As Facebook and Twitter Grow, Google+ Wants to Be in Japan’s Social Circle Too

Much has been written about Facebook’s impressive growth in Japan recenty, and Twitter too appears to be doing well there too, with CEO Dick Costolo saying today that they will aggressively add sales staff in the country. Local player Mixi is still in the social network sweepstakes too, although its growth appears to have stalled.

Meanwhile the new kid on the block, Google+, just rolled out a redesign of sorts, and in addition to explaining this to its global audience [1], the company has prepared a TV commercial for Japan. In the 30 second spot, which you can see below, Google highlights most of Google+’s key features, with a special emphasis placed on Hangouts.

As we’ve noted before, it is becoming common for western social sites to make a special effort in explaining how they work to local users in Japan. So in that respect, it’s good to see that Google has a Japanese site dedicated to learning more about Google Plus in addition to its English global version.

While I’m not sure how many users Google+ has in Japan at this point, I took a look back at how Chrome is progressing in the country, according to Statcounter’s browser share figures. As you can see in the interactive chart below, Chrome had been growing quite well in Japan up until this year, when Internet Explorer and Firefox appear to have taken back some of the market [2].

While I’m not a huge fan of Google+’s interface these days [3], I do hope the network does well in Japan. The big G has done some cool/admirable work in the country so far (examples here, here, and here), and I hope that this can extend into the social space. And this commercial certainly goes a long way in helping to reach more people too.