世論 What Japan Thinks

This survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, was their regular look at keitai (mobile phone) novels, a genre of writing designed to be read on a mobile phone, and often written on them too. Common features include short sentences, paragraphs and chapters, and a casual writing style featuring emoticons and graphical emoji icons. This is the 7th time this approximately bi-monthly survey has been conducted; the sixth survey translation is here for reference.

Demographics

Between the 26th and 30th of November 2010 1,087 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 16.0% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

Unfortunately, the article just notes the halt in the rise of smartphone readers of keitai novels without any analysis. I don’t really have any insights either, so any conjecture would be a pure guess, so I’ll refrain from making one.
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I haven’t seen any statistics on browser use in Japan for a while, so I was glad to get this data from goo Research via japan.internet.com on browsers.

Demographics

Between the 25th and 17th of November 2010 1,091 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.1% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.4% aged sixty or older.

Looking at worldwide statistics on browser usage Internet Explorer is on 52%, Firefox on 26% and Chrome on 11%, but these figures are based on actual page views, so it’s difficult to make a direct comparison. I was also suprised to see that only 13% here have a recommended browser at work or school, although some people might have locked-down PCs so they cannot actually make a change themselves.

You’ll note that this survey was collected on the web, yet 6.4% of the sample (70 people) said they knew what a browser was but didn’t use one… Just as well that they were eliminated from the follow-up question!
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Here is my first “best of 2010″ surveys, a look by iShare at internet slang in 2010. Not all the words are from 2010, in fact most of them are a bit older, but it is the awareness that is being investigated in this survey.

Demographics

Between the 19th and 22nd of October 2010 665 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.0% of the sample were male, 26.9% in their twenties, 35.0% in their thirties, and 38.0% in their forties.

That was a lot of fun to translate, and I learnt a bit tonight! If I have made a few mistakes along the way, please let me know.

Here’s a short animation of orz:

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A recent survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into internet donations found a higher than I expected figure of people who have donated to charity over the internet.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 13th of October 2010 1,051 members of the goo Research online monitor group copleted a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.5% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.4% in their forties, 15.5% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

I’ve never donated anything over the internet, either in Japan or overseas.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on goo Research’s 21st regular survey into mobile phone users’ use of computers.

Demographics

Between the 12th and 14th of October 2010 1,042 members of the goo Research online monitor group who had also subscribed as mobile phone users completed a private mobile phone-based questionnaire. 55.0% of the sample were female, 2.9% in their teens, 25.8% in their twenties, 36.9% in their thirties, 26.2% in their forties, and 8.3% aged fifty or older.

There’s actually not much exciting about these results, I think, but here you go anyway.

Note that the goo Research monitor group initially signs up everyone as a computer-based user, then they can elect to further complete mobile phone surveys too, thus there would be a tendency for the sample to consist of computer-centric people, so the results as difficult to extrapolate
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With mobile phone-based SNSes (well, they are more like Social Gaming Services) currently flooding television screens with advertisements, it’s easy to forget about the granddaddy of them all, mixi. goo Research haven’t as this was the subject of a survey they conducted that was reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 4th of October 2010 1,083 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.3% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I kept meaning to sign up for mixi, and even got an invite from someone, but even now with it going invite-free this March I’ve never felt the urge to sign up, as it would just be something else to ignore along with What Japan Thinks on Facebook.
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japan.internet.com recently published the highlights of goo Research’s 64th regular mobile research surve, this time focusing on mobile shopping.

Demographics

Between the 13th and 16th of September 2010 1,017 members of the goo Research mobile monitor group completed a private internet-based querstionnaire. 56.0% of the sample were female, 3.5% in their teens, 25.6% in their twenties, 39.4% in their thirties, 24.6% in their forties, and 6.9% aged fifty or older.

I’ve never bought anything through my mobile, and don’t think I ever will, at least not until I get a smartphone.

In Q2SQ2, I’m not really sure about the 3.9% who do mobile shopping while physical shopping! Perhaps it means people who for instance find a book they want in a bookshop, but pop onto Amazon to order it at a lower price?
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A recent survey from Media Interactive (iResearch) and reported on by japan.internet.com took a look at the matter of servers, with this particular article focusing on the virtualisation aspect. I’ll apologise in advance for the technical nature of this, but it’s something I’m interested in, and it’s one aspect of Cloud Computing, another buzzword that does the rounds a lot without many people particularly knowing what it actually means.

Demographics

On the 27th of August 2010 300 members of the Media Interactive monitor group who worked in organisations and has the power of approval for server purchases completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The respondents were between 20 and 79 years old, but no further demographic information was given.

Cloud Computing is one of these terms with different meaning for different people. My definition is using resources from a pool of resources, with the usage expanding and contracting on demand, and charging being based on the usage. On which device, or how many devices, or who else is sharing the device is unimportant, just that the resources are available somewhere.
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This survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, looked at keitai (mobile phone) novels, a genre of writing designed to be read on a mobile phone, and often written on them too. Common features include short sentences, paragraphs and chapters, and a casual writing style featuring emoticons and graphical emoji icons. This is the 6th time this approximately bi-monthly survey has been conducted.

Demographics

Over the 31st of August and 1st of September 2010 1,112 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.4% of the sample were male, 16.6% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 22.3% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.2% in their fifties, and 11.4% aged sixty or older.

In June, the fifth time this survey was conducted, 5.5% had read keitai novels on smartphones, and in April, the fourth time this survey was conducted and the first time the smartphone answer was highlighted, 3.8% had read keitai novels on smartphones, thus smartphone readership is slowly creeping up. However, there was no data supplied regarding smartphone ownership, but I would suspect that there would be quite a strong correlation.
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japan.internet.com has been a bit barren recently – I don’t know why they’ve decreased the number of surveys they publish – so this survey from goo Research is not one I would normally choose, but needs must. The topic was web cameras and headsets, but the published results were quite uninteresting.

Demographics

Between the 23rd and 26th of August 2010 1,041 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.0% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 12.4% aged sixty or older.

I’ve got just a headset, which I only use for very occasional internet telephone calls. I did try training Windows Vista’s speech to text software using them, but some combination of the headset, the input settings, Microsoft coding and my accent meant that I couldn’t get much more than 50% accuracy, making typing a whole lot faster.
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