Yahoo Japan Still Going Strong, Wants to be More Social, More Mobile

From Yahoo Japan's financial report, Yahoo Japan News pages accessed compared to other domestic news sites

It seems there’s lots of news surrounding Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) today. Perhaps most notable is that the company announced its financial results for year to March 31, 2012, in which it saw sales and profit gains for the 15th straight year since its inception.

Do check out the entire financial presentation here, as it gives a great graphical overview (with lots of fun charts) of where the company excels, and why things are going well.

The company has a wide range of services, which it says are used by 84 percent of all internet users in Japan. It’s still number one in search, number one among auction sites (beating out Rakuten), and number one in e-mail (over Gmail and Microsoft’s Live Mail).

And it’s number one in news. As you can see in the chart from Yahoo in the upper right, Yahoo Japan News is accesses by more people than the news powerhouses of the Yomiuri, Mainichi, and Asahi.

Facebook comments, coincidentally, at the end of a Yahoo Japan News article (from CNet) about Facebook comments

Today, this is especially good news for Facebook, as Yahoo Japan News has introduced Facebook into its comment system. If you see the screenshot below, you can see that Facebook comments are now a tabbed option, right between native comments and real-time Twitter search [1].

The folks over at Asiajin point out that the company’s increased emphasis on social was a target area of focus noted by ex-CEO Masahiro Inoue on his departure. The company is also finding a surge in access from smartphones, and hopes to continue to serve more mobile content to capitalize on that trend.

One final pieces of news regarding Yahoo Japan today, as the company’s talks with Yahoo Inc on a share buyback (for Yahoo’s stake in Yahoo Japan) have concluded without agreement, due to a “valuation gap.”