世論 What Japan Thinks

[part 1] [part 2]

Last weekend goo Research, in conjunction with Yomiuri Weekly, released the results of a survey into what people thought the coming year may bring. For a week spanning the end of November and the start of December 11,648 members of goo’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.2% of the respondents were male, 5.9% in their teens, 18.9% in their twenties, 29.9% in their thirties, 21.5% in their forties, 11.9% in their fifties and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

The economic outlook in Q4 seem very bleak, but remember this is the viewpoint of the average person in the street, not the pronoucements of politicians, as there seems to be a lot of pundits suggesting that the recent economic growth in Japan has not trickled down to the workers, but instead has been used for investment or passing on to shareholders.
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japan.internet.com today reported on the results of an opinion poll conducted by goo Research on the subject of search engines and advertising keywords. They interviewed 1,099 ordinary members of their monitor group by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample was male, 24.9% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 22.2% in their forties, 20.6% in their fifties, and 10.7% in their sixties. This article is only a excerpt from their full report, which seems to have lots more relevant statistics regarding this subject.

I’m very curious to know whether search keywords are used as heavily in other countries. The majority of television adverts seem to have keywords, often with no URL, greatly outnumbering those with only URLs. I also wonder if any of these Japanese advertising search terms have been usurped by googlebombing, as they do seem ripe for targeting.

Interestingly enough, the page on “Google bombing” in Wikipedia is translated into 17 other languages, but Japanese is conspicuous by its absence. Googlebombing (Google 爆撃, bakugeki) only appears once in Japanese Wikipedia in the middle of another page discussing SEO techniques. Surely there must be some well-known Japanese Googlebombs, or even Yahoobombs, since that engine is the winner in Q1?
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Recently, goo Research published the results of an opinion poll it conducted on the subject of children’s extra-curricular education. Demographics are sketchy – the only available information is that the parents of 1,026 children aged between 3 and 14 years old. For people with more than one child, I’m not sure exactly how they answered – averaging all children, picking one, or each individually. 41% of the children were boys, 59% girls. The fieldwork was conducted between the 14th and 16th of November.

I know that there is a big industry around children’s education, what with advertisements on prime-time television showing children aged just four or five intensely studying, an image that makes me and my memories of a stress-free childhood uncomfortable. When it comes round to my turn to have children, I’d like to say I want to keep my kids away from this sort of pressure; I’d only want to force, or at least strongly persuade a future mini-me to study music or dance for enjoyment, as it probably is the one thing I most regret not having any ability in.

For the English teachers in my audience, note that in Q3 almost one in five want to make their kids take English lessons, surely a business opportunity for you all!
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japan.internet.com recerntly reported on an opinion poll conducted just before Christmas by goo Research on the subject of awareness of Web 2.0. 1,075 people from their monitor group successfully completed the internet-based private survey. 53.5% of the sample was male, 17.9% in their teens, 19.7% in their twenties, 16.8% in their thirties, 17.4% in their forties, and 28.2% aged fifty or older. Note that this demographic is slightly more male and younger than the average monitor group from goo Research; perhaps due to Christmas and other end of year activities the sample was slightly skewed?

For me, I’d have to say that I’m fed up hearing about it, and it’s over-hyped, an answer that sadly was not available. Perhaps that’s one of the 20 others in Q1SQ1?

As can be seen in Q2 and the headline, Google users seem more aware of Web 2.0, although the exact causal relationship is unclear. All in all an interesting but puzzling set of results.

In case you’re wondering, here The Register sums up what Web Two Point Naught is all about.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by goo Research into Wikipedia usage. 1,088 members of their monitor panel successfully completed the internet-based opinion poll. 47.1% of the sample was male, 20.9% in their twenties, 41.8% in their thirties, 26.5% in their forties, and 10.8% in their fifties.

This month, Japanese Wikipedia was chosen as the overall grand prize winner in the “WEB of the Year 2006″ (Japanese link) awards. In addition, on the 15th of this month it crossed the 300,000 article mark.

With Wikipedia, if I am looking up a simple fact I know I can most likely trust the article, but for not just anything remotely controversial but also others that require specialised knowledge I find myself often wondering if it is correct or not, and end up doing my own research to corraborate the data! Having said all that, I did refer today to two articles which referred to current events and I was pleased to find information that I found useful and trustworthy. On the other hand, did I find it trustworthy just because the information supported my stance on the matters concerned?
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japan.internet.com recently reported on goo Research’s fourth regular Social Networking Service (SNS) survey, conducted at the start of December amongst 1,093 members of their internet monitor pool. 54.2% of the respondents were female, 2.4% in their teens, 21.7% in their twenties, 38.5% in their thirties, 24.2% in their forties, 9.8% in their fifties, and 3.5% aged sixty or older.

It’s interesting to notice the distinct (but predictable) split in the sexes in Q1SQ2 – women use SNSs primarily to communicate, men use it for finding others who share their hobbies.

Oh, and I’m still to use the invitation to mixi I got sent by one of my readers perhaps over six months ago…
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At the start of December japan.internet.com published the results of an opinion poll conducted by goo Research into next generation DVD systems. 1,091 members of their monitor group successfully completed an internet-based questionnaire. 47.2% of the group was male, 21.2% in their twenties, 38.0% in their thirties, 28.1% in their forties, and 12.6% in their fifties.

I too am confused by the upcoming standards war, and have no particular urge to purchase either system, as almost all of the contents I currently watch is self-recorded video tapes, so I’ll probably end up getting whatever high-density DVD is fitted in the hard-disk recorder that I plan to buy sometime, although I suspect that standard DVD-based recorders might start dropping into a very attractive price band soon.
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japan.internet.com released the results of an opinion poll conducted this month by goo Research into searching for your own name and others on the internet. 1,088 people successfully completed the internet-based private questionnaire. 56.3% of the sample was male, 21.8% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 11.5% in their fifties.

This practice is known as egosurfing and is fun from not just the ego point of view, but also for finding others of the same name – my non-double-barreled name is shared with a commentator for the Jets (what Jets, or what sport, I don’t know), a member of the Manitoba Hockey Players Foundation, president for Veridiem Inc, a member of Consumer Direct Scotland, and someone mapping Hong Kong’s cultural landscapes. Interestingly enough, my wife’s name turns up zero Japanese hits and just one false English hit.
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Last month japan.internet.com reported on an opinion poll conducted by goo Research into mobile phones and promotional sites. 1,049 members of goo Research’s monitor pool responded to a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.5% of the sample was female, 1.7% in their teens, 24.4% in their twenties, 41.0% in their thirties, 25.0% in their forties, and 7.9% in their fifties.
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of an opinion poll conducted by goo Research towards the end of November into sponsored blogging. 1,093 people from their internet monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based poll. 57.0% of the sample was female, 2.1% in their teens, 20.4% in their twenties, 42.4% in their thirties, 24.9% in their forties, and 10.2% in their fifties.

This practice is often disparagingly called “astroturfing”, meaning faking grass roots support. When it is disguised support, I hate it too, but when made clear I don’t really mind it; to illustrate using my current AdWords advertisers, the subtle and distrusted astroturfing would be something like:

By the way, recently I’ve been dabbling in hedge funds, and found the info at HedgeSynergy invaluable…

The obvious format, which Japundit do really well (now, did they pay me to say that?), is:

You may wish to visit my sponsor at Hayden-Harnett, which seems to be selling rather nice accessories and the like.

My personal least favourite is the habit of using (disclosure: I have a relationship with the company) which to me always reads as (disclosure: they pay me to say this).

There’s also a company PayPerPost which, as the name perhaps suggests, pays you to post about a product or service; actually, they are more of an introduction service, introducing advertisers with advertisees. I’ve not used them though, and I don’t think that sort of blogging would fit in well with this web site.
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