Facebook has become a giant in the internet world. In fact, in November of this year, it achieved its 100 millionth monthly U.S. visitor. It has become as popular as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. It has even surpassed AOL. However, there is one place where it not yet king: Japan.
The popularity of Facebook in Japan has increased tremendously, from 355,000 unique visitors in November 2008 to 1.39 million in November this year. However, this number is still dwarfed by the number of unique visitors that go to the Japanese social networking site, Mixi. Japan’s biggest online community has at least 9.2 million unique visitors per month through its PC website. In fact, in June of this year, the Japanese social networking site had 15 million users. Additionally, Mixi can also be accessed using mobile phones.
Furthermore, people stay inside Mixi longer than in Facebook. On the average, Mixi users stay in the site for as long as four and a half hours, while in Facebook, visitors only stay for a little over half an hour.
Because Japan has a unique language and way of writing, the Japanese market is difficult to break into and conquer. Also, Japanese prefer to let their thoughts be known from behind an alias, which is a feature of Mixi.
However with the dramatic increase in Facebook users in Japan, Facebook might finally get into the Japanese community, if they focus their advertising efforts in that country next year.
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