Facebook is nowhere in Japan

I found an interesting article about the relationship between Facebook and Japanese people.
Japanese tend not to use Facebook.
Do you know why?
According to the article, Japanese don't want to use real names.
Instead, they use nicknames in Japanese social networks such as Mixi and Gree.
Japanese are wary of using real names on the Internet.

I can agree with this article.
Many Japanese don't want to show their private life, even names, to the public.
That's why Facebook is not so popular in Japan.
However, after the great hit of "Social Network," I think many Japanese started to create Facebook account.
But I can say that one of the reasons they started creating an account is Japanese people like popular things.
Personally, I like Facebook better than Japanese social networks, so I hope Facebook will be familiarized to Japanese.
By the way, I also think that when I use Facebook, I feel like I am forced to use English...so do my friends.
I don't know why, but even if Facebook has become world wide SNS, we think it is American, which makes us use English.

Here's an article, "Facebook Is Nowhere In Japan."

Oh, I forgot to tell you.
Please don't think that these 3 people showed in this article are normal Japanese!
They are not that normal for us, either!!
They are just prominent..
Appearance of most Japanese like me or same as American people! :) LOL

 

Thank God GOOGLE

Thank you Google, you saved my roommate!

She was doing her homework for Accounting class.
The homework was about to write a memo, but she didn't know what "CC" is.
And she was really upset because she can't go forward if she doesn't know it.
So...what she did was.....

Google it!

Then, Google showed the answer to her question.
To be accurate, Google showed the Yahoo! Answers about "cc."
Isn't it weird?
It's weird for me because Google showed Yahoo! in the first result of that page.
In my image, Google and Yahoo! are separate things.

But anyway, Google saved my roommate.
I appreciate that! :)

Public Relations and New Media

Today, I went to listen to the presentation about "Public Relations and New Media."

What is Public Relations (PR)?
The definition is: A systematic effort to alter public perceptions of or on behalf of a client through the strategic use of existing media outlets.
And what PR do is: inform, persuade, and integrate.

One thing, interested for me was about the PR in Times Square.
The company "Charmin" created public bathroom store there.
Look at this video on Youtube.
Huge public bathroom is in the center of New York City!
This video is public relations. (Is this way of saying correct?)

However, to be honest, I can't distinguish between public relations and advertising.They seems the same for me....

I think I need to review the presentation, but it was interesting moment for me.

Blog Prompt #2

Google...in the developed countries, everyone knows this word even if they don't have connections to the Internet. From my point of view, although Google has a strong power and is likely to be omnipresent, Google.co.jp is just one of many search engines.
One of the reasons why I think this way is that Google.co.jp is not so developed in Japan as the way in the United States. I mean, when I search about Japanese things, Google.co.jp tends not to show what I want to know. Yahoo! JAPAN is better for me but many Japanse started using Google.co.jp instead of Yahoo! JAPAN and other search engines. Furthermore, on July 27th 2010, Yahoo! JAPAN announced that it made an alliance with Google about the seach engine. It doesn't come true yet, but near future, Yahoo! JAPAN and Google would be the one strongest search engine in Japan.

Of course, when I look up American things or things written in English, I definietly use Google.com. Now, I came up with one question. I like Japanese Yahoo!, but why don't I use American Yahoo! as the search engine for American things? I don't know why..but in my mind, the image "the United States = search engines= Google" has already formed.

Blog Prompt #1

I read the interview of Megan Reardon, who is famous for crafting. She started blogging in 2001. She says she does not maintain her blog because she is lazy. However, when I saw her weblog, "Not Martha," I thought it was well organized.

She published her books about knitting and crafting after she started blogging, which means the weblog has a great influence on her. In Japan, there are many chefs that run weblogs and publish the cooking books. These books are based on the recipes on the weblogs. When I think of that, I slightly thought that we no longer need to buy books because these informations are on the web. Someday, books may dissapear and we may get every informations from the weblogs. This is scary for me because the disappearance of the books means one of our important cultures will not come down to our posterity.

What do you think about the relation between the books and the weblogs?

First Post

Hey everyone! I just started blogging!

This is my first link! It's my country's famous website!