What makes Gigazine so very cool
Image by Adonis Chen via FlickrGigazine is a top Japanese blog that covers Japanese society with over 96% of its traffic coming from Japan only . 13% of the blogs in the world are Asian in origin and Gigazine is one of the few non-English language blogs in the Technorati top 100. Gigazine was created by Satoshi Yamasaki and Mazaki Keito and is Japan’s most popular blog according to Time Magazine . The Guardian UK rated Gigazine the 23rd largest blog in the world .
For people outside of Japan to access the web site, you will need to use a translation service like Google or Babel Fish to comprehend fully the glory that is native Japanese culture . The blog focuses on a niche of all that is weird and wonderful happening in Japan. It has an edgy younger audience that loves the reviews of technology, society, and the never-ending obsession with video games and avatars . The audience is well defined, and while many people read it the core audience of 18 to 34 is the standard audience that many bloggers aim at.
Gigazine started in 2000 and only started going into the blog format in 2006, so it is a relative new comer to the blogging world. What started as a static page site , quickly found that the blogging style and platform was robust enough to manage the millions of page hits the site was getting each day. The readership grew when they swapped over to the blogging style, meaning they were able to make the change without losing their core audience. That is always an issue when a company changes the look, feel, and operation of their web site.
In an effort to branch out into other languages, in March of 2008 Gigazine launched an English language site for their blog that is also proving to be popular for people who follow and track trends that are happening in Japan when it comes to games, technology, and entertainment.
Gigazine might be the best source of finding out what is hot in Japan. Americans usually get technology that has been proven in Japan first, from cell phones, to smaller gaming platforms, to televisions. This is one of the important elements about international electronics, while Korea is also a place to test electronics first; usually new systems will show up in Akihabara first.
Gigazine covers what is happening in the Japanese electronics district, Akihabara , the US bloggers can get a quick view on technology, and gadgets that people in the USA might never see, or if they do see them, it will be 3 to 5 years later. The addition of the English language site will extend the reach of Gigazine into the USA market, with the expectation that Americans already fascinated by authentic Japanese culture will find the barriers of language lowered or removed and spend time on the web site. What is interesting is that the Japanese to English translation is automated, meaning that the reader using the service can be often confused by headlines like,
“The cause of “the smell” of the wash dried as to the inside which is unpleasant to live dryness and .”
The translation service also strips out many of the ads that run on the parent site, so viewers get a relatively uncluttered view of the web site, but Gigazine is missing an opportunity to monetize the site as well. Gigazine caters to a niche market of technology, toys, general weirdness about limited edition coffee cups at chain stores, and other fun things that are happening in Japan. Much like the BoingBoing model of tracking all that is weird and interesting in society in general, Gigazine is part technology blog, part running commentary on life in Japan, and part generalized cultural psychosis that appeals to the 18 to 34 age group that they cater to. The items that have made Gigazine successful are:
1. Ability to tap their readership across multiple viewpoints and channels, from the technology, society, and fun viewpoint
2. They are experts in their field, they have been writing about technology, toys, and society since 2000, and by having a clear focus on Japan and Japanese culture, they have been able to tap the zeitgeist of the culture and turn it into words and images
3. They understand their niche, and have expanded that niche slowly while not compromising the experience of the core audience that they have developed
4. They have a well developed social fabric around their web site and the items that they discuss
Gigazine is relatively unknown outside of Japan and is mostly linked by other Japanese bloggers, with the occasional out of country link. The addition of the English language site once it becomes better known will provide the opportunity for them to expand into an international audience, and most likely become a major source of information for American gadget blogs. The attention-grabbing part of how Gigazine operates is that Gigazine starts the conversation that other bloggers pick up and run with the rest of the story. Gigazine articles are usually very short, about 200 words in length, leaving much of the discussion about what the issue or toy might mean to a legion of other Japanese bloggers.
The ability to start the conversation by presenting something, saying if it is cool or not, or some small chunk of culture and pointing to it supports the community in a way that is often not seen in comparable blogging styles in America. The closest that another blog comes to this same style is Techdirt , with an entire story in 200 words, leaving other bloggers to fill in more information if they want to. The cooperative nature of Japanese culture works best when the full story becomes a collaborative effort amongst a number of bloggers.
Gigazine is a success story by being one of the very few non-English language blogs to crack the Technorati top 100, and by being a relative newcomer to the blogging world and how the blogging format can be used to support a diverse group of readers. Gigazine is truly a reflection of the Japanese cooperative culture, by providing seed stories for other bloggers to run with and then getting the link back to the original Gigazine article. The web site has a unique mixture of American blogging styles that have been incorporated into its own unique Japanese style (much as anime and cartoons have morphed into each other) that reflects their culture and ideals. Gigazine is one of those rare gem web sites that takes the best of many American blogging models and turns those models into something truly unique and original.
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