Granted they have an interest in the outcome, but even having said this, if you just want to get a quick overview, this is not a bad place to start.

 OpenX Whitepaper on DSPs

The first is from Center on Japanese Economy and Business is the summary report for the symposium,”Lessons from the Japanese Bubble for the U.S.” which was held on November 19, 2008 cjeb-111908-report_lessons-from-the-japanese-bubble-for-the-us.pdf. 

 The other is an article by Ed Lincoln, the director of the Center for Japan-U.S. Business and Economic Studies and professor of economics at NYU Stern School of Business. What Japan Got Right.

Both come out, not surprisingly, consistent.  The Japanese goverment waited much too long, but once it did take action, this did seem to avert what was increasinly looking like a major league meltdown.  The one thing I have not been able to figure out is whether in fact the Japanese goverment ended out coming ahead on the deal or not.  Yes, 2 of the 21 banks that got money did go under, but the rest were either merged or continue on their own. 

 Another very thorough analysis is from Pimco Responding to Financial Crises: Lessons to Learn from Japan’s Experience.

Which takes me to the moral of the story.  As Nick Kristof said this week in his Op-Ed piece Escaping the Bust Bowl if you are going to spend taxpayer’s money, they should at least be given a comparable chance to invest and take part in the upside.

There is so much special about cooking in Japan, its hard to start.  One area where I do get a lot of questions though is Japanese knives.  While I have always said they are by far the best in the world, its always better to have 3rd party verification.  So here is an article from the July 2008 issue of Saveur.  japanese-knives-saveur-july08.pdf.

Japan Blog Market Report from Nikkei BP web site

Japan’s blog business recorded 46.3 billion yen sales in 2007, an increase of 69% from the previous year
–From the report by Yano Research Institute

According to Yano research institute, Japan’s blog business amounted to 46.3 billion yen in 2007, an increase of 69% from the previous figure.

1. Number of new blog opening

According to the institute, the number of blogs opened on blog portal services has increased sharply. Total number of blog openings on the major 19 blog portal services in March is 7,346,000 in 2006, 12,345,000 in 2007 and 18,065,000 in 2008.

The total number of blogs on Japanese blog portal services by the end of March is estimated 8.68 million in 2006 (The figure released by the Ministry of internal affairs and communications), 13.95 million in 2007 and 19.85 million in 2008.

The number of new blogs is increasing dramatically, but the figure includes substantial numbers of spam blogs that automatically post random comments to lead viewers to certain commercial services. Also, there are many dormant blogs. Therefore, it is difficult to grasp the accurate number of non spam blogs that are renewed at least once month. But the number of authentic blogs that are non-spam and actively renewed is growing. However, the ratio of the authentic blogs that are renewed at least once a month, to total numbers of blogs are on downward trend.

Note1: The nineteen major services include the followings:

Ameba (Ameblo), webryblog, excite blog, FC2 blog, AutoPage, goo blog, CURURU, cocolog, Seesaa blog, JUGEM, So-net blog, drecom blog, ninja blog, hatena diary, OCN blogjin, Yahoo!blog, livedoor Blog, and Rakuten Blog

2. Current and future market size of blog services

Blog service market in Japan is expanding as seen in the total sales figures: 1.1 billion yen in 2005, 2.74 billion yen in 2006 and 4.63 billion yen in 2007. The institute points out that the current boom of blog markets comes not only from the rise in the ad unit prices with the increase of numbers of articles, page views and unique users, but from the efforts of many blog services that have adopted various ads and inventive ad placement style.

We can observe the rapid increase in viewing and renewing of blogs via cell phones after 2007. Many bloggers start paying more attention to the appearance of their blog on cell phones even though they don’t post much using a cell phone. Against the backdrop of the increased access to blogs via cell phones, the emergence of new charging systems for cell phones and ad revenue expansion from fiscal 2008 to 2009 are expected. The institute predicts that further expansion of blog market with new charging services, efficiency measures and increasing volumes of ads. The predicted market size will be 6.35 billion yen in 2008, 7.95 billion yen in 2009 and 9.15 billion yen in 2010.

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3. Challenges for market expansion

In terms of sales records of each blog service company, the market size is not as large as service recognition and scale. Nonetheless, blog business makes significant contributions to the sales of various industries through Electric Commerce sales that include affiliates, publications of blog contents and blog related businesses such as analysis, and search engines. We believe that the blog business continue to influence businesses across diverse industries.

Blog services have become indispensable to the users since many blogs contain useful and valuable information. It is necessary to eliminate spam blogs for brog related businesses, bloggers and users to keep fully utilizing the merits of blogs.

Spam blogs bring various demerits for both users and businesses by increasing server loads and causing disruption of the stable services. Blog related services also experience inconveniences in their operations. It is an unavoidable task to remove spam blogs for the further expansion of blog industry. It would be extremely difficult to eliminate spam blogs completely. Whole industry has to make throughout efforts to address this issue. The institute points out that facilitating quality contents on blogs and increasing the numbers of quality bloggers are required for further development of blog related businesses.

Below you see the data in 3 month increments starting last September, quarterly up till the most recent data.  Couple of interesting trends from these numbers.   Overall it seems like portals are sucking wind and search related sites are doing well.  A couple of points:

1)      Overall Unique User numbers are growing steadily from 53.8 MM UU in 9/07 to 56.2 MM UU in June 08.  Seems like the overall user market continues to grow.

2)      Yahoo Japan who was struggling last fall, seems to have regained a bit of its footing.  They rebounded from 40.7 MM UU in 9/07 (75.8% of the market) to 46.1 MM UU in 6/08 (82% of the market).  However judging from its stock price, the financial outlook is still not positive.

3)      Google also is holding strong in the number two position, up from 32.1 MM UU 9/07 (59.61% of market) to 35.9 MM UU in 6/08 (63.7% of the market).  I think Google will continue to make slow inroads on Yahoo.

4)      MSN is loosing ground fairly significantly falling from 3^rd rank at 30.0 MM UU 9/07 to 5^th at 28.6 MM in 6/08.  They are the only one in the top 10 actually loosing UUs in a growing market.  Clearly sucking wind.

5)      FC2 is a sketchy chat room mostly frequented by guys looking for excitement and girls looking for trouble.  Has been picking up share moving from 6^th rank at 24.1 MM UU in 9/07 to 4^th rank at 28.6 MM UU in 6/08.

6)      GMO Internet was not even in the top 10 in 9/07, but grew from 19.3 MM UU in 12/07 to 24.1 MM UU in 6/08.  They started a new venture J-word, which is a browser plug in search tool with advertising.   

7)      Nifty, NEC’s portal fell from 7^th at 21.9 MM UU in 9/07 to 10^th at 22.5 MM UU in 6/08.  Another portal gone bad. 

Obviously you can spin the story as you wish, but the fact remains that tripling from 172,000 to 538,000 UU/mos is not necessarily what you can call dominating the market. Particularly when you take into account Mixi’s dominating 12.7 MM UU/mos. But this is not to say that Mixi’s lead is insurmountable.
While Mixi’s position remains unquestionably strong, their vulnerability can be seen in their stock price.

The fact remains they have not opened up their API and remain a very closed and contained environment. While perhaps attracting initial novices, this may not carry over as users come to look for more advanced functionality.
It was also interesting that Toto notes, ” Japan has embraced just five American web brands which decided to go solo and none of them is a social network: Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon.”
This seems a pretty impressive list to me. Amazon and Google for sure have taken time to reach where they are today. In fact, I would argue this list is actually more of a justification for trying to go it alone.
Both myspace and Facebook will not be slam dunks in Japan. As always, it’s all in the execution. This leads me to conclude that in fact, the opportunity is still wide open.
In fact according to ComScore Orkut has the best engagement of them all!

So stay tuned.

To put this on your iGoogle account, just click the get this and then click on google.

I can’t tell you the number of times a client comes in from Narita airport and says, “You know I even called Support and they promised this phone will work in Japan, but sure enough it doesn’t.” The fact of the matter very few do. For a more detailed description of the problem please see the page on my website reviewing all the requirements and solutions for getting your connection to work both in the US and Japan http://www.ajadvisers.com/Travel-Tips-Airport-Tips-Mobile-Tips/Using-a-Cell-Phone-in-Japan.html. After roughly 4 months of research about a month ago, I settled in on the Samsung Blackjack II at ATT with the US plus international data plan (an extra $25 for 20 MB of data a month). The first two Blackjack IIs froze when I tried to install the Japanese language packs (though I must confess this my have been partly due to some errors on my part). But with my third, I finally got everything running in order and so it was with great excitement that I turned it on once I hit the tarmac at Narita. Sure enough, much to my surprise and delight, it worked! At first it had trouble connecting to the Internet, but by day 2 it seemed to have worked this out. Not only that, the Google Maps also was placing my coordinates, though with about the same accuracy as in the US (which is nothing to plot strategic attacks with). It was a real pleasure to be able to get data, anytime any where in Tokyo linked to my PIM database. The speed was equivalent to the US and available throughout Tokyo, though didn’t work on the train out to Narita. So for you Japanofiles looking for the mobile solution, here is one satisfied Blackjack II WM6 customer, for the moment at least. But stay tuned.