DoCoMo last to jump on mobile social networking bandwagon

Just the very next day after I wrote the post about DoCoMo's lack of mobile social network offering, as DoCoMo announced a partnership with Rakuten, the biggest online shopping portal in Japan. Besides the Internet auction services for mobile phones and PCs, the companies will also offer a social networking service (SNS). The service called Okutomo (which in translation from Japanese means Auction Friends) is scheduled for launch on November 20th.

While Okutomo will have all the features of regular SNS such as user profiles, blogging, comments, and avatars, the main focus of it is on the commercialization by tightly integrating the service with the mobile auction platform jointly offered by DoCoMo and Rakuten. Users or auction friends who get to know each through the auction process will be able to view each other profiles and products they are selling, which should encourage users to share information about particular products and purchase the items based on other users' reviews, not on product's mere description. Okutomo users will be also able to create tags for easy search and matching similar products and inviting auction friends to create groups based on similar interests. The newly created groups can even limit the auction to be held within the group members only. I can envision Japanese otaku (refers to an obsessive fan of any one particular hobby) creating special interest groups and trading their collectibles along with social networking.

Mobile Suica signs up 120,000 train commuters

According to Japan's train operator JR East, the subscriber base of Mobile Suica service reached 120,000 train commuters at the end of September. Launched in January 2006, Mobile Suica allows Tokyo commuters to board trains by waving their phones over a sensor in turnstiles. In addition to mobiles, JR East sells Suica contactless cards, which are also good for making small purchases at participating stores near train stations. The total number of issued Suica cards at the end of September was reported to be about 17.75 million, among which 13.84 million cards were enabled for making purchases. The popularity of Suica ticketing and e-money service is rapidly spreading across the region, recruiting more merchants and becoming compatible with other e-money services such as Edy and iD that are offered on cell phones as well. At the end of September, there were 9,000 participating points of sale that were accepting payments through Suica.
Related post: Mobile Suica: 20,000 subscribers in one week

G-Guide hits 10 million milestone

The TV programming guide for mobiles, G-Guide announced a new milestone – its subscriber base reached 10 million users. In March, Japan’s Cellphone Edge reported 5 million subscribers for G-Guide Mobile service. G-Guide Mobile is a Java application loaded onto the majority of DoCoMo's phones. The guide provides airing schedule of all major Japanese TV channels and serves as a remote interface for scheduling the TV program recordings on some DVD players with the DVR functionality. G-Guide also became available to Softbank customers from October this year. Since that, the subscribership rate jumped to achieve one million subscribers in one month totaling in 10 million subscribers at the end of October.

Mobile social networks are coming to Japan

Japan is experiencing the hype of mobile social networking. This week, MySpace and Softbank announced plans for a 50-50 joint venture to bring the popular Internet social networking site to Japan.

Next, on the wave of this news, another US company - Gemini Mobile Technologies - announced it would power 3D mobile communities of Softbank's service S! TOWN. The Gemini platform, called eXplo, will enable 3D chatting, shopping, and other S! TOWN community features via cell phones. Gemini also announced that its multimedia messaging software, the HyperScale Messaging Center, and its HyperScale core technology are the engines behind an additional new Softbank Mobile service, Arrange Mail.

On the domestic front, KDDI is about to launch EZ GREE mobile social network, the deployment of which is scheduled for November 17. While the subscription to EZ GREE is free, users will need to have a data plan with KDDI. EZ GREE is a mobile version of the GREE social network site that has been popular for some time in Japan. The mobile version will be linked with other services and applications from KDDI's portal such as EZ News Flash, au My Page, horoscopes and game scores or various test results. Users will also be able to decorate their profiles, messages and mobile diaries with pictures, smilies and frames.

Only NTT DoCoMo remains silent about its mobile social network plans. While it is not too late, they should snap a partnership deal with mixi - the most popular social network site in Japan in order to not be left behind. Once, they have already lost a leadership in mobile music services to KDDI au.