Social networking in Japan

Mixi.jp is the oldest and hottest site on Japan's blossoming social-networking scene. Having launched in February '04, its population has quintupled in the past year, and it's now the country's No. 3 site after Yahoo! Japan and Rakuten, Crossroads.com reports. But social networking's takeoff has been relatively slow in Japan, partly because phone texting is "the social standard for social communication among Japanese teenagers" and Web-based socializing has only recently been accessible by phone, and partly because of Japanese users' penchant for privacy. "An estimated 3.2 million people walk through Shinjuku station every day, but the chances of them interacting with anyone other than a travel companion are slim to none. Respect for personal space is of paramount importance in busy Tokyo…. In many ways, Japanese prefer interaction at a safe distance. This is, after all, a country where pickup lines are more often subtly typed into cell phone message windows than spoken face-to-face." The big thing in Japan, now, is social networking by interest community, either in private or narrow-interest groups on general social networks or in niche networks. You can learn a lot more about Mixi, including screenshots, at Mashable.com, with further insights into cultural differences in social networking at CNET.