A recent study by Synovate measured the pervasiveness and impact of social networks (SNS) around the world. Most of the findings in regards to Japan weren’t necessarily surprising: penetration and awareness of SNS services in Japan are among the highest in the world (71% have heard of social networking, and 40% of Japanese use some kind of SNS service), and furthermore, most surveyed agree that getting out and meeting people in the "real world" is preferable to socialization that takes places in front of a computer. Drill down deeper into the study, however, and a few of the findings from the study highlight key themes that make the Japanese definition of social networking unique. Most strikingly, out of all countries in the study, Japan has the highest incident of a country losing interest in the medium (55% have lost interest).

Some of Synovate’s explanations for this decline in interest include the framing of SNS as a "fad." An initial tidal wave of interest in social networks came to Japan with the launch of Mixi. At the time, many were attracted to the service due solely to its popularity, so they did not ever have a real interest in the functions of the medium. Also, most "friends" on Mixi are people who they interact with in the real world, meaning that the majority of the users could easily rely on other methods to communicate and keep in touch.

Understanding social networking in Japan is relatively simple. There is only one dominant player that sets the bar for the industry in Japan: Mixi, with over 19 million registered users and a fairly robust, but closed platform that includes standard social networking fare, diaries, photos, music, reviews, groups, communities, and "friend to friend" commenting. The next largest SNS platforms are from Mobage Town and Gree, which only boast 10 million and 7 million registered users, respectively, but have well-defined user niches. Both Gree and Mobage-Town’s user base is largely mobile; Gree gets a large number from their tie-in with mobile carrier AU, and the majority of Mobage Town’s users are high-school students (Mobage Town is so cheeky about its mobile roots that the "PC Site" for it is simply an embedded mobile browser). Service offerings across the three platforms are rooted in social networking fundamentals (friend-ing, blog/diary writing, comments) but have developed different sets of tools and content to appeal to their distinct audiences (i.e., Gree offers free games as an enticement to potential users, while Mobage Town has lined up content that appeals to younger users like avatars, a place to create your own "keitai novel," and a "shitumon hiroba" — "Question Court" — that functions like Yahoo Answers for mobile Japanese high school students).

Despite these relatively robust numbers and Mixi’s one-time high cultural import, the fact that users have already begun to lose interest in the medium appears to point to more than simply a fad hitting a wall. The unique characteristics of Japan "Web 2.0" provide context for the problems that the SNS medium in faces in general, and additionally, hints at potential things that could change to make it easier to for people to fall back in love with the medium again.

Reason #1 - The Internet and Anonymity

Inherently, the fact that (hardly) anyone posts their real name or face on Mixi, Gree, or Mobage Town (not to mention blogs and other web 2.0 media) kind of flies in the face of the basic "social network" concept. After all, the whole idea behind a SNS is to create connections with people who share common interests; regardless of culture, a certain amount of commitment and transparency is needed to facilitate this kind of interaction. As long as the majority of people on Mixi, Mobage Town, and Gree continue to mask their identities from each other, it will be harder for SNS to grow cheaply and organically. Mixi-tsukare — Mixi-exhaustion — is a good example of this; if you want to expand your network on Mixi, the fact that no one uses their real names or faces means it requires a lot effort to find friends on the service. Mixi and its brethren do allow users to interact and mingle through groups, and while that’s a good way to meet people, the fact that everyone in these groups is anonymous discourages the "hey, I wonder what happened to so and so from high school" type of organic growth that is the bread and butter of most global SNS platforms.

Reason #2 - SNS roots and segments

Mixi, Gree, and Mobagetown are, for the most part, exercises in building SNS not from a specific segment (i.e., MySpace and music, Facebook and college campuses) but from a wide demographic — online or mobile Japanese. Within that, certain groups have obtained the critical mass necessary for social networks to proliferate. For example, housewives, otaku, and college students are heavy users of Mixi, while Mobage Town has been successful in registering high school students for the service. For those who don’t belong to those segments, however, the incentive of joining the network just isn’t there, which is likely contributes to the dampening of interest in the medium among the public in general.

Reason #3 - Platform

As we’ve theorized before, the structure of media in Japan, even with the relative freedom allowed by Web 2.0 technologies, is still very structured and organized. Those who want to assume some kind of market positioning and control in Japan find themselves eventually drifting towards the industry leader’s business model instead of trying to innovating a new way of making money. Rather than define themselves as hubs for social interaction on the web, most of the business models and content developed recently by these sites has started to pull them closer to the ecosystems occupied by portal sites such Yahoo! Japan, Nikkei, or in the case of Mobage Town and Gree, a myriad of gaming sites. While this may contribute to a healthy business model for the business operating the service and some interesting offerings to advertisers, such as crowdsourcing product development, it’s unclear how this business model contributes to making SNS appealing for those who aren’t involved already, or need to find a reason to do more of it.

So while it’s difficult to pin the lack of interest in Japan of social networks on one thing in particular, the cultural and structural imperatives of the medium seem to hint at deeper problems in expanding the medium beyond its current user base. Ultimately, the biggest reason behind SNS fatigue in Japan just might that Mixi, Gree and Mobage-town don’t effectively expand the means of communicating with a group of friend the way that other social networks around the world do. They’re nice services, wrapped up in Web 2.0 bells and whistles, but the heart and the engine behind them still seems a bit stuck in Web 1.0 (albiet with excellent mobile presences) communication imperatives.