March 12, 2008

Back from Japan

Internet definitely became a part of Japanese people's everyday life, but what's actually happening and what's the difference between US Internet market and Japanese Internet market? This is what I saw and heard during my last visit to Japan.
February 23, 2008

The power of word-of-mouth marketing

The advertising market in Japan grew to more than 3 billion yen market in 2007 from 0.9 billion yen market in 2006. Their another survey shows that more than 80% of net users have actively taken the advise/information they got through "word-of-mouth" on the net.
February 17, 2008

Will Baidu gain market share in Japan?

It's been 3 weeks since Baidu officially opened its services in Japan after 10months of beta phase. While Baidu's news has been picked up by some search industry media, I haven't heard any user side feedbacks. None of my friends in Japan have tried the search at Baidu, yet. So, the question is... "Will Baidu gain market share in Japan?"
February 14, 2008

Yahoo Japan releases Yahoo Profile

2 weeks after Google released its Google Social Graph API, Yahoo Japan opened "Yahoo Profile" service. Yahoo Profile integrates Yahoo's Social Networking Service, Yahoo Days' profile pages and Open ID user profiles.
February 1, 2008

MSN wants to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion

Microsoft announced it's offer to acquire Yahoo for $31/share, which is more than 60% higher than Yahoo's current traded price. Yahoo shows their willingness to consider the offer. If MSN and Yahoo come to the agreement, we may see new search engine-portal site later this year.
January 21, 2008

Search Around The World at SES Paris

On Feb 15, I spoke about Japanese Internet Market during the Search Around The World session at Search Engine Strategies Paris. It was the only session provided in English. I was happy to see we had a good attendance to the session.