世論 What Japan Thinks

I looked at RSS feed usage yesterday and expressed surprise at the relatively low level of usage, but this new survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into web site viewing habits reveals perhaps that there is not much need for RSS.

Demographics

On the 4th of September 2008 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor pool who used the internet at home completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.6% of the sample were male, 3.3% in their teens, 11.8% in their twenties, 30.5% in their thirties, 24.5% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, 8.5% in their sixties, and 5.7% in their seventies or older.

I was going to quote similar figures on site usage from the UK or USA, but I couldn’t find anything useful through Google! If someone knows of a “What the UK/USA Thinks”-like web site, please let me know.

Although there are few people performing their regular site checks through RSS, with the majority having no more than five places to visit, RSS is perhaps not that necessary. However, do people start checking more sites once they learn about RSS, or do they keep the same number but just do their checks quicker? That would be an interesting topic for a survey.
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I get the impression that iShare’s monitor panel is relatively web-savvy, but the results from a recent survey into RSS (Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary) indicates that there is still relatively little use.

Demographics

Over the 4th and 5th of September 2008 309 members of the CLUB BBQ free email service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.3% of the sample were male, 12.9% in their twenties, 43.4% in their thirties, 32.4% in their forties, and 11.3% in their teens or aged fifty or older.

One of the most powerful ways to use RSS is through Google Blog Search and Google News; after typing in the search you want to make, look at the left-hand column and find the “RSS” link. This gives you a link that can be pasted into a suitable RSS reader (I use Google Reader) and every time a new blog post or news story that matches that search appears the results appear in your reader.

Finally, you can get both this blog and the latest comments through RSS.
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Regular readers will know that the most popular search engine in Japan is Yahoo!, with Google just a few percentage points behind, but what do people do at these sites? This recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com looking at web search tried to answer these questions.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 12th of September 2008 1,060 members of the goo Research monitor panel (the report actually says goo users, but I don’t know how accurate that is) completed an online survey. 51.9% of the sample were male, 11.6% in their teens, 22.2% in their twenties, 22.0% in their thirties, 19.0% in their forties, and 25.3% aged fifty or older.

Ego-searching is looking for your own name in the search engines. Not suprisingly, lots of relevant information turns up about me since I’ve got a unique double-barrel that I use online a bit. However, my full birth name turns up absolutely zero, which is not surprising as I don’t often use my middle name.
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The figure in the headline is a surprisingly high one, coming from this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into measures to prevent leaks of information.

Demographics

Over the 28th and 29th of August 2008 300 people from the Marsh monitor panel with home computers completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, and 20.0% in each age group from the twenties to the over-sixties.

The difference in Q1 between online shopping and online checkout is that many services offer not just online payment, but also offline payment at convenience store kiosks, and even cash on delivery to said convenience stores.

For Q2SQ, my wife had that, filling in a dodgy survey from a site linked from a popular trustworthy site, and she gets about 10 spam per day from them.
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This survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com looking into issues surrounding Google Maps Street View.

Demographics

On the 20th of August 2008 332 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor panel employed in either the public or private sectors completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.7% of the sample were male, 6.3% in their twenties, 35.8% in their thirties, 45.2% in their forties, and 12.7% in their fifties.

The Google camera car didn’t make a trip up my street, despite being right beside a railway station on the most overcrowded (or so I heard, I should search for figures!) line in the Kansai area. When I used my old computer with Street View it was horribly slow, although I did manage to find my previous flat. I had a look around the area but didn’t find anyone I knew, however.
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There was a short report on IT Media about a new female-oriented site that is threatening to break into the big time. This under-the-radar idiom is お化けサイト, obake saito, or ghost/monster site. At least I hope that’s what the meaning is!

The site is entitled 発言小町, hatsugen komachi, or in English Talk Town might be a reasonable translation, a sub-site on the Yomiuri Shimbun’s site. Although the monthly unique visitors from home computers are a factor of ten to twenty behind the big boys, the average time spent per unique visitor is far ahead of the competition, as this chart shows.

One important issue when comparing sites is that the user profile is older and female-biased, as the following tables show.

Looking at other articles, two of the main selling points of the site to the female population are that all posts are moderated before posting and that the a lot of the highlighted content on the front page reads like the problem page of a woman’s magazine.

Story from the Japanese original on IT Media.

No serious internet user should be without Google, and this research conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into Google service awareness shows that many Japanese use it heavily.

Demographics

On the 11th of August 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group employed in either the public or private sector completed a private on-line questionnaire. 76.1% of the sample were male, 9.4% in their twenties, 37.9% in their thirties, 40.3% in their forties, 10.6% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

As Yahoo! beats Google in Japan for most aspects, I’d love to see similar questions asked about that portal too.

Note that this survey was conducted after the Japanese versions of Google Maps Street View was launched, and although Q1SQ1 does not mention it, I wonder if Google Maps was included within the Google Earth answer? I also wonder if AdSense was grouped with AdWords.
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The number in the headline is quite surprisingly high, I feel, as revealed by this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into web filtering. The survey was specifically looking at service for blocking web pages with content deemed to be harmful.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 4th of August 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20:20:20:20:20 of people in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and sixty or older.

Sadly, details of why people use filtering services was not described. What it for protection from viruses, to stop their children accessing unsuitable material, or what? Without purchasing the full survey results we will never know.
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Although other reports have shown that visitors to the home-grown competitor to YouTube, Nico-Nico Douga, stay longer and watch more per session, in terms of both visitor numbers and total viewing time, YouTube is still ahead. Therefore, this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc looked only at YouTube.

Demographics

On the 6th of August 2008 330 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group employed inb either public or private industry completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 69.7% of the sample were male, 9.7% in their twenties, 36.1% in their thirties, 41.2% in their forties, 10.6% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

Q1 is a bit of a poor question as when you first access it defaults to the country and language setting of you browser (I think), but from a menu on top you can change both the language and the default country, so presenting a binary Japan versus USA is incorrect. I use Japan as my location and UK English as my language, so how would I answer?

Q2 is also confusing as what is entertainment? I guess that means clips from television variety programs, but it’s difficult to be sure.
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If you want to find a reason to dislike Japan, visiting 2 channel is probably the best place to start. This recent survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com into the 2 channel bulletin board system found an awful lot of people use the place.

Demographics

On the 10th of July 2008 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group employed in either the private or public sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 74.9% of the sample were male, 7.3% in their twenties, 40.2% in their thirties, 38.1% in their forties, and 14.5% in their fifties.

The popular image of 2 channel amongst the portion of the gaijin internet users that I am familiar with is of it as a place of unfettered right-wing strongly-nationalistic hate-mongerers. A standing joke, based very much on fact, is that whenever a Japanese person commits a headline-worthy crime, the 2 channelers will dig up a Korean ancestor for them so as to deny the wrong-doer is one of “us”.

Having said that, I don’t really know what percentage of 2 channel (by volume or by frequency of access) is of that reprehensible kind. Do any of my readers have a feel for this?

Oh, and 2 channel is blocked at work by our firewall proxy, I think. I can’t check as they’ve just recently started asking people about why they accessed blocked sites, and I don’t fancy trying to explain that away!
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