Twitter goes mobile in Japan

16.10.2009
It's the kind of thing that in many countries might pass largely unnoticed but the launch on Thursday in Japan by Twitter of a mobile Web site could end up being of vital importance to its success here.

More than two thirds of the 91 million people in Japan that access the Internet do so from cell phones, 8 million of them exclusively from phones, so that makes mobile access a very important component for success in Japan. The vast majority of mobile access in Japan is through WAP-like services such as NTT DoCoMo's I-mode, and Twitter's previous mobile site, a generic one for users worldwide, doesn't work well on some Japanese phones. So on Thursday the company introduced a new site just for Japan.

"I think the exciting things that you are going to see when everyone starts using it is that all the feature functionality that works on all the phones that everyone here in Japan has is totally accessible," said Kevin Thau, director of mobile business development at Twitter. "Favoriting, at-replys, setting your preferences, on each and every one of the browsers on all the carriers is the goal."

The new service doesn't just bring greater compatibility to Japanese cell phones but at least one feature that is being launched first in Japan: emoticons. The smiley faces and other icons have long been a popular inclusion in cell phone email clients here -- so much so that their absence in the iPhone generated complaints from users -- and they can now be used on Twitter through the new site.

"So I hope that everyone uses the new beta site and looks forward to things coming such as keitai (mobile) mail and many, many more new features from the Twitter service," he said.

But for many of the Twitterati in attendance at the launch party on Thursday night it's introduction means little. The networking and Web 2.0 crowd that has already embraced Twitter has chosen the iPhone as its tool of choice so easy access is already a few clicks of an application away.