If you’re going to compare the Facebook users on Japan to other countries, only 30 percent of Japanese internet users have an account. It’s quite different compared to the U.S. where 67.2 percent uses Facebook and even 39.3 percent in nearby South Korea. It’s comparatively low but 30 percent is a huge increase on May’s figures where just one year ago the figures were around 16 percent using Facebook during the beginning of 2011.
According to a Nielsen/Netratings report, 17.2 million unique visitors from Japan were recorded on Facebook the other month, more than double the 8.2 million in May 2011. On a separate poll, Mixi has seen a loss of about 60 million users at the end of 2011.
Mixi is Japan’s longest dominant social network where most users are anonymous or use nicknames and only reveal themselves to people they know and have met in person and it operates more as an online notice board where they can discuss topics on public forums.Because Mixi allows anonymity, as well as other social networks sites such as Gree and Twitter, has gained popularity in Japan.
Mixi’s Vice President said that he didn’t feel that the rise of Facebook meant the inevitable downfall of Mixi. Facebook is becoming popular in the country because of the social aspect, but it’s still too early to tell if it will surpass Mixi.
Facebook has certainly seen a large increase in users recently and I have noticed a lot of my Japanese friends signing up. Mixi as you said allows for more anonymity, which the Japanese tend to like as they rarely speak out openly or in a public forum but will do so in a more private environment.
True, but I think Mixi is difficult to use and a little too anonymous. I’m sure being a Mixi user makes can make you very paranoid about many things in life. It’s been a slow process but I’ve seen my Japanese friends slowly move over to Facebook although they rarely share photos, etc.