Japan’s KDDI Corporation recently announced a new investment fund worth 5 billion yen (or about $66 million), which will target upcoming startup companies in Japan, Asia, and the US, primarily in the mobile space. The fund will be managed by Japanese venture capital firm Global Brain, which has worked with domestic ISP and portal site Nifty, developing opportunities and partnerships for its portfolio ventures. The firm tells PO that it sees Singapore as a natural center for future activity around Asia, and in fact, it has already partnered with NUS ...
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![Japan’s Social Giants: Trends in User Numbers [CHART]](http://www.penn-olson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_5437-250x250.jpg)
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Feb 8 2012
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Japan’s Social Giants: Trends in User Numbers [CHART]
There have been a flurry of financial reports over the past week, giving us insight not only into whether or not companies are profiting, but also how they are growing – and in the case of GREE, DeNA, and Mixi, fighting for the the attention of users. I’d prefer not to compare their users directly, because after all two (GREE and DeNA) are mobile social gaming players, and Mixi is a social network . And while there is certainly some business overlap between the three, I’d like to just take ...
Feb 8 2012
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Venture Generation: The Latest Startup Incubator in Tokyo
J-Seed Ventures, a Japan-based startup fund, this morning announced Venture Generation, a 180 square-meter startup incubator located in Tokyo. The space is set up for fledgling startups — both local and foreign — to enjoy a co-working space at an affordable monthly rate. Some of the facilities you can expect are WiFi, workstations, office equipment, and also three conference rooms for meetings. More than 25 venture advisers have committed to support Venture Generation members on a voluntary basis. Two of those 25 are Michael Korver, co-founding partner of GVC, and Tetsuya ...
Feb 8 2012
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Japanese Animation Company Sues Hundreds of ‘One Piece’ Downloaders in One Bunch
I was curious to see over on AnimeNewsNetwork that Toei Animation had filed a complaint in District of Columbia district court (in September of last year) regarding copyright infringment of its popular One Piece series on peer-to-peer networks. What’s remarkable here is that the complaint is filed against 869 ‘John Does’ whom Toei asserts “worked in concert, via the internet … to reproduce and distribute unlawful, digital copies.” The suit refers to them as a “filesharing swarm,” and according to ANN’s report, Toei has also filed a motion to obtain ...
Feb 7 2012
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CyberAgent Ventures Invests in Vietnamese Music Service
CyberAgent Ventures, a subsidiary of Japan’s CyberAgent, recently announced investment in Vietnam-based NCT Corporation. That company operates nhaccuatui.com, which is one of the country’s biggest music websites, seeing about 10 million users each month. The financial details of the investment were not disclosed. According to the announcement, CyberAgent anticipates that the service will continue to grow, and it hopes to create “some new businesses in cooperation with NCT by taking advantage of its existing huge traffic.” CyberAgent’s investment arm has already invested in seven tech companies in Vietnam to date, including ...
Feb 7 2012
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As Japan Uses Bloggers For Tourism Bump, Numbers Show Korea and China are Key
A Kyodo report today gives a brief update on the Japan Foreign Ministry’s invitation to overseas bloggers to come see the parts of the country affected by the earthquake and tsunami last year. Of course the hope is that these bloggers will spread a little good news and reassurance about the country so as to help the tourist industry rebound after a very tough 2011. One of the writers mentioned in the report is Louisa Liu Chu, who (from what I gather) is a food blogger for WBEZ Chicago . ...
Feb 7 2012
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FC2 Continues to Expand Web Services to Big Markets
We’ve recently told you about Nevada-based web services company FC2, which offers what could be the top blogging service in Japan , as well as a popular video service which just branched out to Indonesia. But the company has its eyes set on other big markets as well, a company representative tells us. Its LiveChat service (at livechat.fc2.com) is being released in multiple languages, including Indonesian, Korean, and Traditional Chinese. We’re told a China release is being contemplated as well. Like FC2’s video service, FC2 Live Chat also has a prominently ...
Feb 2 2012
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Coffee Chat: Social Gaming Startups in Southeast Asia, the DeNA Perspective [LIVEBLOG]
This post is a part of our coverage of Startups in Asia (Singapore), Penn Olson’s first tech conference. Our full coverage of the event can be found here, for our RSS feed, click here. Summary Tetsuya Mori (pictured above on the left), managing director at DeNA Asia (and ex-VC at Mitsubishi UFJ Capital) joins us to give us his insights on the social gaming market in Southeast Asia. He's based here in Singapore, not his native Japan, leading his company's outreach across the continent. Liveblog #13:55: And after some closing quips, the coffee chat is over. Thank ...
Feb 1 2012
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Kazuo Hirai Takes Over as Sony President and CEO
In a move that was much anticipated over the past few weeks in the tech industry, Sony (NYSE:SNE) has finally announced the appointment of Kazuo Hirai as president and CEO of the company. He replaces the outgoing CEO Howard Stringer, will continue as chairman until he moves on to become chairman of the board. It was just a few weeks ago that rumors of this appointment were swirling, prompting a company spokesperson to deny that the move had been made at that time. Hirai graduates from heading up the consumer ...
Feb 1 2012
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Which are the Top Twitter Nations?
We recently took a look at Eric Fischer’s Twitter visualization which showed that Asia is a very chatty region when it comes to microblogging, particularly Indonesia. Now French company Semiotics has examined some data as well in order to give us an alternative view of how the world Tweets . The top 20 countries, in terms of the number of Twitter accounts, are listed below in the following chart. Not surprisingly, the US has by far the most user accounts with 107.7 million. Brazil is number two, with Japan just behind ...
Feb 1 2012
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Wantedly: Japan’s Trust-based Social Recruiting Site Officially Debuts
On Monday, a Tokyo-based tech startup called Wanted officially released its social recruiting platform Wantedly. The service was developed by ex-FBer Akiko Naka and her buddy Gaku Hagiwara, and it allows employers to find potential employees by showing them how they would work in the company with possible future colleagues. We had a chance to interview the startup's co-founder and CEO Naka and asked her a little bit more about the service, as well as some of the details behind it. Wantedly originally launched as a platform to find like-minded co-workers for projects. Did ...
Jan 31 2012
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Driven by Ameba, CyberAgent Continues to Grow
We’ve written much about Japanese internet entertainment company CyberAgent (TYO:4751) over the past year, ranging from its many game offerings for smartphones and social platforms, to its ventures abroad setting up offices in Taiwan and Jakarta, to helping international smartphone developers make inroads in Japan. The company recently announced its first quarter results, which saw net income up by nearly 40 percent. CyberAgent just published an online video presentation with slides about its first quarter, and I thought I’d share some highlights here. One aspect of the CyberAgent’s business which we ...
![Japan’s Social Giants: Trends in User Numbers [CHART]](http://www.penn-olson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_5437-80x80.jpg)
Japan’s Social Giants: Trends in User Numbers [CHART]
Feb 8, 2012
Cazbak Partners With Giant E-commerce Sites, Gives Savings to Consumers in India
Feb 8, 2012
Perx’s ‘Chop Mob’ Helps Coffee Bean Increase 50% in Transaction
Feb 8, 2012
CyberAgent Ventures Invests in Vietnamese Music Service
Feb 7, 2012
DropMySite.com Backups Your Website, Email, and Database in the Cloud
Feb 8, 2012