Creating unique travel experiences with Meetrip will now be a little easier, thanks to the release of 12 new Android apps. The apps were released today in cities across Asia, in the countries of Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan.

Meetrip is a travel sharing service that matches up travelers and local guides. It launched this year on September 18 in Tokyo and Taipei, and shortly after that it expanded to 10 more cities. The concept of bringing a unique travel experience to every traveler has been well-received, and in less than three months, more than 1,000 activities have been registered on Meetrip.

Meetrip is a C2C market place for travel, matching sellers (local guides) and buyers (travelers). This expansion to 10 more Asian cities in November was intended to attract sellers and apparently the startup succeeded in that goal as it was able to bring in more than 1,000 new sellers.

What’s the strategy behind releasing 12 Android apps at once? There is a distinct user behavior among travelers to search for apps before traveling by using the name of a city such as “Bangkok travel.” Such travelers tend to be tech savvy and have a prefererence for experiencing local culture — and this is exactly Meetrip’s target user.

Meetrip is a product by Duckdive, a company located in Tokyo. Its next move is to release an iPhone app.

Some of our readers may recall reading our past feature about a travel sharing service Meetrip. It bills itself as a ‘travel sharing’ service that matches up travelers and local guides. Thus far it has been well received by users, as the Japanese startup has just announced its expansion to more major cities around Asia.

Those cities include Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, and Vietnam. Meetrip was initially launched in Tokyo two months ago, and subsequently opened to users in Taipei back on September 18. Since it’s launch, there have been over 200 activities (or tours) created on the site.

Here’s a quote from a Japanese guide in Tokyo who has been using Meetrip to connect with visiting travelers:

Up until now, some of the people I’ve met through being a local guide on Meetrip are a Turkish accountant, a Canadian Kindergarden teacher, and a guy who works for a broadcasting channel in Hungary. I’ve taken them to Kaiten-zushi, a local bar at Shinjuku, and karaoke. It was such an exciting experience! They all looking for the same thing in their trips — something that’s not in the guidebooks.

Meetrip plans to further expand it’s product, aiming for 1,000 new cities next time around. The service was co-founded by Takashi Kiyama, who is himself a frequent and enthusiastic traveler.

While traveling can be lots of fun, some aspects of it can be quite mundane. Buying guide books and looking up “popular restaurants” using Google – we all end up going to the same places. The rise of Airbnb is a clear sign that people are looking for more in their trips. And a startup from Japan plans to tackle this travel sharing market with a new product called Meetrip.

Meetrip is a smartphone app (pictured below) that connects local users (or guides) with travelers. After signing up using Facebook credentials, local guides can quickly and easily create their own tour plans. For example, a three-hour tour to explore an old town not known to tourists, or a long lunch hour to enjoy the best hot noodles in town. Travelers can find interesting tours and sign up for them. By communicating back and forth with the guide, together you can come up with a perfect tour just for you. The details of the tour including the price can be revised afterwards, leaving space for adjustments.

The idea of Meetrip came from co-founder Takashi Kiyama who is a frequent traveler. Of all the trips he has ever taken, he explains that the ones that he remembers the most are those where he met someone local and communicated with them. And that’s why Meetrip focuses on people rather than plans. The team founded the company in June 2011, and has been working on the product for four months. They released a prototype in Taipei, Taiwan, and conducted beta user interviews to enhance the user experience.

The motivation for locals to use Meetrip can be many things, including interacting with travelers from distant places, speaking/practicing foreign languages, or explaining a special place in your area to travelers. These are the initial reasons why locals begin using the app; but with time, Meetrip can become a significant source of income for them. For this reason, the team is focused on bringing their travel product to Asian countries first. Meetrip can be used in Tokyo and Taipei for now, but there are plans to expand to Seoul, Jakarta, and Bangkok within the next few months. The startup’s goal is to release Meetrip in more than 10 countries cities this year.

The company behind Meetrip is Duckdive. The other co-founder is Nobuhiro Ariyasu. As a university student, he founded and sold his first company to Net Age Group. His second startup was a C2C market place named Cyta.jp. The CTO of Duckdive is Shinya Kasatani, who while working as CTO for another company released a very popular iPhone app called Pocket Guitar. The paid app has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times. They are all graduates of Keio university.

When launching a website, everyone knows that it’s critical to consider search SEO. But what about for smartphone apps? How discoverable is your app? AppGrooves claims to have a solution for this problem in its new SearchMan service. Readers may recall that we wrote about the company’s previous version of the product, AppSEO, back in February.

AppGrooves is led by its Japanese co-founder Naoki Shibata, and the startup currently resides at 500Startups. We got in touch with him to find out how this differs from the previous AppSEO initiative:

With AppSEO, we gathered & analyzed data only for the apps that belonged to our users. This was a small percentage of the entire AppStore because we were new. Based on initial positive user feedback, we got more ambitious. We realized that if we are serious about enabling search and discoverability of the best mobile apps, we had to do more. So now, we gather ranking data for search, directory, and user ratings on the whole market.That’s 600,000 apps x 1m keywords x 2 devices x 3 stores every day (UK launching soon).

Naoki adds that with this upgrade, they correspondingly upgraded their branding to ‘SearchMan,’ which he describes as a powerful data-driven superhero.

They’ve put together some recommended best practices in the slide below. So if you think your app could be doing better in the SEO department, you might want to give this a look.

The website is quite simple. You can enter the name and email address of a person with signs of depression. The person with symptoms of depression will be notified by email that a friend is concerned. The email comes with a general survey about depression and tips about how to get better. By answering the survey the individual finds out whether they really are depressed or not.

Utsuppo was created by U2plus, a medical community for battling depression. The founder went through depression himself in the past, leading to his current efforts to help and support people with similar problems. He sees it as essential that as a society, we not miss the first signs of depression in those around us. And this is exactly what Utsuppo aims to do.

The website was created in just a week with help of Liverty, a group of people with a mission to develop as many creative web service and projects as possible. The group is lead by a serial entrepreneur in Tokyo, Kazuma Ieiri. The whole project of Utsuppo started when the founder of U2plus pitched his idea to Mr. Ieiri, who is now an investor as well.

Users can create a Vites account using their Facebook credentials. Once you’re done, you can start listing any service that you can provide, such as giving a morning wake-up call, taking a picture of something, trying out an app, giving fashion advice, or anything else you can think of within reason. Every task on Vites is sold for 5 dollars, with no exception. If you come across something interesting, you can press the outsource button. Vites charges a one dollar service fee for every transaction. The worker signals the completion of a task by pressing a button, and the fee will be subsequently transferred to their PayPal account.

Some of the popular services on the site so far include drawing a Twitter icon, replacing a Twitter icon with an ad for 24 hrs, giving UI/UX advice, finding the perfect book, and more. 

There is also a crazy one, as one guy wants 5 dollars to wake himself up early for one week. He is not providing anything in return, his just forcing himself to get up early in exchange for 5 dollars. Anything goes, I guess. It says on the project page that he has already received 9 orders. Maybe it’s his boss?!

User can browse using the category section in the right sidebar. Categories so far include illustration, photography, design, movies, music, and beauty.

Indeed the concept of Vites is nothing new, but they have done a good job of simplifying the structure. Vites is planned to be released in  English, Thai, Indonesian, so users who speak those languages can look forward to that. They’re currently working on an iPhone app and Android app as well.

Vites is a work by blue note co. Ltd., located in Tokyo, Shibuya.

The strength of Mixi is its real life social graph that extends over 25 million users as of September 2011. According to Mixi, people in their 20s account for about 50 percent of its total users. That breaks down to 29.3 percent for users age 20-24, and 22.1 percent for users ages between 25-29 (see interactive chart below). Most active users access Mixi from mobile which accounts for a whopping 80 percent of the total traffic.

DeNa (TYO:2432) is no stranger to online shopping, as it operates a huge shopping and auction website called bidders. It sells over 8 million items ranging from fashion, cosmetics to gourmet. Bidders is available for featured phones and PCs, and is also optimized for smartphone as well. It allows users to shop using points and coins collected from the gaming platform Mobage.

Even with the rise of Facebook and Twitter, when it comes to friendships based on real-life relationships in Japan, Mixi is still without a doubt THE social network. It is having difficulty with retention of users due to new and more open competitors though. But for younger generations, it is still a place where they exchange messages everyday with friends.

The biggest annual campaign thrown by Mixi is its “mixi christmas” campaign, where users ring each others Christmas bells to earn points which allow them to decorate their Christmas stockings and win presents. The 2010 campaign gathered more than a million mixi users within 58 hours of release, and the total number of users surpassed 3 million within 25 days. But one challenge for mixi is the lack of buying experience by the users, who are not used to spending money on the site. Hopefully this new partnership with DeNA will help to solve this issue.

Planned for late March, the two companies will open an online mall within Mixi. Prior to it’s release, big companies such as Lawson HMV entertainment, Sanrio (famous for Hello Kitty), and Cecil McBee (a very popular apparel brand that can be found in 109 stores in Shibuya) have already signed up to join the mall.

Hatsune Miku, the popular vocaloid character from Japan, is leading an online vote titled Singers You’d Like to Perform at the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremonies over on TheTopTens.com. The poll is also getting the attention of many here in Japan, including the very popular Jcast website.

Second in the ranking is Korean male idol group Super Junior. Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber are ranked seventh and eighth respectively.

Hatsune Miku’s most devoted fans are most likely to be heavy online users though, which would help to explain the current poll results. But the poll is remarkable nonetheless because the British website is in English, showing that Hatsune Miku is indeed a global online phenomenon. Here are a few of the comments [1] that people are leaving about the virtual superstar:

I think she could really show the world what the technology can do day by day. It would be so interesting of see ^^ She is the world’s virtual diva, and the world has to know it.

Miku is not only a virtual singer, but also a current witness of the development of modern science and technology… Miku’s appearance in London Olympics Opening Ceremonies will be a significant symbol of the world’s Information Ages’ coming and come into people’s lives.

A lot of people don’t like Hatsune Miku because she isn’t a real human, and that can’t be denied. But it’s important to realize that behind each of her songs is a human making the instrumentals, writing the lyrics (most of which are MUCH deeper than today’s music), and doing the artwork. Miku’s voice, like all automated voices will never be as good as a really talented singer, but there is so much more to her than just her voice. This software has brought together people from all over the world in one Vocaloid genre of music composed of many smaller genres.

Hatsune Miku was created by Crypton Future Media located in Sapporo, Japan. Its sound collaboration desktop music software using Vocaloid2(developed by YAMAHA), allows users to compose melodies and lyrics to create vocals and chorus for the character Hatsune Miku. The way that she brings together people online is certainly an example of the same global spirit that the Olympics intends to share.

There are some key differences we see about the newborn Grow, one being its website design. User can see the archive of all contents that they ‘Growed’ (Grew?) in a timeline format. By following other users on Grow, you’ll see what kinds of content people feel is worth paying for. So it  can be used as a highly curated information website too.

I have Grow button placed on my personal blog TechDoll, and I have received 7 Grow points so far. Until now these points were just applause for my content because I couldn’t do anything with it. But now, Grow points can be exchanged to Amazon gift certificates. For now, for every 10 points, publisher receives 600 yen worth of Amazon gift certificate. At present this feature is limited to publishers in Japan.

To see how Grow works, please see the image below. Publishers can place the Grow button on their website, and users who want to thank those publishers can create an account on Grow and use it to reward them. If you run into an inspiring article with a Grow button, let the author know by pushing it to leave a tip.

The team is planning to officially release the platform in English this March. They are working on preparing more options for exchanging Grow points. Outside Japan, it may be transferred to your Paypal account or may even be withdrawn as money. If you have any suggestions, please let us know!

It was pre-launched [1] in late December, and since then it has attracted 8,500 registered users and there have been over 60,000 cosplay pictures submitted.

Currently in a beta phase, WorldCosplay is a sister site to Japan’s most popular cosplay community “Cure,” which has been active since 2001. As cosplay became a phenomenon not just amongst Japanese but all around the world, Cure opened an English website back in 2008.  The number of English-speaking registered users has exceeded 20,000, leading to the release of WorldCosplay.

User can create a WorldCosplay account using their Facebook or Twitter credentials. A user’s ranking is generated by the evaluation of submitted photos, motivating cosplayers to submit high quality photos. There are several ranking criteria such as User Ranking, Character Ranking, Title Ranking, and Tag Ranking. Not surprisingly, the most popular character on WorldCosplay is “Hatsune Miku” (featured in the most recent Google Chrome TV commercial in Japan).

So if you happen to be one of the many cosplayers out there, please check out WorldCosplay and let us know what you think!

This article about Sumally was written for WIRED Japan, and I had the opportunity to translate it to English. Sumally has been covered before on PO, so consider this an update of sorts to the previous article. Sumally is an encyclopedia of all products. People can Want or Have any product that they come across online and archive them in a single unified format. The total number of Wants and Haves on Sumally has exceeded one million, and the number of items archived has surpassed 200,000.

Here is the article below, with comments from me indicated by italics.

Sumally: The Vision and Processes Behind the New Social Platform for Connecting People and Products [In-depth Interview]

Sumally, the new online service where Tokyo’s top creative talent are sharing their Wants and Haves, started from a desire to create an all-encompassing online encyclopedia of products. Here is what the four leading members of this exciting new service have to say.

Sumally is a new social networking service aiming to become the “Encyclopedia of Products.” Kensuke Yamamoto, the CEO of Sumally, left his position as a magazine editor to become an entrepreneur and to pursue his vision of creating a place where users can catalog every product they ever wanted or had. He was joined by well-known web designer Yugo Nakamura, and together with Nakamura’s employees, design director Hideki Oowa and software engineer Keita Kitamura, they are working hard to create an online experience that will be successful at an international level. As the team prepares to release the next milestone for their service, which will allow users to buy and sell products on the site, our WIRED editorial team sat down with the Sumally team to share and discuss their ideas, hoping to find out how Sumally will help shape the technology driven future.

The entire interview lasted more than an hour, split between serious discussions about Sumally’s vision, hardships the team endured, creative solutions to get around them, and plenty of laughter.

Original article on Wired Japan

Kensuke Yamamoto (left center, see Wired photo)
President and CEO of Sumally. Graduated from Hitotsubashi University. After starting his career at Dentsu Inc., Mr. Yamamoto joined Conde Nast Publications Japan as an editor for GQ JAPAN. Resigned in September of 2009 to found Sumally in April, 2010.

Yugo Nakamura (right)
CEO and Designer of tha*
. Web designer, interface designer, and screen image director. Graduated University of Tokyo graduate school with a degree in engineering. Associate professor at Tama Art University. Became involved in interactive design in 1998, and founded design studio tha ltd. in 2004 to direct, design, and develop websites as well as video art. Won the grand prize at Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, and has received the Tokyo Interactive Award, the TDC Award, and the Mainichi Design Award.

Hideki Oowa (right center)
Design Director for tha*. 
Born in Tokyo 1972. Received a BFA degree in the United States. Participated in design projects of all sizes in various locations, including San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London, and Sydney. Returned to Japan in 2002, working at Business Architects, as well as a freelance web director. Went back to the United States to become senior art director at Method and AKQA. Became design director for Yugo Nakamura’s design studio “tha ltd.” in November, 2010.

Keita Kitamura (left)
Programmer and Technical Director for tha*. Born in 1983, Kitamura dropped out of high school, and started working at Business Architects, Inc. After studying abroad, he joined design studio “tha ltd.” as a founding member in 2004. Built an image bookmark service called “FFFFOUND!” in 2007, which remains very popular among designers all over the world. Won awards for Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo Interactive Award, and ARS Electronica.

Can you tell us what Sumally is about, and the concept behind it?

Kensuke – While I was an editor for a magazine, I started thinking about creating a “Wikipedia for Products”. Not only am I in love with products of all sorts, but I also realized that even mainstream products, such as Leica cameras, Nike sneakers, Louis Vuitton bags, Comme des Garcons clothes, are not cataloged in an openly available format. This is a serious loss for our society, and it was clear to me that I had to create a universal format for archiving product meta data.

So, instead of creating a magazine, I moved on to creating an encyclopedia of all products. And instead of just having a picture and description of the product, like any modern encyclopedia in year 2010 should have, I decided that it was important that information such as who wants it, who has it, and who is selling it was also included. Furthermore, a system had to be in place to make the cataloging process simple.

Users have pulled down different products from different places online. Some of the commonly seen websites include Amazon, and fashion websites such as Mr.Porter and ZozoTown. I came across products from Esty too.

Mr. Nakamura, what was your first impression when you heard of Mr. Yamamoto’s idea?

Yugo – Many online services are started by “geeks”, or some sort of specialist involved in the domain of the service. They start small, and gradually become big. It was exciting to see an editor of magazine, someone in a completely different field, to want to start a new web-based online service. He was all smiles when he first came to talk to me, and announced “I want to be the Japanese Zuckerberg.” At first I was speechless, but the idea seemed interesting, and thought that his idea just might work. I then spread the word to Hideki and Keita, both of whom were involved in creating UNIQLOOKS, and we all decided to give it a shot.

How about you, Mr. Oowa?

Hideki – While we did pretty well with UNIQLOOKS, I had a gut feeling that we could go further in terms of designs and structure. That’s when the idea of Sumally came along. The fact that it was a startup and not a big enterprise was appealing, and Kensuke’s passion convinced me that the project was indeed feasible. Despite the hardships that comes with it, building a new online service from scratch is really exciting in a different way from creating advertisements.

And you, Mr. Kitamura?

Keita – While our design work at tha is mostly for advertisements, I have always wanted to create an online service as well. So, Keita’s proposal came at the perfect timing. I was excited that I will finally be able to build my own online service. As Hideki mentioned, with advertisements, once it’s finished it is out in the open, and that is the end of it. On the other hand, building an online service allows to continually attract and build up a customer base, which is what I was looking for. I actually feel that suites my character better!

When investors make the judgement to support a startup, they look at the idea or the potential market size, but more importantly, they look at the team. The Sumally team is unique in the sense that they are not from the high tech industry which gives them a fresh eye. The uniqueness of the team can be confirmed by looking at the simple and sleek design of the website and its newly released iphone application.

“Advertisement is a short film, Service is a Soap Opera”

What is the difference between creating websites for advertisement and creating websites for an online service?

Yugo – Advertisement is a one-shot deal like creating a short film or a movie. An online service, on the other hand, continues even after it’s released, more like a soap opera. Of course, not everyone can contribute to both kinds of website development. While developing an online service is interesting to me, I tend to lose focus when working on one project for a long time. Hideki and Keita prefer developing an online service though.

Hideki – The line between an advertisement and an online service is becoming increasingly thin, especially since modern online advertisements require an interactive social networking feature. The difference lies in the amount of time the content needs to be relevant, and much higher level of passion and vision is required to maintain an online service that will disappear like one-shot advertisements. Furthermore, while advertisement projects come with a budget, building your own online service requires us to attain funding. Fortunately for us, Kensuke, with his passion and determination, has been able to deliver the funding we have needed.

Sumally has just started its journey. There are many online services that have succeeded in getting the attention upon release, but had difficulty maintaining user interest. Each and every decision they make will either engage users more possibly make them lose interest.

“Creating a truly international online service!”

Can you tell us more about your vision of creating a service that can change the world?!

Kensuke – My saying that I want to change, not just Japan, but also the world, is a bit of an exaggeration, something I’ve been saying to stand out from the crowd. But I have always been passionate about and have great respect for brands that can make it in the global market. So yes, I do want to build an online service that can succeed outside of Japan. One of the things that I feel might have a chance at succeeding on the international level is the way Japanese people, and especially people living in Tokyo, create brands for specific product categories. A simple combination of a ten dollar t-shirt together with a five dollar skirt and perhaps a twenty dollar pair of shoes is enough to be branded as a specific “style”, which seems amazing to me. This ability to quickly create recognizable name for a specific product category that represents context as well as interests is something unique to Japan, and something I think we should be proud of. And I am hoping that it will be relevant throughout the world.

Hideki – Building content that is only relevant in Japan wasn’t what the tha team is about either, so “Going global” was one of the key elements in deciding to create Sumally together.

When I first looked at the Sumally website, all the menus were in English, making the site look “foreign”. Was that design effect something you were aiming for?

Hideki – Definitely. Of course, since most of our users are Japanese, we have to choose the words we use carefully. We are looking to strike the perfect balance between keeping the site user friendly for Japanese users and making sure that the site is viable in the international market.

Kensuke – I want our online service to be just as user friendly for non-Japanese users as it is for Japanese users, while making sure that we keep our roots in Japan.

Yugo – When we say global, we are not talking about the geographical transition from Japan to the rest of the world. Our challenge is whether Sumally can become an infrastructure for people when they talk about products. Online services such as Twitter and Facebook provide infrastructure, while advertisements function on top of such infrastructure. And we are an infrastructure type service.

Kensuke – Making something fashionable is simple, if I am allowed to say so. But going beyond fashion and reaching sophisticated simplicity that can be appreciated objectively across the board is a totally different matter. That’s why I wanted to team up with Yugo Nakamura who can achieve this both in terms of programing and user interface design. Things have to work whether the product is an animation figure, golf club, or a teapot in order for our online service to be considered an infrastructure.

Making it universal to take it beyond fashionable.

What exactly do you mean when you say “universal”?!

Kensuke – Magazines are segmented into categories such as street fashion, animation, or Internet related. “Universal” is when you abandon that categorization based on taste. Until about 5 years ago, people were talking about how mass media would someday become segmented media. My thought at that time was that after segmented media would be “micro-media collectives”. The “2ch” online service, which I consider to be one of the best built media, is already structured this way.

In the 2ch system, there are 100 or so top level categories, and under them are 200 or so threads in each category, which makes it highly likely that every visitor will find something interesting. The fact that this simple aggregation of content is functioning as a single medium makes 2ch very powerful. It is my belief that such a platform, where the currently separate worlds of street fashion, animation, and gadgets can coexist, is the required structure for any successful media. This is what I mean by wanting to create something “universal”.

Hideki – This concept of being universal is something we have in common with the design concepts at tha. It isn’t the container of content that needs to stand out. Through our designs, we ensure that the content that stands upon the container shines through and looks good.

Kensuke – That is why we need to build something that is more than just fashionable.

Now that Sumally has been launched, has it been used in a universal manner so far?!

Kensuke – We’re still in our invite-only beta phase, hoping to start out with mostly influential users with a strong interest in products, and then gradually spreading out the user base. This makes it unlikely that the service is being used universally, but we are accumulating quite a collection of products across a wide range of categories, which is exactly what we were aiming for.

Yugo – What I found interesting was how much effort Kensuke poured into attracting beta users for the service during the launch. Even many of my colleagues, many of them famous and very influential in their industry, have started to use the service. I really liked the idea of “start building the people network first”.

Kensuke – This part is similar to how we start up a magazine.

Keita – While many people who can develop the system, the type of content you accumulate depends mostly on the people you attract to your service. It was a smart idea to start out by gathering many interesting people. It would be difficult for other startups to do what Kensuke did.

While many popular services penetrate from tech savvy people to mainstream, Kensuke has leveraged his network from his career as a magazine editor. Just by looking through Sumally products, one can meet fashionable and famous stylists and celebrities in different fields. It is similar to the marketing strategy of Ameba, the biggest blogging service in Japan. They succeeded in attracting all sorts of famous celebrities to blog use the service, which in turn brought in the mainstream users. In the case of Sumally, it is mostly because of the passion that Kensuke has that these well-known people have tried out the service.

The next step for Sumally: selling products via “Social with Commerce”

What is the business model for Sumally?

Kensuke – A new feature we have in mind is to be able to sell products on Sumally. Most e-commerce works by creating a list of what to sell. We believe that it would be a better user experience if it was the other way around, and users were able to shop from a list. Both real and virtual stores are separate establishments, giving more power to the merchant. Using a universal catalog of products, consumers will be able to indicate and share their wants, and instead of going to buy a product, merchants will come to sell the product. From the merchant’s perspective, instead of having to spend energy on attracting customers to the store, they can simply go to the consumer who is ready to buy. We would then receive a cut of the sale.

Is “Social Commerce”, which is quickly becoming a buzzword, a category that Sumally belongs to?

Kensuke – To be honest, I am a bit uncomfortable with the phrase “Social Commerce”. In my opinion, it is more like “Social with Commerce”. There are many catalogs that are made to look like a magazine, but everyone can tell that it’s still just a catalog. It is obvious when something is being pitched to you as a sale instead of when they are presented because they are good. Just like we all know that Takuya Kimura, a very famous actor and featured in commercials for the Toyota Carola, does not really drive that car in real life.

Since “Social Commerce” services are based on the old e-commerce model, I believe that they are limited to just that: what the seller wants to sell. Sumally, on the other hand, is about sharing everything that is interesting. Rather than categorizing the products that are on sale, it is closer to adding an e-commerce feature to the Tumblr service. This is why I feel that “Social with Commerce” would be a better description of what we are trying to do, than “Social Commerce”.

The Sumally iPhone application is worth trying out. There is a feed tab where users can see all items shared by people they follow. On my Sumally tab, users can browse through products that they have Wanted or Haved. The Activity tab can be used to find people who have similar tastes as yourself, because you can see who else have Wanted or Haved the products that you have archived on Sumally.

Since it is impossible to add every feature you can think of, what are the criteria for adding new features to Sumally?

BEAMS T on Sumally

Kensuke – The most important thing is to have our users keep on using our service. An iPhone app, which is coming soon, will be the first. (NOTE: iPhone app has been released )We also plan to add a feature similar to Facebook Pages for brands and stores. Users would be able to follow a brand and find out about new product arrivals and everything else about that brand. There are many other features that we’re considering, but we will take it one step at a time.

Hideki – Since the concept of connecting people to products is at the core of Sumally, we want to make it easy for our users to discover other people and other products. New recommendations should flow by constantly, yet painlessly, and we aim to design and implement a best of breed system to make that possible.

Is there anything you would like to share with our readers about the near term plans for Sumally?

Kensuke – Being able to buy and sell products on Sumally is definitely on the top of our to-do list.

What is the appeal of Sumally for people merchants?

Kensuke – Since people are sharing what they want, merchants would be able to sell to those particular users who want the products. If there are 5 people who wants a 1,000 dollar Star Wars figure, toy stores all over the world would want to sell there. If 100 people indicated that they want the same pair of sneakers that Kayne West has, Nike would want to sell there.

Hideki – I really want Sumally to be used all over the world. We are currently still in our beta phase, and most users are still from Japan. The key is how we would expand into markets outside of Japan. Just like we count many influential and taste-leaders from Tokyo as our users, we will have to attract the same kind of users from all over the world, and make it possible for anyone anywhere to take a peek into their closets.

Sumally

[Original article, Text by Hiroki Maruyama, Translated by Yukari Mitsuhashi, Oct 31, 2011]

Sumally has also released brand pages and more than 50 brands have joined already. It works sort of like a Facebook page where brands can share newly available products with their core fans who have decided to follow. Very famous brands which have joined include Colette from Paris, Cibone, and Moma Design Store, and they have over 400 followers at present.

The next feature planned to be released is a smaller categorization of Wants and Haves. Users will be able to categorize their wants to something like “Things I want for my next birthday” or “Things I’m giving away” or “My interior goods”. This should make the discovery process a bit easier.

Sumally began it has been invite-only in its beta phase in Japan.  Most of the current users are from Japan with only 10 percent from outside Japan. Now that it are officially available to everyone, it aims to gain more users from Asia and the United States.

WishScope

WishScope won an award at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in San Francisco.  People have different resources such as time, skill, and things, but often resources are not leveraged to their full potential. WishScope matches those in need with those who can provide for that need in close proximity.  Users must have a Facebook account and certain number of friends to join the site.

Qiita

Qiita is a platform for engineers to share their experience and knowledge about coding.  Many engineers are facing the same kind of problems everyday. Qiita wants to become a go-to resource for engineers. Soon after its release, Qiita has attracted 1,100 users and over 1,000 posts. English version of Qiita was released on the day of TechCrunch Japan event, aiming high to help engineers all over the world.

PicoTube

PicoTube is an alternative for Turntable.fm., now that Turntable.fm has blocked access from anywhere outside the United States. Users can create their own clubhouse and play  their favorite music using youtube video. They can choose their own avatar, and show their likes of the clubhouse by pressing the “awesome” button. Avatars grow as you receive more and more “awesome points.” PicoTube is at the invite-only beta phase at present.

Sumally

Sumally is an encyclopedia of all things. Users can Want or Have anything that they come across on the web using a bookmarklet for browsers.  Sumally already has 160,000 items, and more than 20,000 users globally. The added number of “want” and “have” clicks is over 700,000. New feature is the brand’s page which works like Facebook pages. Sumally just released its iPhone application.

misoca

misoca is an invoice management service targeting freelancers and small companies. Downloading PDF files, creating invoices, and sending out invoices by mail can all be done in one-stop. It currently provides a light plan which costs 210 yen per invoice, including shipping. Misoca is considering partnerships with coworking spaces to spread usage. It will introduce a premium package with more features in the future.

engraph

engraph is a social phone directory for Android created by a highschool student. Communication methods have changed from making a phone call or mailing to exchanging messages on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Using a user interface named “Friend Map”, user’s friends are displayed like a map by their closeness to the user. Engraph uses its own edge rank algorithm that reflects activities from different social networks.

nana

nana allows people to communicate with the world using music. By using iPhone as a microphone, users can record their voice and add different sounds to the original voice. There is a timeline of music, and user can pick up whatever they like made by other users and collaborate with them.  Voice effect features can be used to create more unique and fun music to share with the world.

Minaome

Minaome is a social gifting service that allows people to send gifts together. They can partner with different merchandisers to find gifts to sell on the website. Users can login using Facebook.

Crowsnest

There is too much information online, but not enough curation. Crowsnest organizes information based on people’s credibility. It analyzes all tweets on Twitter, and curates information by reflecting the interests of who you know.

Spothon

Spothon is an iPhone application that brings watching sports games to a whole new level.  It allows public viewing of a game from anywhere.  When watching a game, there are two different screens on Spothon. The first one is the timeline for the game, and the other allows user to see who else is watching the game by avatar. While watching a game, there are emotion icons that can be thrown into the stadium, making the atmosphere feel more alive.

Spoqa

Spoqa won many awards at the recently held Young Venture Summit. It is a social loyalty platform for smartphones. Seven out of eight people who use group buying services do not return to use the venue they visited. Spoqa aims to become a solution for this problem by having users give each other points for a particular venue. Users receive points by visiting a venue, and if they like the place they can recommend it to a friend by giving them points to use at the venue. The commission for Spoqa is 10%, which is very reasonable compared to the 50% discounts stores have to provide for group buying deals.

COODE is a fashion Q＆A site that was launched on September 7th. We have seen online collage website such as Polyvore, and there is a Japanese version of the same service called iQon. iQon started in April 2010 and has so far received 140 million yen in investment (about $1.8 million).

What makes COODE different from rest of these services is its Q&A approach. Users can ask each other questions about fasion, and to answer, they create online collages using all sorts of fashion items. Another strengh of COODE is that it has professional stylists answering those questions. In that sense, it’s similar to Shoedazzle. The items in the collage can be also bought online from the brand’s website.

Some examples of questions asked would be:

“I just bought a camel fur scarf. How would I wear this to work?”
or
“I just dyed my hair back to black, what style do you think will go well with it?” 

Many users ask for advice for appropriate clothing styles to suit different occasions. There is an interesting use case where one user asked others to coordinate his fashion style, and he ended up getting many answers from his friends. One of the suggestions looked like this.

Each user is given their own profile page, which includes an introduction, type of fasion with their strong points, favorite magazine, Twitter or Facebook accounts, and a blog URL. Users’ questions, answers, and the people they follow can be viewed as well.

Answers to a question can be rated with a Nice! button. And in the sidebar, there is a weekly ranking of users according to their Nice count.  COODE creates its own original content too by interviewing the most popular user of the month.  Some features in development are a “best answer” feature and a commenting feature.  COODE also plans to use the Yahoo! Chiebukuro API (Q&A basically) which receives 3,000-5,000 questions per day.

For now the revenue is generated by advertising and through affiliates. COODE is created by PlayMined, which is led by 28 years old Mitsutaka Hamada. The start-up’s goal is to have 10,000 registered users within a year. We can expect to see iPhone and Android apps early next year.

How much do you really know a person? How well do you know your Twitter friends, or even your colleagues? In many cases, conversations are often limited to very casual and superficial topics. But a popular new web service in Japan is trying to help you get know know people a little better. It’s called The Interviews, and it is a fast-growing Q&A service for personal use that has taken off in Japan.

Just a few weeks after its release, its per-day page views have surpassed 2 million and it continues to get bigger every day. The service reminds me of Formspring, but in reverse. With Formspring, you decide to reveal certain secrets and facts about yourself that may surprise other people. (i.e. What’s your favorite band? What was the best moment in your college life?)

With The Interviews, people ask each other questions anonymously. The interviewer of a question is never revealed. This works well because there is an online culture in Japan that tends to prefer anonymity. The popularity of 2ch.net is evidence of this, but of course with the rise of sites like Twitter and Facebook, people are becoming more aware of the merits of an open profile. But when it comes to asking questions, anonymity enables people to ask questions that they might not otherwise ask.

All sorts of questions are asked on this new platform. There is a question for the former CEO, asking how he sees the current situation of the company he left. Someone else is asking a girl what she likes most about her boyfriend. The response rate is revealed on each person’s interview page. And so the more you answer, more questions you are likely to receive.

Each user is given their own interview page, listing questions from people and their answers to those questions. It is a detailed profile page that keeps getting updated. There are many convenient features including one that allows users to find people that they follow on Twitter, and also a feature to block certain interviwers.

As of September 1st, the number of registered users is 16,000. The Interviews was created by paperboy&co at it’s development camp.

The name “Sumally” combines the two words “sum” and “all.” It’s where you register what you have and what you want. One of the Penn Olson editors noted that it reminded him a little gdgt.com in some respects. You can also browse through people’s Sumally pages to discover other interesting products, or it can be used as a wishlist too. Mine is right here. :)

It’s very simple to use, as you can add a sumally bookmarklet to your browser toolbar. Whenever you come across an interesting product  – it could be a jewerly, furniture, gadgets, etc. — just click on the bookmarklet. Click either “want it” or “have it” on the image. Then enter the product details like category, name, or brand.

Each user is given their own Sumally page.  In the sidebar, the site shows you people’s activities relating to your wants and haves, so you can easily know people with the same interests.  If you find someone who has a similar taste, you can also follow then within the service. There is Twitter and Facebook integration too.

I really love the sleek interface of the service.  It was created by Kensuke Yamamoto, former editor at “GQ JAPAN.”    Sumally is in English, so please try it out.

Journal+, a website that gathers popular posts from Google+, was released by User Local last week. It’s a web magazine that brings together popular pictures, videos, and news articles on Google+ by various categories, or by country.

Taking a quick look at Journal+, users can get a snapshot of what’s most popular on Google+. The number of times a post has been reshared, and the amount of +1s it has received, are some of the factors that decide what is displayed on the site. There are more than 6.2 million posts on Journal+ right now, and it has already acquired more than 4.2 million users.

Main features include:

• Ranking of popular posts, pictures, videos, URLs (which are then browsable worldwide or by country)
• User rankings, according to how many times a user is added to a circle (also worldwide or by country)
• Rankings of popular shared posts and +1s for each user
• Sharing on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ itself

For example, you could browse only China posts on the Journal+ custom page for that country. Also, there’s a page just for popular G+ pictures and movies posts from across the globe.

Journal+ is a good way to get raw G+ stats too. They reveal that in terms of the number of Google+ users, Japan is placed 8th in the world – but the number of posts emanating from Japan sees it ranked 2nd in the world. It can be said that Google+ is taking off pretty well in Japan.

Journal+ shows the top ten Google+ users around the world. (Click to enlarge)

Here is the global top ten list of Google+ user numbers.

1. U.S.： 30.03%
2. India： 16.15%
3. England： 3.14%
4. Brazil： 2.98%
5. China： 2.82%
6. Indonesia： 2.82%
7. Canada： 2.57%
8. Japan： 2.07%
9. Germany： 1.95%
10. Vietnam： 1.76%

User Local is a technology development venture company located within Waseda University that provides analytics tools. Its products include User Insight which is a heat maps-based tool, and TwitTraq which provides twitter analytics.

We recently told you about East Ventures Alpha, a 100-day accelerator program for start-ups. Well yesterday, yet another acceleration program was introduced by Movida Japan, a company by Taizo Son, younger brother of Masayoshi Son of Softbank. The ultimate goal is to build an eco-system in Japan and Asia that allows start-ups to grow. Beginning in Tokyo, the plan is to open programs in different areas in Japan such as Kyoto, Fukuoka, Sapporo, and but also in other Asian centers like Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Jakarta, and more.

This seed acceleration’s mission statement is ambitious. It aims to incubate 1,000 big-impact start-ups within ten years. That averages out to 100 per year or approximately eight start-ups incubated per month.

There are five fields in which Movida Japan is especially interested in investing:

• Mobility of Life
• Global Distribution of Digital Contents
• Redistribution by Social Sharing
• Cloud Accelerated Innovations
• Improvisations by Social Curation

What they look for in start-ups is the passion to want to change the world for the better, and a specific idea of how to accomplish that. A vision of the “bigger picture,” or seeing beyond whatever service you’re building helps too.

Different from other incubators?

What distinguishes Movida Japan from other seed acceleration programs is that it will invest five million yen into one start-up, and it will be truly hands-on. Many programs claim to be involved, but Movida Japan will consider the start-ups their own business, committing to their success 100 percent. Their seed acceleration program will be Asia-wide, allowing start-ups to enter the global market. Taizo Son was the man behind Softbank’s investment in RenRen, and his strong network in Asia will be leveraged.

The application for Movida Japan’s first acceleration program can be found here. The entry deadline is September 30, 2011. Any start-up (outside Japan) can enter the program. For those of you in other parts of Asia with an idea to change the world, just wait. They will come to you.

A new social recruiting service from Japan called Jobring was launched on July 29th.  It is the first recruiting service that features deep integration with Facebook.  The service targets college students in Japan and students from abroad and it hopes to become a recruiting platform for all of Asia.

It pulls in information from Facebook, sparing students the effort of writing yet another resume online.  Recruiters can then scout students that they find interesting.

In Japan there is something called an “OG/OB appointment,”  which stands for old girl/old boy.  Students can look for graduates of the same university and ask for an appointment as part of their career hunting process. More than 20 companies have joined Jobring including Macromill and Nihon Seimei.

According to an internal survey at Jobring, many students are coming from top universities in Japan including Waseda University, Keio University and Tokyo University.

The website is currently in an invite-only alpha phase, but plans to officially open next month.  Social Recruiting is going to expand its service to college students in Asia as well, hopefully this summer. It will particularly target students capable of speaking Japanese.

Social Recruiting Co, is backed by Samurai Incubate.  To contact Mr.Kasuga of Socialo Recruiting Co, you can email him here.

On Colish, users can connect to others who are already living in a share house, or they can submit a concept for a share house and look for roommates. The service was officially launched just a few hours ago, so only 12 ideas in total have been submitted to the site for the time being.

One interesting concept is the “Session-House,” where people who play instruments can live together in a sort of music-themed house. Another combines the ideas of couch-surfing and share houses, where people from all over the world can come to stay and meet Japanese people and vice versa. On the website you can follow concepts, contact the organizer, and leave comments.

Hopefully Colish will grow into a community for people who live in groups.  The service was born out of Startup Weekend in Tokyo. The event sees people gather to come up with an interesting idea for a service and then actually create it within 54 hours. You can find out more about the “No Talk, All Action” project on tokyo.startupweeked.

Colish at Startup Weekend Tokyo, May 2011

]]> http://www.techinasia.com/colish/feed/ 0 http://placehold.it/350x150 http://www.techinasia.com/green-girl-crowd-funding-for-girls-only/ http://www.techinasia.com/green-girl-crowd-funding-for-girls-only/#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:58:23 +0000 Yukari Mitsuhashi http://www.techinasia.com/?p=42075 Read more »]]>

Another crowd funding service “Green Girl” has just launched in Japan. The system works very much like “Campfire” which I introduced in my previous post several weeks ago.

What differentiates “Green Girl” from other crowd funding services is that it aims to support females only.

Its goal is to support anything “Kawaii” (means adorable in Japanese) created by females. Users visiting the site can show support by clicking on the “Buy” button. If enough users agree to support the project in a certain period of time, the collected money will be used to fund the creator’s vision.

An unique feature of Green Girl is its gift feature. An user can ask someone to show their support on his behalf or give his support to someone else as a gift. From the project page, users can choose who they want to send gifts to via Twitter and Facebook. Messages can also be customized, which will be delivered to the recipients with an URL that leads them to purchase the ticket.

Mixi is the biggest social network in Japan and it has always aimed to create its social graph based on real human-to-human connections. The folks at Mixi have kept silent for a while with no major announcements on this. But just a couple days ago, they sent out a PDF press release to us (in Japanese, see below), giving a hint on how the company plans to leverage its social graph for monetization.

In partnership with Nike Japan, this is Mixi’s first attempt at social advertising: an integration between online banner advertising and its social graph. The campaign is titled the “NIKEiD FRIEND STUDIO.”

NIKEiD FRIEND STUDIO

There are more than 100 products available on NIKEiD, a service which allows users to create customized products such as shoes and bags. With a banner generator on Mixi. Users were given their own iD to create an original banner with their very own customized product designed. With hundreds and thousands of such NIKEiD banners made by users, it brought tons of traffic to the official website.

Traditional online banner ads have received a fair share of criticism, and Mixi aspires to introduce new of online advertisements like this that leverage on its social graph. For users, the social banner provides another avenue to express themselves, sharing the products they like, and their style preferences with friends. If friends like what they see, they can click on the “Cool” button to vote for their friends’ banner ad, just like Facebook’s ‘like’ button.

Results

• Number of visitors to the NIKE FRIEND STUDIO: 2.13 million
• 80% of the visits were through clicking on a friend’s banner or social feed shown on their mixi page.
• Click Through Rate (CTR) for desktop computers is 11 times more than an average online banner. CTR is 16 times more on mobile compared to a regular banner.

Apparently Nike Japan is very much satisfied with the result of the campaign. Let’s hope we can get to see more of these campaigns by Mixi in the future.

Mixi Press Release

FlutterScape, which describes itself as a cross-border social commerce platform, has just closed its latest round of funding at 60 million yen ($749,000). The funding round was led by NVCC, with NGI group and Innovation Engine also joining as investors. Prior to this investment, Flutterscape secured its first seeding round at 25 million yen ($310,000) last August from Digital Garage, Net Price, and Aucfan.

Rilakkuma

Flutterscape aims to deliver Japanese culture abroad by leveraging on foreign residents in Japan as sellers. There are over 1,500 sellers and 7,000 customers on the social commerce site, with 6,000 item sold to date. Popular items on Flutterscape include Japanese character items like Rilakkuma and original items like Sushi memo pad.

Its Facebook fan base is huge with more than 250,000 people ‘liking’ the service. From what we have understood, half of Flutterscape’s users are from the United States and the rest are from Eastern Asia. Flutterscape is popular among young people who love Japanese culture and goods. 68 percent are in the age range of  18-24 while 18 percent are in the age range of 25-34.

Flutterscape plans to use the investment to ‘socialize’ its commerce system.  At present, Flutterscape works more like an e-commerce website. The team plans to make its website more shareable and user-friendly. Other upgrades are in the pipeline which will be announced at a later date. Stay tuned to Flutterscape’s Facebook,  Twitter, and official blog. You might also want to meet Takehiro Kakiyama, the founder of Flutterscape on Twitter to tweet him a congratulations note.

Here are some popular products on Flutterscape. Interestingly, 20 percent of all items sold are Japanese character-related. They are pretty cool:

1. Elecome ipod Nano Leather Belt Wrist Watch Band
2. Jigazo Puzzle Make Your Own Self-Portrait Puzzle With Only 300 Pieces
3. Popin’ Cookin’ DIY Sushi Candy “Tanoshii Osushiyasan” Grape Flavor
4. iPhone 4 CLEAVE Aluminum Bumper Case
5. One Piece 2011 Collectibles Japan Postal Stamps Set Pre-Order
6. Revoltech Danbo Amazon.Co.Jp MINI Ver. 80mm
7. Hetalia Axis Powers Artbook ArteStella
8. GIGA Pudding
9. Kokeshi Bento Kyoto Newest Design Handmade Lunch Box MAIKO (Geisha Girl)
10. Point-And-Speak Phrasebook (Japanese)
11. Nico Sushi Memo Block
12. Pikachu Pokemon Cosplay Kigurumi Pajama Outfit
13. Rilakkuma Cosplay Cap
14. My Neighbor Totoro Japanese Thermal Bento Lunch Box
15. Rilakkuma Iphone 4 Soft Case

Campfire is a new Japanese service similar to Kickstarter, aiming to raise money to fund users’ projects.  The service was launched by Hyper Internets inc. about a week ago and there are already six projects running at this point.

Here’s how it works: Each of the projects launched on Campfire will have to set out the purpose of the project, the amount of money it aims to collect, and the period of time required to collect it.  Campfire’s users can support a project starting at 500 yen ($6.20) using Paypal. If the funds are collected in time then the project becomes official and the creator will be paid to fulfill the mission set.

So far things are looking good at Campfire, as half of the projects have already succeeded. Supporters can receive rewards if they donate a certain amount of money. One of the projects, for example, aims to travel around the world to collect all sorts of free magazines. The project will give free samples to those who donated 2,000 yen and also an invitation to an after-event to those who paid 5,000 yen.

Information is constantly updated on the project page, showing how much money the project has collected, how many days are left, the number of supporters, and who they are. Hyper Internets will take a 20% commission from every project that was successfully funded. If a project fails to collect enough funds, the money will be returned to the supporters.

Somehow Campfire has drawn me in as well. The project that I’m helping is looking to collect 300,000 yen ($3,744) and has so far collected 156,000 yen ($1,947).

The brains behind Campfire are @hbkr and @kohex. To become a supporter, simply register at the website. You can also login using your Twitter or Facebook account.

Behold. Sorevo, a group-buying site which offers premium-products-only was recently launched in Japan. Like most group-buying site, offers for these premium products only come to fruition if enough orders were accumulated within a limited period of time.

The first product featured on Sorevo has already captured much attention: It is an iPhone case of the popular animation “GUNDAM,” specially designed by Kunio Okawara (check out his profile on Wikipedia), a famous designer in the Japanese Anime industry. Each case also comes with an unique serial number.

Going Social

Grand Design & Company, the brain behind Sorevo has gained much success marketing products in Japan. Its achievements include “LagunaMoon,” a popular brand among young Japanese girls. However, as things are pretty much done in the traditional way, and coupled with the rising popularity of social media the company seeks to explore social commerce.

Sorevo, a name inspired by “social media revolution,” is an effort by the company to create a marketing channel powered by social media. Unfortunately, the company didn’t reveal much about how it plans to make Sorevo a success, but it did say that it has a goal is to hit 1 million users within a year before expanding the business to other Asian markets.

Stay tuned.

“Snapeee” is a new Instagram + Purikura app for the iPhone.

[For your information, Purikura is a fashionable photographic booth which allow users to take a picture and decorate it with cute icons and letters. Purikura was a huge sensation years ago when it was first released in Japan, and today it has become a norm amongst young high school-college girls.]

After both Japanese and English version of Snapeee were released in the app store on May 16, the app attracted more than 50,000 download within a week. According to TechWave, Snapeee was ranked second place in the app store after its second day of its release in Taiwan, beating Instagram.  Snapeee is also huge in Hong Kong and Japan as well.

Here’s how Snapeee works:

• Use Snapeee to take a picture or chose a picture from your iPhone library
• Decorate your picture with frames, emotional icons, and add letters
• Send out the completed picture to Mixi, Twitter, and Facebook. Mixi is one of the largest social networks in Japan, which is especially popular among young people.

Users can follow each other within Snapeee by tapping on the follow button. There is also a category tab, which allows users to see all pictures uploaded via category such as food, pets, fashion, etc. There is also a tab listing people’s reactions about your pictures. I started using Snapeee right after its release:

The creator of Snapeee is Mind Palette Co., which was founded November last year. It is funded and supported by CyberAgent Ventures. You can find the CEO of Mind Palette, Yuji Kobayashi on Twitter at @yuji_nano or download Snapeee here [iTunes link]

You start using the service by entering your Twitter log in details. Once done, there are three things you could do:

• Give away something
• Request something
• Claim what you own

To submit a product, you can search on Amazon or Rakuten, or register a new product from scratch. Enter the product name, image, and status (giving away, searching for, own it). Set a period from 1 to 7 days, and also the shipping option. Livlis has a pretty active community. I submitted a book to give away and within 30 minutes, I already received two requests for it. All actions on Livlis like liking, wanting, owning something (Livlis’s original liking system) can be tweeted from your Twitter account.

Online transactions require Livlis points and there are several ways to obtain these. Livlis gives away 100 points for first time registration and also 100 points for users who gives away, wants or owns something for the first time. Plus, you will get 100 points for inviting friends and 10 points for each “I want it” reactions for your product submission.

What makes Livlis a social classified is that it embraces your Twitter social graph.  When submitting a product on Livlis, you can limit your target to your followers accordingly. Searching for a product works the same way, you can look from all products (Livlis has 15,000 products as of May 2011) or restrict your search to products submitted by your followers.

Livlis was launched in December 2010, and has so far attracted 30,000 users. The service is run by the former vice president of Hatena, Yuichi Kawasaki.  Livlis was featured at the recent Teclosion Spring 2011, held by media company DESIGN IT! LLC.  An iPhone app is scheduled to be released soon.

Since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit Tohoku region in Japan, there has been a shortage of electricity throughout Kanto area. Tokyo is of no exception. Many office building lights are switched off and many stations are kept dark to save as much electricity as possible.  TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) is running TV commercials asking each and every person to join forces to save electricity.

Well, apart from from that, there is a product that may help us save even more energy. It’s called the “Energy Literacy Platform” (ELP) projected to be released this summer.  In brief, ELP is a tool that shows users how much electricity are being consumed in your home in real-time.

There’s no way to know how much electricity you’re consuming other than checking your electricity bills.  ELP allows users to see how much energy was consumed when you dry your hair after taking a shower, cook your breakfast or even simple task like heating up your coffee using the microwave. On the ELP website, users can set a maximum electricity capacity (or a maximum financial capacity) for the ELP module. A report would be generated as shown below:

These ELP modules can be placed between various power outlets and home appliances. The ELP receiver sends the power consumption data to the server.  ELP modules allows you to track each household appliance individually, you can even turn off appliances remotely using your smartphone.  All data collected by ELP can be also be monitored on your smartphone and also on the web in real time.

ELP is a Japan-based service by Sassor Inc., which was founded in Sep 30, 2010. Sassor is run by a group of students from Keio University and its website is available in Japanese and in English. You can catch more here.

There’s another exciting product that they’re working on called “Socialacts” which I’m particularly very interested in it. I’ll share more when it’s released

A minor but cool feature within the “Feel on!” app is that by shaking your iPhone, it will remove the cartons in your tweet timeline. If your boss happens to do a spot check, simply shake your iPhone to remove all the ‘complain-related’ emotions in your timeline. Catch the demo video below to get a better understanding:

With “Feel on!”, a simple tweet now comes with a face. “Feel on!! is planned to be released as a website in late April and on Android in August.

More useful Twitter iPhone apps from Japan:

• How To Send Gifts Through Twitter
• How To Voice Tweet Through Twitter

Ever wanted to show your appreciation to your friends on Twitter? Now you can, with a Twitter micro-gift service named Giftee. With Giftee, you can send real gifts through Twitter, say a cup of coffee at a cafe or a mug of beer at a bar. Giftee was launched in March 2011, and is backed by Open Network Lab, Inspire Corporation, and Yuma Umeda.

To send a gift on Giftee, you first need to create an account by entering your Twitter log in details. Next, select a friend, pick a gift from the selected items, and enter your gift message. The gift is paid through your credit card. Once paid, the recipient will be notified via a tweet. He or she can click on the link and will be asked for a passcode upon landing on the gift page.

Giftee has so far partnered with more than 18 cafes and restaurants. If you wish to participate in giftee as a merchandiser, you can send an e-mail to Giftee at partners[at]giftee.com.

Besides helping Twitter users to send gifts, Giftee also contributes to the society through charity projects. Giftee’s current projects include “coffee kids” and “TAP project 2011″. Coffee Kids aims to support coffee manufacturers and their families in Latin America. The TAP project 2011 helps UNICEF provide clean water to children all over the world. In addition, Giftee has created an album consisting of 16 different ringtones called “PRAY for JAPAN”: All the proceeds will be donated to Japan Red Cross to aid the victims in the recent earthquake.

I first learned about Giftee’s service when I received a gift from a dear friend of mine. Show your appreciation in an easiest way possible and spread the smile with Giftee through Twitter today.