Twitter sees gold in Japan…launches Japanese mobile site

Since the U.S. can officially be claimed “conquered”, Twitter is setting it’s sites on a larger, more global scale. Even though other U.S. based social networking giants such as Facebook and MySpace have failed to gain any real following in the east, Twitter is pushing onward in hopes it can do something different. Part of that “different” approach is new measures that aren’t employed inside the U.S. For example, banner ads can be seen on the mobile Japanese version of Twitter. Such ads are still unseen here in states. Whatever Twitter is doing appears to be working as January – June alone saw user numbers rise to 783,000! Sure it pales in comparison to the millions upon millions of U.S. users, but, Twitter was born here. They aren’t just expanding outside of the company however as recent months have even seen the hiring of a Japan country manager and several other tools to further their reach into the distant land.

Future growth should be rather unhampered as Japan’s largest social networking site, Mixi, is more of a full fledged Facebook-type experience, not a short, 140 character messaging service like Twitter. It will be interesting to see if Twitter can sustain the early growth they’ve enjoyed so far as well as what new things they will try. Just maybe, some of those new treats will creep back over to us.

Cellular-News > AP News

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