New under-the-radar Q&A site making waves
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.
| Site Name | Monthly uniques | Monthly usage (h:mm:ss) | Site genre |
| Hatsugen Komachi | 670,000 | 1:21:50 | Bulletin board |
| YouTube | 18,320,000 | 1:17:38 | Video viewing |
| 2 channel | 9,400,000 | 0:56:19 | Bulletin board |
| Yahoo! Chiebukuro | 13,230,000 | 0:13:03 | Q&A site |
| Oshiete! goo | 6,420,000 | 0:05:08 | Q&A site |
One important issue when comparing sites is that the user profile is older and female-biased, as the following tables show.
| Site name | Male | Female |
| Hatsugen Komachi | 46 | 54 |
| YouTube | 58 | 42 |
| 2 channel | 60 | 40 |
| Yahoo! Chiebukuro | 54 | 46 |
| Oshiete! goo | 54 | 46 |
| Site name | Teenagers | 20-29 years old | 30-39 years old | 40-49 years old | 50 years old and over |
| Hatsugen Komachi | 7% | 10% | 36% | 30% | 17% |
| YouTube | 27% | 12% | 21% | 25% | 16% |
| 2 channel | 16% | 11% | 28% | 29% | 16% |
| Yahoo! Chiebukuro | 16% | 12% | 27% | 27% | 18% |
| Oshiete! goo | 12% | 13% | 29% | 28% | 19% |
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.
Read more on: hatsugen komachi,it media,yomiuri shimbun
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