Three Secrets of the King of Social Networking – Japan’s Mixi

So, who’s the king of social networking – Facebook? Myspace?

How about Mixi!?

Mixi has 15 million users, up 40% from one year ago and 41% of the 31 million unique visitors for all social networking sites in Japan.

Myspace has 1.2 million visitors, Google-owned Orkut has 638K and Facebook has 538K.

Mixi is Japanese, for Japanese. And the Japanese like what’s made for them.

Mixi also gets 85% of its annual revenues of $92 million from online ads. Wouldn’t Facebook and Myspace like a piece of that?

Mixi’s profits were up  72% last year, sales were up 92% and this year is going to be better. Can you say $118 million?

Three secrets -

1.  CEO Kenji Kasahara figured out how to tap into his country’s blogging craze before anyone else.

Where were you when he was doing that?

2. Its squeaky-clean image as an online hangout.

“Kasahara pledged to keep out troublemakers and young kids who might be easy prey for online scams.”

No date sites or easy prey for Japan’s perverts

3.  So that personal data is not leaked to the Net, Mixi lets users hide behind a pseudonym.

If it ain’t safe, Japan doesn’t want it.

Mixi…the king of social networking.

What can Facebook and Myspace learn?