Best practices for designing Private Online Communities in Japan …  

Japan is a blog-crazy country

• Don’t make the same mistakes as Facebook in Japan: Most of the Facebook applications are pointless in the eyes of Japanese users. In particular Facebook is missing the function Japanese consumers deem fundamental in a social network: blogging.

Japanese communities are more about trust and like-mindedness than about self-expression

• Look at how invitation-based Mixi succeeded where Facebook failed: Mixi, the country’s biggest social network, positioned itself as a tool for communicating at a distance through diaries and communities to meet like-minded members. It doesn’t primarily exist to make new friends (poking is restricted) or as a platform for public self-presentation.

In Japan, the mobile web is king

• The Japanese mobile web is bigger than the PC web. Millions of Japanese are accustomed to using one thumb, a dial-pad and a jog dial on their phones when accessing the web during their commutes to school and work. Lucid360 Communities are carefully designed to account for this.