People used to refer to Japanese Social Media Networking Services (SNS) market as “Galapagos of SNS”. However, Western born SNSs have been getting a good traction in Japan in the past a few years. Social Media Lab has published the latest Social Media statistics in Japan. Here are some of the notable points and data. (All numbers are estimates based on several researches.)

Facebook:

Monthly active users have grown from 24 million to 26 million from March 2015 to September 2016. More than 40% of people in their 30s and 20s are on Facebook. Surprisingly, 39% of people in 40s are, too. Facebook has 60%-90%+ penetration in US across the age groups, so the user base in Japan could further grow in coming years, especially among older age groups.

Twitter:

Monthly active users have grown from 35 million to 40 million from Dec 2015 to September 2016. 57% of people in 20s are on Twitter. But, the number of users and penetration rate decreases significantly as the age group goes older. Only 30% of people in 40s, and only 20% of people in 60s are on Twitter. You can see the similar case of age gap in US, too.

LINE:

Currently, 68 million Japanese are using LINE, which is more than 30% of LINE’s total active users worldwide. What’s significant about LINE users is that they are active, very active on the daily basis. 71% of users use LINE every day. 96% of users use it every month.

Instagram:

While the above three services have far more number of users, personally, I think Instagram was the winner in 2016 in Japan with the highest growth ratio of 50%+ in a year. I felt this shift as many of my friends in Japan started to use Instagram last year. More than a half of users in Japan are in 20s and 30s, but I expect people in other age groups to join soon.

Having more varieties of the social platforms and the fact that user base is growing across the board are great news for the digital marketers. It offers more ways to connect with the customer base, and to market the services and products as well as creating the visibility in Japanese market.