Twitter a hit in Japan as millions 'mumble' online

[maye]

TOKYO —
Twitter is a hit in Japan, succeeding where other social networking imports like Facebook have foundered as millions “mumble”—the translation of tweet—and give mini-blogging a distinctly Japanese flavor.

The arrival of the Japanese language Twitter service in 2008 tapped into a greater sense of individuality in Japan, especially among younger people less accepting of the understatement and conformity their culture is usually associated with, analysts say.

A mobile version of Twitter started last October, further fueling the Twitter boom in a nation where Internet-connecting cell phones have been the rule for years.

These days, seminars teaching the tricks of the tweet, as the micro-blog postings are known, are popping up. Ending Japanese sentences with “nah-woo”—an adaptation of “now” in English—is hip, showing off the speaker’s versatility in pseudo-English Twitter-speak.

A TV show features characters that tweet. A Tokyo bar has screens showing tweets along with World Cup games. And pop idols, a former prime minister and plain regular people are all tweeting like crazy.

The proportion of Japanese Internet users who tweet is 16.3% and now surpasses the ratio among Americans at 9.8%. Twitter and Japan’s top social networking site, mixi, have been running neck-and-neck with monthly visitors between 9 million and 10 million but in April Twitter squeaked past mixi, according to ratings agency Nielsen Online.

In contrast, only 3% of Japanese Internet users are on Facebook compared with 62% in the U.S., according to Nielsen. MySpace has also failed to take off in Japan, at under 3% of Net users versus 35% in the U.S., according to comScore Inc.

Twitter estimates Japanese write nearly 8 million tweets a day, or about 12% of the global total. Data from Tweet Sentiments, a website that analyzes tweets, show Japanese are sometimes tweeting more frequently than Americans.

“Japan is enjoying the richest and most varied form of Twitter usage as a communication tool,” says Daisuke Tsuda, 36, a writer with more than 65,000 “followers” for his tweets. “It’s playing out as a rediscovery of the Internet.”

(source: Twitter a hit in Japan as millions 'mumble' online <--read more)

This goes to show the new arising popularity of Twitter in Japan and also the power of virtual micro-blogging~ (Y)