Twitter had its first language localization in Japan, its first ads (and profitable ones), its first groups (not exactly lists), and now, the “What’s happening” company is trying out a payment model.

How I ended up on French TV talking about Japan. And linking the TV journalists with entrepreneurs on the ground in less than three days for a full show.

Twitter has become a link machine. For the better. The focus is back on the context and creating trust. My view on the need for a self-definition of a social architecture.

What a day it was. What a week it was.
Last Friday, the launch event of TEDxTokyo was held in the Japanese capital. The independently organized TED talks was months in the making, by a great team of highly-dedicated people that wanted to add new voices to the Ideas Worth Spreading.
Andrew and I were contacted in [...]

Today, I’ll try a new viral experiment with Andrew Shuttleworth: Extreme Hanami.
We decided to greenlight that idea we’ve had for a week and set up a StoryTlr website: www.extremehanami.com
The idea is to do 5 Hanami spots (what’s a Hanami?) in 5 hours this afternoon and live casting the event using Qik for video, Flickr for [...]

Yesterday saw the third episode in the revamped JapanTechTalk podcast. Since it happened at the same time as my sayonara party, Robert Sanzalone got a big surprise as Andrew Shuttleworth, Steve Nagata, Joseph Tame, Rob Cawte and myself crashed the podcast after 15 minutes!
Only Kristopher Tate was too busy winning his UNO game to attend!
Before that, the [...]

I recently participated in a podcast with Robert Sanzalone in Nagoya. We’ve talked mostly about MobileinJapan.com, the community I’ve created with Andrew Shuttleworth about everything mobile in the keitai country.
It was made via an iPhone with a newest (and great) TalkShoe offering.
It’s called Podcast on Demand. I was on episode #3.
The show will soon be [...]

I was reading this Slate article today, and it struck me once more: people love Facebook, yet they tend to find the service “creepy”. Pardon me, but it’s just naive.
150 millions users, apparently logging in at least once a day. Yes, Facebook is a runaway success. It has made a long way since it’s college-alumni [...]

Look at your Twitter feed. Retweet is the new Twitter trend, but there’s no cohesion on how it’s done.
Until Twitter decides to implement the feature directly, the developers are having a innovation field day on how to do it:
Retweet @, RT @, via @, etc.
Since we get only 140 characters to get a message through [...]

iRovr.com, a social media experiment launched on the iPhone/iPod Touch only, is having lots of trouble lately. It goes without saying that competition is hard these days in the social media sphere.
Legacy gone
The founder recently sent a message to all the iRovr users, both on the service and by e-mail, explaining that financial difficulties were [...]

I stumbled upon an interesting read today, comparing Twitter and Plurk.
Ed Rowan mentions in his latest blog post that Plurk in content-centric while Twitter is user-centric.
While true to a point and besides the technical difficulties that Ed relates, I won’t be going to Plurk for my daily interaction. Here’s why.
Audience
In all certainty, Plurk is a [...]

There’s no dignified retreat to the retweet frenzy these days. As of late, I’ve been retweeting a lot. Is that a sign that I’ve got nothing to say? You cannot afford to think so. The retweet is one of the most powerful tool in the Twitter-world.
Re-what?
What’s a retweet? It’s simply repeating an entry you’ve seen [...]

Updated December 13, 2008 11:14am | In the ever-competing world of micro-blogging site, there is one I hold dear to my heart, Rejaw.
This service, launched in August 2008, has had some great features from the start. Will them help it survive against Twitter?
Company
Rejaw is a creation of Infoteria, the Japanese company behind the nifty live-chat [...]

SocialToo is the another entry to the Twitter Economy series. Since it’s a direct Qwitter competitor, it naturally follows the first entry that was dedicated to this service.
What’s SocialToo anyway
SocialToo is working to compliment your social experience by providing you with all the tools you need to get the most you can from those you [...]

As Twitter becomes widely adopted -almost 5 million and counting-, it is maybe time to ask the following question: Is there such a thing as a Twittetiquette?
Interacting
If you are a user of Twitter, there are chances you’ve sometimes asked yourself the question on how to use the tool, how to exactly interact with other users.
There’s certainly [...]

According to a recent study by Epsilon, it appears that despite the impressive growth that both Facebook and MySpave have seen since 2003, chief marketing officers (CMO) at leading brands are not too interested in using social media in their marketing mix.
The numbers
Epsilon’s survey shows that 22% of CMO were not too interested, while a [...]

Qwitter is my first entry to the Twitter Economy, the expanded world around Twitter.
What’s Qwitter anyway
As their motto says it, it’s about “Catching Twitter Quitters”: a simple tool that automatically sends you an e-mail update whenever one of your followers un-follows you.
The email recevied not only tells you who quit on you, but also after [...]

Some of you probably remember the days when Google emerged as the leader in search. Overnight, a whole new breed of services emerged and used it a their main growth engine.
From SEO advisers to meta-searchers to browser add-ons, you name it.
Today, with Twitter, there’s a similar burgeoning breed of tools created around the micro-blogging leader.
That’s [...]

If, as a brand or a individual, you’ve ever been using recent social networking tools and older ones like RSS feeds, Google Alerts and the grandfather of social networking, the email, you’ve certainly reached a point where you were wondering how you’d be able to follow all the chatter that was happening in front of [...]

We really appreciate your continued support and understanding. Thanks so much for being part of the Pownce community.
With these words, the Pownce team announced today that the micro-blogging service will be gone by December 15th.
The technology was acquired by Six Apart, the company behind TypePad and Movable Type.
Leah and Mike will be joining the team [...]

Twitter is the fastest-growing social community, according to the latest Nielsen statistics. The unique audience is reaching 2.4 million with visitors almost at 5.6 million, according to ComScore.
Still, it’s not mainstream. Yet, in the current economic downturn, finding the right revenue model is becoming more important than ever.
Ads and… ?
The company wants to add ads. [...]