dirt and plants and animals, but because of the difficult terrain, bringing modern mass farming practices has been very difficult and has left rural areas very undeveloped in relation to what you might find in the U.S. or Europe.
There's a huge disparity in things like construction quality. Some areas have impressive, modern buildings. Some areas (particularly older areas built up in the late 70s early 80s) look shabby and have issues associated with shoddy construction.
2) Software in the South Korea is...not as advanced as in the West, but from the sounds of it, in better shape than in Japan.
There's a pretty thriving games industry that's as good as any average or better than average western developed games. There's also a pretty sizable contract software industry. Mostly Western firms who've setup shop to take advantage of highly educated developers and slightly lower pay.
Though the Internet is high speed, for various reasons, almost entirely legal (that would involve thousands of words to properly explain and would probably require a dive into South Korean Social Security law believe it or not), browser technology and techniques are stuck with IE6 era sites. This means lots and lots and lots of flash everywhere to make things look good. However, the design work is about as good as what you'll normally find in the west. Nothing spectacular, they aren't pushing the boundaries of usability, but there's a sophistication in the sites that makes them equivalent to say reddit or amazon.
Here's two of the most popular sites http://www.daum.net/ http://www.naver.com/
I think one thing that helps is that the South Koreans have a strong tradition in graphic design and the arts that at least helps make things look pleasant even if the interfaces can be a little "off". But you can see it everywhere, mundane signs in the grocery store for example, are put together with harmonious color schemes and beautiful typography. It's wholly different than Japanese aesthetic (and Chinese for that matter), and seems to have made it's way onto the web more or less.
I've never really encountered encoding issues or the like, I guess most places have moved on to UTF-8.
Most people at home have older, less powerful computers, but laptops and netbooks are extremely common. Apple computers...I think I've seen one, one time. And *nix is almost unknown. iPhones are starting to get popular, but most people have phones that better work in South Korea since they also have digital TV reception (yes, it's broadcast over the air) and near field payment chips and such in the phones.
3) Facebook is not heavily used (if at all) compared to other social media sites.
1) South Korea is similarly more advanced than the West in some ways and less in others.
Large transportation infrastructure in South Korea is among the best I've seen, both because it is so comprehensive and because it is so new. So for example, the Seoul subway is easily comparable to the NYC subway in terms of size and coverage, but feels much nicer because it's so much newer. The stations are larger, the trains are new, etc. Similarly, Korean rail is easily as good as the best you'll find in Europe. The National Highway system is comprehensive, modern and easy to navigate.
Communications infrastructure is fantastic, easily the best I've seen. Very fast high speed internet everywhere, great mobile service, digital mobile TV in the subway, etc. etc.
Some infrastructure is not as good. In the well developed parts of the cities things like sewage aren't a problem, but you quickly drop off the development cliff as you head away from city center. Public restrooms are infrequent and typically dirty. If they have toilet paper, count yourself lucky. (However, the tap water is considered quite clean and drinkable by world health authorities even if the locals habitually don't drink it out of decade's old habit when things weren't quite as good). Farm areas are like farm areas anywhere, lots of dirt and plants and animals, but because of the difficult terrain, bringing modern mass farming practices has been very difficult and has left rural areas very undeveloped in relation to what you might find in the U.S. or Europe.
There's a huge disparity in things like construction quality. Some areas have impressive, modern buildings. Some areas (particularly older areas built up in the late 70s early 80s) look shabby and have issues associated with shoddy construction.
2) Software in the South Korea is...not as advanced as in the West, but from the sounds of it, in better shape than in Japan.
There's a pretty thriving games industry that's as good as any average or better than average western developed games. There's also a pretty sizable contract software industry. Mostly Western firms who've setup shop to take advantage of highly educated developers and slightly lower pay.
Though the Internet is high speed, for various reasons, almost entirely legal (that would involve thousands of words to properly explain and would probably require a dive into South Korean Social Security law believe it or not), browser technology and techniques are stuck with IE6 era sites. This means lots and lots and lots of flash everywhere to make things look good. However, the design work is about as good as what you'll normally find in the west. Nothing spectacular, they aren't pushing the boundaries of usability, but there's a sophistication in the sites that makes them equivalent to say reddit or amazon.
Here's two of the most popular sites http://www.daum.net/ http://www.naver.com/
I think one thing that helps is that the South Koreans have a strong tradition in graphic design and the arts that at least helps make things look pleasant even if the interfaces can be a little "off". But you can see it everywhere, mundane signs in the grocery store for example, are put together with harmonious color schemes and beautiful typography. It's wholly different than Japanese aesthetic (and Chinese for that matter), and seems to have made it's way onto the web more or less.
I've never really encountered encoding issues or the like, I guess most places have moved on to UTF-8.
Most people at home have older, less powerful computers, but laptops and netbooks are extremely common. Apple computers...I think I've seen one, one time. And *nix is almost unknown. iPhones are starting to get popular, but most people have phones that better work in South Korea since they also have digital TV reception (yes, it's broadcast over the air) and near field payment chips and such in the phones.
3) Facebook is not heavily used (if at all) compared to other social media sites.
"Though the Internet is high speed, for various reasons, almost entirely legal (that would involve thousands of words to properly explain and would probably require a dive into South Korean Social Security law believe it or not),..."
I hope you'll take the time one day to write that up. Sounds fascinating.
I hope you'll take the time one day to write that up. Sounds fascinating.
It's all rather confusing and complex (and reads a bit like an episode of connections), but the gist is this:
To gain access to a website and get an account, you need to supply your social security number as a convenient unique identifier. This is all so that if you do something bad, like commit fraud, or distribute child porn or whatever, the authorities can figure out who did it (I know, I know, there's an entire debate about why using your SSN like this is a bad idea). In the States, the government goes through all kinds of gyrations to ensure separation of interests to protect personal privacy. The same level of privacy protection simply doesn't exist in South Korea. To my understanding, this SSN gathering requirement is required by law.
Further complicating matters, encrypted communications (via web browser) are mandated by law to use an ancient ancient activeX control (like 1998 ancient) implementing an encryption standard called SEED. Why this is is one of those funny historic happenstances. In the late 90's South Korea's internet buildout was booming and the necessity for encrypted communications (for things like online purchasing) was seen as imminently necessary. If I recall, the U.S. was not allowing export of 128-bit encryption technology, and the exportable 40-bit SSL was considered not secure enough. So the South Korean government, in the interest of promoting online business, brought KISA (their NSA) in to develop a homegrown 128-bit encryption system.
SEED was then implemented as an ActiveX control for IE6 and a plugin Netscape and the use of this system was enshrined in law.
As you can imagine, the wheels of government turn incredibly slowly, even in Korea, so lawmakers have never really updated this law. Once Netscape went away, all that was left was IE and thus the stubborn persistence of IE6 to this day.
As you can guess this has left most Koreans with huge security vulnerabilities on their machines, and outdated browser (who's inadequacies they try to fix with Flash) and myriad other problems.
Fortunately, this may all end soon as there's growing momentum for the government to take another look at the law and bring South Korea's internet users into the 21st century.
TL;DR version: If you want to use an online service in South Korea, you have to make an account, and to make an account you need to use your SSN, and since you don't want to transmit all that in the clear, you want to encrypt that number, and since you want to encrypt it you have to use SEED, and since SEED only exists as an ActiveX control, you are stuck with IE6.
Some more reading on it
http://seoulspace.co.kr/2010/03/09/ie6-no-more-not-in-korea/ (the comments are great) http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2009/09/123_52401.h... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEED http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60225
(sorry if I got some details wrong, this is just what I happen to recall, but should nail down the important points)
To gain access to a website and get an account, you need to supply your social security number as a convenient unique identifier. This is all so that if you do something bad, like commit fraud, or distribute child porn or whatever, the authorities can figure out who did it (I know, I know, there's an entire debate about why using your SSN like this is a bad idea). In the States, the government goes through all kinds of gyrations to ensure separation of interests to protect personal privacy. The same level of privacy protection simply doesn't exist in South Korea. To my understanding, this SSN gathering requirement is required by law.
Further complicating matters, encrypted communications (via web browser) are mandated by law to use an ancient ancient activeX control (like 1998 ancient) implementing an encryption standard called SEED. Why this is is one of those funny historic happenstances. In the late 90's South Korea's internet buildout was booming and the necessity for encrypted communications (for things like online purchasing) was seen as imminently necessary. If I recall, the U.S. was not allowing export of 128-bit encryption technology, and the exportable 40-bit SSL was considered not secure enough. So the South Korean government, in the interest of promoting online business, brought KISA (their NSA) in to develop a homegrown 128-bit encryption system.
SEED was then implemented as an ActiveX control for IE6 and a plugin Netscape and the use of this system was enshrined in law.
As you can imagine, the wheels of government turn incredibly slowly, even in Korea, so lawmakers have never really updated this law. Once Netscape went away, all that was left was IE and thus the stubborn persistence of IE6 to this day.
As you can guess this has left most Koreans with huge security vulnerabilities on their machines, and outdated browser (who's inadequacies they try to fix with Flash) and myriad other problems.
Fortunately, this may all end soon as there's growing momentum for the government to take another look at the law and bring South Korea's internet users into the 21st century.
TL;DR version: If you want to use an online service in South Korea, you have to make an account, and to make an account you need to use your SSN, and since you don't want to transmit all that in the clear, you want to encrypt that number, and since you want to encrypt it you have to use SEED, and since SEED only exists as an ActiveX control, you are stuck with IE6.
Some more reading on it
http://seoulspace.co.kr/2010/03/09/ie6-no-more-not-in-korea/ (the comments are great) http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2009/09/123_52401.h... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEED http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60225
(sorry if I got some details wrong, this is just what I happen to recall, but should nail down the important points)
Shift-JIS encoding is more widely used than the world standard UTF-8.
I thought that was because the Japanese were unhappy about Han unification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Rationale_and_c...
I thought that was because the Japanese were unhappy about Han unification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Rationale_and_c...
I think I remember this story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/technology/internet/30goog....
Oh wait: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/technology/28yahoo.html
Oh wait: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/technology/28yahoo.html
Japanese society is way more resistant to any changes where
social relations are involved. Facebook-encouraged openness
is too much for most japanese people.
Maybe it's too much for the western society as well, but we
took a bait already.
Yes, and the reason is, that they have a very strict social code of conduct, which is why people there take great care of their public (official) persona.
Because of this pressure, people need vents to express what they think about in private and the last thing they want is to connect these to their public persona, which would have much more severe social and business impact than in western countries.
Because of this pressure, people need vents to express what they think about in private and the last thing they want is to connect these to their public persona, which would have much more severe social and business impact than in western countries.
There's also a very prevalent and unfortunate number of perverts as well. It's no wonder women wouldn't want to show their identity. The fact that they have women-only cabins in the public transportation systems is telling enough.
The used schoolgirl panties vending machines probably do not help, either.
http://www.snopes.com/risque/kinky/panties.asp
http://www.snopes.com/risque/kinky/panties.asp
I have never seen one of these machines and I couldn't tell you where to go to find them. There might be a few fake ones somewhere in Akihabara to appease the Japanophile weirdo crowd and I'm certain Snopes is correct about them being around ~20 years ago, but as near as I can tell these things no longer exist.
I can't comment on the vending machines, but the panties are sold in S&M stores still and it's quite disturbing. (Disclaimer: I noticed them as I was following a friend through den den town.)
Maybe they are more active than us, actually using those online accounts, whereas Facebook for me and my acquaintances is just a way to publish socially-acceptable meaningless crap from time to time, not to mention lots of people I know with Facebook accounts are just lurkers.
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2087622 for the previous discussion of the same article.
Based on the article, the Japanese social networks appear to address an entirely different set of social goals than Facebook. Real names are important on Facebook so that people who have lost track of each other over time can reconnect. And that's most of what people do on Facebook. Meeting new people online through Facebook is entirely secondary (and not really beneficial to the data collection upon which Facebook relies). On the other hand, anonymous user accounts require another channel of communication in order for people to reconnect (such as meeting at a party) and therefore they are oriented toward connecting online with people with whom one has recent real world connections, i.e.42 year old Rod Wingstead's high school sweetheart has no way of knowing that he is "winger471" without already being in contact some other way.
Most Japanese dislike to join fb simply just because it is still English sns, as you don't feel good if you are in mixi, fully in Japanese.
Then I'm curious, why we Japanese love Twitter...
Probably because Facebook decided to "invade" and set up office, whereas Twitter worked with Tokyo-based Digital Garage to localise Twitter for the Japanese market (and attempt to provide extended services geared for the Japanese market). Twitter also doesn't require your real name - all they care about is that impersonators specify that they are parody and not genuine.
I just release a new post analysing how Facebook's doping in japan, and from what I found: http://blog.gmbhnews.com/how-facebook-is-winning-in-japan , they are doing quite well and it's just a matter of time till the gain all the japanese market.
Tumblr appears to be very popular over there. Instgrrm too.
Can anyone from Japan comment on these two?
Can anyone from Japan comment on these two?
So how is Facebook accepted in other countries than US and Japan? Maybe US is the outlier and we may have to think why Facebook is popular in US.
That's just a speculation. But we need more data points anyway.
That's just a speculation. But we need more data points anyway.
you should check this post to understand how facebook's doing in Japan: http://blog.gmbhnews.com/how-facebook-is-winning-in-japan
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For some reason Japan still has this image of being a technologically advanced nation. I guess regarding hardware and infrastructure they are still advanced, but when it comes to the web and software they are waaaaay behind. Both in what they build, and in what they use.
The iPhone didn't really take off until a full year after it went on sale here (2 years after the US), android phones are just now starting to be sold, Twitter blew up recently but that wasn't until it was already a household name in the rest of the world. Nearly all mobile websites here are written in a carrier proprietary subset of WAP/HTML. Most non-mobile sites are entirely flash. The most popular search engine is still Yahoo. Shift-JIS encoding is more widely used than the world standard UTF-8. The list goes on and on.
I've been living in Japan for 4 years so I can speak from first hand experience. Before I came here I had the same image of Japan, but after being here for a while I can tell you that your image of Japan is not how it really is.
The Nintendo and Walkman era has ended. I wish people outside of Japan would finally realize this and stop acting surprised when Japan doesn't seem to be following the latest tech trend.