How Twitter became ubiquitous in Japan
- While the popularity of Twitter has stagnated in the US, the app has mass appeal in Japan, where students use it to follow their favourite bands, anime fans list their accounts on business cards, and monks use it to share videos.
The social media platform’s popularity started growing in the country after that. So it was a surprise to Yu Sasamoto, who joined Twitter as head of Japan in 2014, when he learnt that revenue figures there were trailing other markets.
That changed when the platform in 2014 began letting advertisers promote mobile apps that encouraged users to download or open mobile apps directly from a tweet. And in November 2016, the social network hit a big milestone: 40 million people, about one-third of Japan’s population, were logging into Twitter at least once every month.
Japanese people tend to not feel comfortable expressing feelings or opinions in public.
As Twitter’s user base has stagnated in the US – where Twitter has been dogged by the perception that it’s a non-intuitive platform, more suited for public figures, entertainers, and journalists – increasing advertising dollars from Japan has propped up Twitter’s total revenue.