The economics of mobile social networking in Japan

August 27th, 2009

Following on from my previous post on mobile in Japan – we get 3 new reports on Mobile Social Networking from Infinita.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flapjax_at_midnite/3371964379/sizes/m/

Anyone interested in learning about how to make money from Mobile Social Networking – you could do a lot worse than study Japan. In fact I am taking more clients there on another learning journey later this year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/84381936@N00/2327371236

I asked Christopher Billich who authored these reports, why they were of relevance to anyone wanting to understand mobile + commerce in a social network context? He said to me…

These new reports on the top mobile social networking services in Japan, which I think may be of interest to people/organizations in your network. Without a doubt, all three – mobagetown, GREE and mixi – are doing some incredibly cool things in terms of service design, strategy and business models that are highly relevant to social networking plays, advertisers/brands, agencies, carriers and mobile games studios/publishers trying to figure out the SNS equation on mobile anywhere.

These reports also correlate with the findings we made in Communities Dominate Brands, that in a Read / Write participatory culture, to win, businesses must adopt the model of the 4C’s: [1] Commerce, [2] Culture [3] Community [4] Connectivity

mobagetown Research Report (V2.0) – 206 pages
“Social Networking, Games and Avatars: The Incredible Success Story of Japan’s No. 1 Mobile Portal”

View a preview of the report on Mobagtown

mixi Mobile Research Report (V2.0) – 111 pages
“Going Mobile: Japan’s Most Successful Social Networking Service on the Big Small Screen”

View a preview of the report on Mixi

Mobile GREE Research Report (V1.0) – 180 pages
“Rags to Riches: GREE’s Transformation into a Top Player”

View a preview of the report on GREE

All three are priced at US$ 3,000 each for a company license; Infinita also distribute them as a bundle for US$ 6,750:

For more information