世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently reported on an interesting survey conducted by Nifty, comnico and Lifemedia into social media usage, focusing on young soon-to-graduate students.

Demographics

Between the 8th and 11th of March 2013 559 social media-using people who were due to graduate at the end of this academic year and were aged between 20 and 26 completed an internet survey, but it was not reported how the sample was gathered. 62.1% of the sample were female, and 37.9% male.

Coincidentally, my new group leader today introduced himself, including his Facebook page, and suggested that people interested should befriend him, so I shall do that and see what happens…
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The headline reveals a rather obvious conclusion from a survey by Ceres Inc into LINE (an extremely popular chat app) usage, which was reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of February 2013 806 LINE users aged 16 or older competed a smartphone-based survey. More detailed demographics are not given, but the sample most likely came from users of the moppy web site.

I’ve never downloaded LINE myself, and in fact had never even used chat even casually until last week, when I got invited into a group chat on Google+ for smartphones. It’s been an ongoing discussion which I’ve been finding rather fun to participate in, and I can now understand the attraction of text chat services! However, due to me being a stingy git, I only take part when my train journey to and from work takes me past a public wi-fi point.

Note that stickers are basically clipart emoticons that you can paste into your chat; the Japanese term is “stamp”.
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Having had a rather negative look at SNS obsessions earlier this week, today we turn round 180 degrees with a report on japan.internet.com about a survey conducted by Just Systems into how things are between married couples since they started using LINE, a free text and voice chat service that is taking Japan by storm.

Demographics

Over the 11th and 12th of January 2013 800 married men and women (400 of each sex, but it is not clear if they are 400 couples) who both talk with each other on LINE completed a private internet-based questionnaire. They were aged between 20 and 49 years old, but no further demographics were provided.

Note that “talk” in the questions below covers both text and voice chat. In Q2, I don’t know if the imbalance in the sexes indicates that it was not couples married to each other who completed the survey, or if women don’t reply sometimes, or people are poor at estimating, or some combination of these or other factors.
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A recent survey from MMD Laboratory entitled 2012 smartphone user insight survey confirmed a trend I have seen with my own eyes; SNS usage, in particular LINE, has really taken off.

Demographics

Few demographics were presented; just that over the 18th and 19th of December 2012 670 smartphone using members of the MMD monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was aged between 20 and 59 years old.

When I initially read this survey, I was surprised to see email not featured anywhere, but finally I noticed that it was considered a built-in function. What I would really like to learn, though, is what people use for their main email provider; is it their carrier’s functionality or do they choose GMail or other third-party providers?
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