A non-profit organization, Japan Web development and Web marketing Consortium was established on April 1 to improve the quality of Japanese web. Current members include, Adobe Systems, Apple, Microsoft, web design companies, and some individual members. They plan to offer …

Japan Registry Services, who handle JP domain management and DNS operation, announced that there are 908,329 registered JP domains as of April 4, 2007, which makes JP domain to be the 10th popular domains in the world. (There are …

Japan University just announced its plan to introduce Google Apps (Education Edition), and provide it to students (up to 100,000 students). The service includes, Gmail, Google talk and Google calender. They plan to provide the service to a …

A report by Nielsen/Net Ratings on the site view changes in February shows most of the popular cooking (recipes) sites had a large increase in site views. 3 of them had more than 30% increase in site view from January, and most of the increase came from female between 20-50.

Yahoo! Japan announced the opening of Yahoo! Japan Laboratory in Tokyo.
It aims to contribute to a healthy, rich development of the Internet by investigating and researching a further possibility of the Internet with the advancement of the technology, and the …

“NicoNicoDouga” is not a website for you to submit videos, but to comment about videos you viewed at YouTube and Ameba Vision.

Since the opening of its beta version on January 15, 2007, they received 10 mil comments by Feb 7, …

I read an announcement by Rakuten that consumers can soon view the information about the products sold at Rakuten by entering product codes on Rakuten catalogue into Rakuten’s mobile site.

This sounds great, but why stop there?
This is what …

JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers) announced that the U.S. video-posting website YouTube’s CEO and CTO will visit them in February to discuss the request made by them to remove the large volume (about 30,000) of …

Japan’s largest social networking service site “mixi” announced that its mobile service “mixi mobile” had more than 100 million page views on January 15th, 2007.

As of December 2006, mixi mobile has 2.3 million unique users, and has more than 12,000 …

There are some changes in PPC ad market in Japan in December. Here’s some notes for those people who are running the ad campaign in Japan market.

- MSN Japan’s Live Search result pages now show the ads from Microsoft Digital …

According to a report by Adotas, Rakuten - one of the largest Japanese online malls - plans to expand into the United Staes, Europe and China.

The company already owns US affiliate portal LinkShare which should help them in their efforts.

Interestingly, …

RSS feeds are very convenient way to obtain the information without visiting each web site, and more and more Japanese are using the services.
Despite the initial concern of some of the sites may lose the number of access …

Yahoo Japan has announced its 2006 Search word ranking. (Jan 1 - Nov 5, 2006)

The results shows new trend in the search words used at Yahoo Japan this year. In over all ranking, the ultimate bulletin board service site “2 …

Wall Street Journal is reporting that Baidu plans to enter the Japanese market by 2007.

“We carefully studied the Japanese market,” said Mr. Li, who is also Baidu’s chairman. “It’s primarily dominated by two players we are very familiar with. We …

As I’ve reported in past, SNS services are really hot in Japan. While mixi went public with more than 7mil members, and Softbank to offer Japanese version of MySpace, there’s a new trend in SNS market in Japan.

At nanoty.jp, …

“.jp” domain debuted in February 2001. With more than 500,000 domain registered, now there are more “xxx.jp” registered than other form of JP domains such as “xxx.co.jp” and “xxx.ne.jp”.

The total number of registered JP domain is 866.495 (as of …

On October 23rd, Net Ratings put out the top 10 property ranking sites in Japan for the month of September 2006.

According to their research, Google made the top 10 ranking for the first time in history with more than 5 …

Seems the Japanese are pushing copyright violations against YouTube in an effort to have them pull thousands of videos from the site. According to an article in Adotas, YouTube removed about 30,000 videos at the request of the …

Media research firm Zenithoptimedia reports that 8 countries will dedicate more than 10% of their budgets to online marketing by 2008. Two countries will already cross that barrier this year - the UK adn Sweden - interestingly not the …

Many CMs aired in Japan now mention a keyword phrase, some even show a phrase being typed in the search window on commercial.

According to Internet.com and goo Research, 52% of the Internet users who responded to the survey …

Yahoo Japan made a licensing agreement with Mediabolic for its web media product software, with which Yahoo Japan is going to develop “Yahoo! digital home engine”.

Once it’s developed, people can access Yahoo Japan’s services such as search engine, auction, …

Internet.com and goo research have announced its blog user survey results. It shows the difference in usage between male and female.

Q1: Have you viewed someone else’s blog in last 30 days?
Male - Yes 77.75%
…

Google’s senior v.p. of global sales, Omid Kordestani spoke at the conference in Tokyo last week that they will add engineers in Japan to develop new technologies in one of the most advanced markets for mobile technologies.

They understand the importance …

I just read the survey taken by OPT and Cross Marketing with 300 male and female Blog and SNS users in Japan. It has interesting results about what have the impact on Japanese consumers in purchasing products and services.

Q. …

Google’s Gmail account is now available for general public without an invitation in Japan.
Currently, Google is the default search engine on mobile “au” through the tie-up with KDDI. Gmail may become “au”’s mobile mailer soon???

Gmail is also available …

“Obon” (Aug 10-16) is one of the biggest holiday season in Japan. More and more people use Internet to obtain leisure related information such as travel booking, attraction, and weather. On the other hand, people are busy with …

Overture Japan began serving ads to Japan’s No.1 social networking service “mixi” on July 27. The content-match ads appear on the mixi content search results pages.

On July 26, mixi announced that its membership reached 5 million on July 24. …

The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry announced the results of the mobile content and commerce market research. It shows that the mobile content market grew to 722mil yen, which is 39% growth from the previous year.

The mobile content including …

Mobile Research with goo, a project run by goo research and Japan.internet.com, announced the results of the Mobile Search research.

1083 mobile users in Japan participated in the research, 43.4% male and 56.6% female.

Yahoo mobile is the most popular search site …

A blog service provider, Hot Link announced the results of blog/SNS usage survey in Japan.

59.2% of blog owners said that the ads appear on their blog, and 67.2% said that they’ve clicked the ads on the blogs.

66.0% answered that they …

The latest research by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication shows that there are more mobile Internet users (approx. 69.23mil) than PC Internet users (approx. 66.01mil) in Japan for the first time in history.

It also shows 57% (approx. 48.62mil) of …

PSI-Japan has begun accepting the applications for new domain “.mobi” for mobile sites.

From May 22 to 29, the registration is limited to the member companies and organizations to GSMA, CTIA, MMA, CWTA, and MEF for their registered trademarks.

From June 12 …

KDDI announced the agreement with Google to incorporate Google’s search engine into its EZ Web Internet service for “au” mobile phones in July. This search service for both mobile phones and PCs, is the first of its kind in …

Internet.com and Girls.Lab announced the results of mobile site bookmarking survey with 1409 girls between 10 and 18 in Japan.

Here are some of the results:

Q: Do you know the bookmark function on your mobile phone?
- Yes, and have used it, …

JASK (Japan Affiliate Service Kyokai) was established on May 12th. They will exchange and provide the information and the services with affiliate service providers, including:

- increase the understanding of the affiliate programs
- monitor improper activities and exchange the information …

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has announced the number of Blog and SNS registrations as of March 31, 2006. The numbers are the total memberships of 53 blog companies and 21 SNS companies.

* Blog membership: 8680,000
* …

MARS FLAG is a search engine made in Japan, which shows the search results with web page images. It started to run the beta version in March 2005, and officially opened on May 8th.

They also started to provide …

According to “The Face of the Web”, which was published by a market researcher Ipso Insight, Japan remains the world’s No.1 Internet based economy with about 9 in 10 said to have used the Internet in the past 30 days, …

The Internet Usage in Japan (by Net Ratings) reports that more than 2 million Japanese had accessed to “You Tube” even though the site is in English.

The number of Japanese users who access to “You Tube” has been rapidly increasing …

According to the survey done by Opt and Cross Marketing, the “newspaper articles” was the number 1 reason (37%) why Japanese male searches, and the “conversation with family and friends” was the number 1 reason (49%) why Japanese female searches.

The …

SEMPO Japan has announced the results of Japanese SEM market research at the SES Tokyo on April 20.

The results show that more than 60% responded that they use SEM as a mean to improve the brand recognition, and more than …

One of Japan’s oldest search sites, goo, has added “encyclopedia search” button on its dictionary search service, “goo dictionary”. This is the first tie-up search service with Wikipedia in Japan.

goo dictioary has about 3 million users/month, and one of …

The shopping focused search site, Become.com, has opened its Japanese beta version “Become.co.jp” on the 10th.
The site users can search the information such as products, reviews, and EC site comparisons in Japanese.

On 12th, Google announced the release of new “Google mini” in Lego-ish simple design, the search appliance for mid to small companies.
Google picked Japan as the first market for the new “Google mini”, and this version is 100% localized …

Google Japan’s “Google mobile ads” started on the 7th of April. The ads show up on Google.jp’s search results.

In addition to the title (with link to the site) and the description, the ads show a telephone icon, which …

According to the survey by Japan.Internet.com and JR Tokai express search, almost 80% of participants responded as they’ve used Google Japan.

Q: Do you use Google?
39.9%: Yes, sometimes
39.0%: Yes, always
18.2%: Have heard about it, but haven’t used it
3.0%: Not sure what …

On March 15, Yahoo! Japan opened the beta version of Keyword input assist.

When a search user types the first several character of the search word, it will display a list of related keywords. This function is available …

Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has established Japan Blog Association on February 28, 2006.

Its purpose is to perform research, study, support, etc. about Blog, and to provide the information and environment for Blog users to enjoy blogging freely. …

Dentsu has published “Advertising Costs in Japan, 2005″ on February 20th, 2006.

The report shows that the total internet advertisement spending in 2005 is 280.8 billion yen (approx. $230mil), which is 54.8% up from the previous year. The total for …

According to the 2005 4th quarter Electro-Communication Study done by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the Electro-communication market is growing rapidly in Japan.

The results show there are 14,310,000 DSL contractors, 3,978,500 FTTH contractors, and 10,022,000 IP phone numbers.

Read the …