Facebook in Japan: Will It Blend?

<i>Japanese social networking users tend to like their privacy and therefore will tend to use a nickname instead of their real name.</i><p>Uhm, before Facebook, every social network, virtual community, online discussion board, etc, used nicknames. One of the things behind Facebook's success is that they didn't, instead they used real names.<p>Before, whenever a new interesting virtual community appeared, I used to find my existing "net-hooked" friends in there, because I knew which usernames they usually use, or I already discussed it with them over some other channel, resulting in me only meeting the usual suspects.<p>When Facebook came, I started finding people that I had never seen online before, it allowed me to get a connection to them because they used their real names. We were all used to nicknames, but it turned out to be a strength, not a weakness, to use real names instead. I don't see why this would be different in Japan.

Different social networks have different feature sets and perhaps their popularity in different countries reflects how well they fit local customs and social protocols. For example, Orkut became popular in Brazil entirely unexpectedly, maybe they hit a sweet spot with Brazilian culture.<p>It's surprising that Facebook does no tweaking to different cultures and it is still going so strongly worldwide. I guess this is a sign of real globalization - social norms online do not seem to vary from country to country so much.

The real cultural hurdle isn't the indirectness in Japan, it's the burdening sense of obligation Japanese people who are connected socially feel to one another. Facebook already feels like a part time job to me, but transplant an urban Japanese's persons relationships as well as their loose ties onto a social networking site...that would be a lot of work for them to maintain that sense of equilibrium in all those relationships.<p>But if they do try, they should totally get Joi Ito's help.