The highlight of Springtime for Japanese is “Sakura-mi“, where everyone takes an afternoon off, meanders to the local park with their co-workers, spreads out some blankets, and starts singing ballads while drinking sake and enjoying the pink cherry blossoms that cover every tree in sight.  It’s a great time.

Facebook is rapidly approaching its Sakura-mi in Japan.  Until now it was the dark horse behind the dominant Mixi.jp, and really only used by Japanese students and employees who had spent time in the U.S. or E.U.  But now, with the movie The Social Network hitting it big in Tokyo, and Mixi dying a slow death from no new functionality and a poor user interface, the network effect that accelerates Facebook adoption is taking off.  However, it’s not all sweet rice wine and kara-age.  There are some snags.

Facebook has the following going for it in Japan:

• The movie is pretty much like a 90-minute tutorial on how Facebook works, and that it’s okay (necessary) to use your real ID and not a fake alias.  Japanese are finally getting used to that point.
• Mixi always accepted and centered on people making aliases, which seems like a protection of privacy (a big point for Japanese), but ultimately prevented people from connecting with their real-world set of friends.  Everyone had their real friends, and their Mixi avatar strange connection friends.
• Facebook has its marketing act together: it’s a viable advertising channel which means that companies are looking at it seriously (which they never really did with Mixi).
• Facebook has a workable API for others to utilize (e.g. Facebook login).  Mixi never got that far in their product roadmap.

However, Facebook may run into some bumps:

• When we all signed up for Facebook 3-4 years ago, the Facebook viruses and scams weren’t as advanced as they are now.  I see my Japanese friends signing into Facebook for the first time, but many of them are falling victim to the same scams and dupes that tricked my young nieces when she first joined up.  In short, Japanese users are still a bit naive.
• The “real identity” thing is a big lump for Japanese users to swallow.  If they use their real ID, that means that all those people from High School and old jobs and college can now really find them.  Americans went through that phase, but admit it– if you could do it over again, would you really “friend” all those random people that you happened to graduate at the same time from some school 15 years ago?
• On-gaeshi.  I’ve described this before as a benefit for short texting like twitter, but I still see it as a small hindrance for Japanese.  Friending one person in a group obligates them to friend all people in that group, and anytime they get a friend request, they feel they MUST return the favor.  It almost puts a compulsory feel to the network effect, and it creates a slight anxiety for users.
• Lack of shopping benefits: there’s no deal at Starbucks or Takashimaya or Mitsukoshi for participating in a given Facebook promotion, because those large companies are still way behind on the Social Media thing.
• Work environment: Japanese office workers are pretty much sitting shoulder to shoulder on long bench tables, with the section chief at the end of each row, and the bucho sitting behind him (furthest from the front door, of course).  There are no cubicles, no offices, no privacy.  There’s no way office workers can screw off on Facebook during work time.

I’m sure Facebook will eventually roll through the country.  I am also relatively confident in predicting that penetration will never be as high as it is here in the US.