4 ms·

Those are all good points, but they don't say much regarding nicknames vs. real names, they say that the Facebook concept itself may not work very well in Japan

Those are all good points, but they don't say much regarding nicknames vs. real names, they say that the Facebook concept itself may not work very well in Japan, real names or no. :-) The only thing that touches on real names is unwanted friend invites, since real names makes it easier for people to find you and possibly try to friend you. I don't know if that's gonna be a dealbreaker though, I think people can overcome that with the limited friend profiles? Anyway, the article tries to predict the failure of Facebook in Japan on the grounds of it not being like all previous virtual communities, i.e. about groups of people already online making new circles of friendship. But Facebook was never such a virtual community, it was always about modelling your real-life social network, about hooking up online with people you were already friends with, not the other way around. And having real names is a crucial part of that. Facebook may very well fail in Japan because of different privacy expectations, but changing it to make it more similar to existing community products is pretty bad advice.

ramchip 17y ago
Just in case that wasn't clear: there is already a japanese version of Facebook, and many (probably most) people have heard of it at some points, but in my experience the only people who actually register are people learning foreign languages or living outside Japan. Mixi can be used to meet new people, but most of the people I know only use it to communicate with their real-life friends, and using nicknames isn't a showstopper. Friend on mixi is usually closer than friend on Facebook. Photo sharing isn't very popular (they usually post food...) but the 'diary' (a blog with comments essentially) is. It's possible to look for someone by name and/or location on mixi, not all people write their full name but they'll tell you what to look for otherwise.

ramchip 17y ago

Just in case that wasn't clear: there is already a japanese version of Facebook, and many (probably most) people have heard of it at some points, but in my experience the only people who actually register are people learning foreign languages or living outside Japan. Mixi can be used to meet new people, but most of the people I know only use it to communicate with their real-life friends, and using nicknames isn't a showstopper. Friend on mixi is usually closer than friend on Facebook. Photo sharing isn't very popular (they usually post food...) but the 'diary' (a blog with comments essentially) is. It's possible to look for someone by name and/or location on mixi, not all people write their full name but they'll tell you what to look for otherwise.