Kenji Kasahara, the chief executive of Mixi, one of Japan’s most popular social networking sites.

      Facebook has stepped up efforts to tailor its service to Japan. A Japanese version of the site, translated free by volunteers, was introduced a few years ago, but the company opened a Tokyo office in February to customize the site for Japan. (Facebook’s Japanese site, for example, allows users to display their blood types, considered an important personality trait here.)

      Some users complain that Facebook’s Japanese-language site is awkward to use.

      People like Maiko Ueda, 26, a Mixi devotee, see little reason to switch. Ms. Ueda, who works at a stationer based in Osaka, logs into Mixi at least once a day to read other users’ “diaries,” which resemble status updates on Facebook, albeit in longer form. She uploads pictures of her American shorthair cat, and sometimes writes about her day in her own posts.

      But most people on Mixi do not know her real name, nor have they seen what she looks like. In her five years on Mixi, she has never uploaded a photo of herself.

      She has heard of Facebook but says she is suspicious of “how open it seems.”

      “I don’t want to give it my real name,” Ms. Ueda said. “What if strangers find out who you are? Or someone from your company?” She spoke on the condition that her Mixi user name would not be revealed.

      In a survey of 2,130 Japanese mobile Web users by the Tokyo-based MMD Laboratory, 89 percent of respondents said they were reluctant to disclose their real names on the Web. Specialists say that while Facebook users in the United States tend to recreate real-life social relationships online, many Japanese use Web anonymity to express themselves, free from the pressures to fit into a conformist workplace.

      In a 2010 survey by Microsoft of social network use among 3,000 people in 11 Asia-Pacific countries and regions, respondents on average said that only about one-quarter of their friends on social networking sites were close friends. In Japan, more than half of all respondents said that not one of their acquaintances on social networks was a close friend.

      Mixi has grown by letting users sign up with pseudonyms, and gives its subscribers fine-tune controls over who sees posts and other uploads. Mixi also lets users closely monitor who has viewed their profiles with a function known as “footprints.”

      In contrast, Facebook has insisted that Japanese users adhere to its real-name policy. “Facebook values real-life connections,” warns a message that pops up when a Japanese user withholds information, like the traditional characters used in names. “Please use your real name,” it reads.

      “I think there has to be an event, a celebrity signing up for Facebook, or something else that teaches Japanese users that identifying themselves online isn’t scary and can be useful,” said Toshihiko Michibata, an e-commerce and social media consultant in Japan.

      Japan could be an extreme case of the privacy issues that Facebook is tackling elsewhere. Facebook introduced stronger privacy controls in May after groups complained that it shared too much personal data.

      “The dangers of too little privacy may be lost in the global Facebook fad, but it’s likely to become a growing problem elsewhere,” said a popular blogger known online as Akky Akimoto, who does not reveal his real name and refuses to be photographed in public. “I’d hate it if people on the street recognize me, without me knowing.”

      Still, Facebook may have a powerful force on its side: Japanese consumers’ penchant for all things new.

      With Mixi in its seventh year, it is starting “to feel old,” said Mitsuyo Nakata, a Web designer. Its growth has slowed, as have advertising revenue and investor confidence. Profits have fallen at Mixi for three of the last four quarters, and its stock price has slumped 70 percent since its initial public offering in 2006.

      In an interview with the Nippon Television Network in November, Mr. Kodama, the Facebook manager for Japan, said he was confident that users would start warming to Facebook’s real-name policy once they discovered the usefulness of finding old classmates online.

      “The Internet in Japan has not been so closely connected with real society,” he said. “Those other community sites can keep offering the joys of staying remote from real life.”

Source from The New York Times