Maybe I'm too close to the subject matter, but the article seems to gloss over a few things...<p>1. Mixi essentially IS Facebook; they've constantly been updating and adding things to the interface that make it more and more facebook-like. All they need to do now is take all of the feeds they've made and integrate them in popularity/chronological order.<p>2. The communities he talks about are the same as Facebook groups. You can make friends in either one, though mixi communities tend to have topics people talk in more than in most Facebook groups I've seen.<p>3. Mixi not only allows you to control who your friends are, but also allows you to see who's visited your profile (and when!). It also allows you to delete your OWN footprints from visiting other people's profiles a few times every month. On top of that, you can see how recently someone's been active on Mixi. It's terrible (great?) for OCD stalkers.<p>Perhaps this author's article is based on selection bias; though; of all of the people I know on facebook who are Japanese, a number of them are Japanese people interested in English or who have been to America -- they largely use it for the same reasons that everyone else in America does: to keep in touch with friends and post stuff. Others are simply Japanese people using it with pretty much only Japanese people: they seem to do the same thing, without the influence of Americans "teaching" them the "right" way to use facebook. I also have a few professional acquaintances that I'm friendly with; they use it in the same way as the people I mentioned before.<p>Perhaps the professional accounts the author is encountering are accounts made solely for professional use. Some Americans I know do that as well, since there really ISN'T a requirement that you use your real name.