Sakebii: A Closed Social Network for Drinking Buddies

This post is a part of our coverage of Startups in Asia (Singapore), Penn Olson’s first tech conference. Our full coverage of the event can be found here, for our RSS feed, click here.

It’s likely a blessing that my peak drinking days in the past did not coincide with the Facebook era. Drinking parties frequently result in regrettable information or pictures being shared, and that can be a problem sometimes. Japan-based Sakebii wants to solve that problem by creating a limited, closed social network that includes only your ‘first degree’ drinking buddies. If there was a prize for best prop, Sakebii would probably win for bringing a tequila bottle into their on-stage presentation!

The name comes from the Japanese word for sake (of course, rice wine) and ‘sakebu’ which means ‘shout.’ Founder Ryo Umezawa says that Sakebii would be a network of 30 friends only, which for most people should be an adequate amount of people to count in your drinking circle. From there, it’s easy to share and communicate intentions to go out drinking, and form drinking parties. There’s a timeline feature, and users can shout statuses there are well.

Given that more than a few Japanese users have reservations about the openness of Facebook, Sakebii could very well prove popular in Japan. Ryo explains that the Japanese market really likes to drink, with over 8.5 million liters consumed in 2009 — and they hope to make that bigger. Of course, in order for it to work, your entire group of drinking buddies needs to be on there too — and that’s going to be a difficult bump to cross. While some judges expressed skepticism, this could have potential in Japan where ‘nominication’ (nomi meaning drink + communication) is a thing.

The Sakebii team so far is made up of seven students and two engineers. I can’t help but wonder how much fun this group is having in alpha testing… You can check out their promo video below, which doesn’t show much, but it kind of cute and fun nonetheless. The characters pictured are fish, which is of course, a very appropriate mascot for a drinking network.