Pseudo-anonymous New Year nengajo postcards through mixi
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Just in time for the New Year nengajo postcard season, goo Research performed a survey, reported on by japan.internet.com, into that subject, with the report focusing on a service from mixi, Japan’s largest SNS, that allows people to send physical postcards to virtual friends, while maintaining the pseudo-anonymity of people’s online handles.
Demographics
Over the 7th and 8th of December 2010 1,098 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.8% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.
Since Facebook doesn’t offer such a service for Christmas cards (as far as I know), I can conclude that either such a degree of privacy is of no great concern to the average Facebook user or that the average user has no urge to send cards to their Facebook friends. Perhaps it might be more of the second, as surveys have found that Japanese have a significantly lower number of social network friends, indicating that they are more discerning about who they befriend.
Q3 is a quite surprising result from my point of view; note that the question refers to disclosing your address to mixi only, not to your contacts on the SNS, yet 70% don’t feel too happy about doing so.
Research results
First of all, 73.2% of the sample, or 804 people, said they were going to send physical New Year postcards this year. They were asked the following question.
Q1: Have you ever had the experience of wanting to send a New Year nengajo to someone, but been thwarted by not knowing their address? (Sample size=804)
Often 8.8% Sometimes 54.4% Can’t say either way 4.6% Almost never 26.7% Never 5.5% The next two questions were for the whole sample.
Q2: Do you know what “mixi nengajo” is? (Sample size=1,098)
Know about it 14.7% Just heard or read the name 23.0% Don’t know anything 62.4% Q3: Do you feel reluctance to disclose basic personal information such as your physical address to SNS operators? (Sample size=1,098)
Feel considerable reluctance 25.5% Feel some reluctance 44.4% Can’t say either way 15.9% Not really bothered too much 12.0% Not bothered at all 2.2%
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