世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into 2007′s web trends. Ahh, the first “… of the year” survey for 2007.

Demographics

On the 9th of November 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group who were employed in private or public industry successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 80.9% of the sample was male, 10.9% in their twenties, 43.0% in their thirties, 33.0% in their forties, 10.0% in their fifties, and 3.0% in their sixties.

The only buzzword that was presented translated into Japanese is “wisdom of the crowds”, becoming 集合知, shuugouchi, although that did very little to aid understanding. In Q2, only about a sixth claim not to know what ubiquitous is, an awareness I doubt native English speakers could duplicate! That figure does seem rather fishy to me, or perhaps the question was framed by presenting a short Japanese explanation of the term.

Research results

Q1: This year, which of the following words or terms have you often heard or read about? (Sample size=330, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
One Seg	292	88.5%
Blog	256	77.6%
Wireless LAN, Freespot	198	60.0%
Spyware	181	54.8%
SNS	166	50.3%
Ubiquitous	152	46.1%
Web 2.0	135	40.9%
BlueTooth	100	30.3%
PodCasting	78	23.6%
ASP	61	18.5%
RFID	35	10.6%
Long Tail	33	10.0%
JSOX	26	7.9%
SaaS	15	4.5%
Creative Commons	10	3.0%
SOA	10	3.0%
Wisdom of the crowds (集合知, shuugouchi)	9	2.7%
CGM (Consumer Generated Media)	8	2.4%
Metaverse	2	0.6%
None of the above	2	0.6%

I plead ignorance of SaaS and SOA, and after a quick Google I’m none the wiser on SOA! Note that although only one in ten is familiar with RFID, if the more common name IC Chip or even the technology name FeliCa was used, the awareness would most likely be much higher.

Q2: Which of the following words or terms do you not understand at all? (Sample size=330, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
SaaS	254	77.0%
Metaverse	254	77.0%
SOA	240	72.7%
JSOX	237	71.8%
CGM (Consumer Generated Media)	219	66.4%
Creative Commons	217	65.8%
Wisdom of the crowds (集合知, shuugouchi)	216	65.5%
RFID	216	65.5%
Long Tail	200	60.6%
ASP	151	45.8%
PodCasting	142	43.0%
BlueTooth	101	30.6%
SNS	100	30.3%
Web2.0	95	28.8%
Ubiquitous	53	16.1%
Spyware	30	9.1%
Wireless LAN, Freespot	6	1.8%
One Seg	6	1.8%
Blog	4	1.2%
None of the above	14	4.2%

Q3: This year, which of the following product or service names have you often heard or read about? (Sample size=330, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
YouTube	230	69.7%
mixi	223	67.6%
Wikipedia	215	65.2%
Skype	123	37.3%
Gmail	85	25.8%
Second Life	83	25.2%
Hatena	65	19.7%
MySpace	24	7.3%
mylo	9	2.7%
None of the above	20	6.1%

Hatena is a Japanese internet services company, with its main product being Hatena Bookmarks, the most popular social bookmarking service in Japan. mylo is a Sony communcation product.