世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com reported on goo Research’s first regular Social Networking Service (SNS) usage survey. They interviewed by means of a private internet poll 1,067 members of their monitor group. 56.3% of these surveyed were female, 1.6% were in their teens, 20.8% in their twenties, 43.2% in their thirties, 21.4% in their forties, 9.1% in their fifties, and 3.9% in their sixties.

I really should join mixi just for the sake of seeing what the fuss is all about, as as I occassionally get searches from people looking for invites to said service. If any of my readers could oblige, I would be most grateful!
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japan.internet.com presented the results of a survey by goo Research into the FIFA World Cup™ and the internet. They interviewed 1,015 people from their monitor group on the 16th to 18th of this month (Japan’s second match against Croatia kicked off late on the evening of the 18th). The sample was 57.2% female, 3.0% were in their teens, 20.3% in their twenties, 42.9% in their thirties, 22.7% in their forties, 8.0% in their fifties, and 3.2% in their sixties.

The article gives a gratuitous plug to the Firefox plugin Joga, so I will too, even though I am an Opera man myself.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the issue of communication on the internet. They surveyed 1,019 members of the goo Research Montiro group by means of a private internet survey. Demographically, 55.8% were female, 2.4% were teenagers, 1,8% in their twenties, 40.4% in their thirties, 26.0% in their forties, and 9.4% in their fiftes.

The survey’s keyword was 不快感, fukaikan, or discomfort; the moment when the survey respondent felt like cursing 「ムカっ！」, muka!, an exclamation abbreviated from むかつく, mukatsuku, a feeling of irritation or annoyance.

I’m surprised that only just over one in three had been offended on the web! Whether this reflects usage patterns that stay away from viper nests like the infamous 2-channel, or whether it shows people are desensitised, I am not sure, although Q3 does indicate that almost half the respondents find net communication more offensive than face-to-face, suggesting it might be usage patterns more than sensitivity that determines whether or not people take offence.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, published the results of the 9th regular monthly survey on RSS usage. 1,013 members of the goo Research monitor group from all over Japan replied to the private internet-based survey. 56.2% of the sample was female, 2.5% were teenagers, 22.4% in their twenties, 40.6% in their thirties, 23.6% in their forties, 8.3% in their fifties, and 2.7% aged sixty or over.

I can’t say I’ve ever spotted an RSS feed with adverts in it, even though there is a Google program for AdSense for this, and there is another service whose name escapes me right now that offers a similar service. As for visiting sites with feeds, I only do so if I feel the need to comment on a post or look at who might have commented on it. Looking at my log files, I can tell from my LiveJournal feed that just 5% of the readers actually visit my site!
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at how people obtained and used audio and video contents at home. They interviewed 1,046 members of goo’s internet monitor group from all over the country by means of a private web-based questionnaire. 55.7% of the sample were female, 22.7% in their twenties, 42.6% in their thirties, 24.2% in their forrties, 7.7% in their fifties and 2.8% sixty years old or more.

The one very surprising outcome from this survey is that almost one in five has paid to download video contents! Perhaps the full results of this survey describe what type of contents people are paying for, but I have my suspicions… Conversely, only 3% admit to using P2P software.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc, looked at what people thought about mobile phone cameras. They interviewed 150 male and 150 female mobile phone owners from up and down the country; 20.0% were aged 18 or 19, and similarly 20.0% in each of the twenties, thrities, forties, and fifties age bands.

My current camera has a mere 60,000 pixels, so all it produces are pretty muddy images that look awful even on the tiny screen! However, the QR Code reader is an excellent feature that’s well-supported by many print magazines, but as I understand it they are still to make headway in the rest of the world.
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Over four day in the middle of May, goo Research asked 2,124 members of their monitor group by means of a private internet-based questionnaire about their thoughts on the upcoming 2006 FIFA World Cup™. The survey group was 50.8% female, 16.8% in their teens, 16.4% in their twenties, 20.4% in their thirties, 20.9% in their forties, 19.3% in their fifties, 5.3% in their sixties, and just 0.9% aged 70 or older.
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japan.internet.com published the results of goo Research’s 25th regular survey into blogging. Every month since April 2004 they have looked into the blogging market, and the highlights from this April’s results are presented below. They interviewed 1,068 people from their monitor group by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.1% of the sample was female, and 2.4% were in their teens, 26.6% in their twenties, 40.1% in their thirties, 20.7% in their forties, 7.7% in their fifties, and 2.5% sixty years old or older.

The huge number choosing to remain anonymous is rather surprising to me, and I’d like to find out about what sort of blogs people are hiding behind. Perhaps a further study on this matter is in order.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, looked at the use of Skype in Japan. They interviewed 1,011 people from their research monitor group by means of an internet-based questionnaire. 41.6% of the sample was male, 24.3% were in their twenties, 43.2% in their thirties, 25.4% in their forties, and 7.0% in their fifties.

Skype has been somewhat heavily promoted in Japan, with Livedoor being the main partner, and various hardware is available such as cordless phones or adapters for standard phone lines. However, with Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others offering free PC to PC VoIP service, and with the launch recently of a free IP telephony service in Japan called freep, the marketplace is getting rather crowded.

For those of you interested in learning Japanese, Tae Kim occassionally holds Skype-based language lessons.
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goo Research recently published the results of some detailed investigation into the use of portable music players. Over four days at the end of March they interviewd by means of a private internet questionnaire 2,183 members of their monitor group. The respondents were 48.2% male, with 19.1% in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 19.7% in their thirties, 21.2% in their forties, 16.6% in their fifties, 4.8% in their sixties, and 1.2% seventy years old or more.

Note that MP3 player refers to either memory based or hard-disk based players only like iPods or D-Snaps, not CD players that support MP3 file formats. I am not sure under what category phones with music playback support are recorded; perhaps they are “Other”?

I’ve recently been testing a Sony NW-A3000 but I couldn’t really recommend it to anyone. The 20 Gb hard disk is nice, of course, but the PC-based software is unwieldy to say the least, as is the player software. Pet hates include that random shuffle seems not as random as it should be, doing Pause then Play will result in a one-second or so skip, and recharging the player resets the player back to the first track. I’ve heard that the iPod balances out the volume, but the Sony doesn’t, so I have to keep fiddling with the sound levels. On the other hand, I did manage to find an almost complete archive of Just A Minute, but on the downside I perhaps scare the other train passengers as I try to stifle laughs during my commute.
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