SNS
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Nowadays there’s a social networking system (SNS) for just about anything. In Japan, aside from the big ones like Facebook and Twitter, the LINE messaging service (and life-LINE service) and Niconico Douga are also extremely popular ways to talk with your friends – both on and offline – about stuff you love.
And that’s just scratching the surface. There’s plenty more, based around every imaginable interest. In fact, pretty much the only kind of SNS that doesn’t exist is one based around posting and sharing erotic anime-style drawings of men loving on each other.
…until now. Meet Horne.
Whoops, guess I better whip out my smartphone and upload a picture of my Green Tea Frappuccino to Twitter, because I just happen to be writing this post at Starbucks. Apparently, the classic “at Starbucks now” picture is one of the most commonly seen types of photos on social media sites, and I’d hate to be missing out.
In fact, a concise at-a-glance chart of trivial photos that (Japanese) girls frequently upload to their SNS accounts has recently been making the rounds on the Japanese internet. We were familiar with every single one of them–how about you?
The Sochi Olympics didn’t quite turn out how Russian figure skater Yulia Lipnitskaya had hoped. After losing out to her Russian teammate and placing 5th overall in the ladies competition, you can bet that this talented 15-year-old will be back with a vengeance for the 2018 Winter Games.
But despite her relative inexperience on the international stage, she has already made quite a name for herself across the world with her fierce determination, signature spin, and blunt remarks. Over the past several weeks she’s also amassed quite the following of Japanese fans. One piece of art made by a Japanese fan even caught the attention of none other than the skater herself! Read on to see the fan drawing that Yulia posted on her personal social networking site.
Like them or loathe them, social networking services, or SNS for short, have become an integral part of our daily lives and society as a whole. While Facebook, Twitter and Naver Corporation’s Line offer very different experiences, most users will agree that without them, they’d feel lost, or at least have a sudden and unexpected amount of free time on their hands.
Recently, a survey was conducted in Japan which asked respondents about the services they used, asking them which they turned to most often, which they were most careful about using and sharing information on, and which they’d hate to be without. Join us for a peek at the results after the jump.
For anyone who loves gaming but often gets told by those around them to put their efforts into something more productive, we here at RocketNews24 have some great news. It comes in the form of a job post searching for someone to play video games for three months that carries a million yen (US$10,000) reward. Gaming all day only to be paid a salary at the end of it, is for many, the stuff dreams are made of. But believe it or not, this is a real job posting that is valid right now in Japan.
With over a billion registered users worldwide, Facebook is the king of online social networking services. In Japan, however, there are signs that its dominance is starting to crumble.
Facebook launched a Japanese version of its website in 2008. Initially, the platform experienced sluggish user growth as it struggled to compete with already established Japanese SNS sites produced by the likes of mixi, Mobage, and GREE. However, after well-known companies in Japan began to use Facebook as a marketing tool, it caught on with the general public and by the end of 2012 had 17.12 million users.
A mere five months later, however, that number has dropped to 13.78 million, a 19.5 percent drop in less than half a year.







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