I really do. On Friday I did a cover day in Ebisu, and I was kinda hoping my last student of the day would cancel so that I could leave at 7.30 instead of 9. And I’ve got to say I’m really glad he didn’t. As it turns out my last student was a guy called Asanao, who is the head of SEO at Excite Japan. Doesn’t sound very exciting? Well it is to me, as SEO was my new favourite area of work before I decided to up and leave for Tokyo.

SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation) is a pretty geeky subject by all means - but when you work in online publishing and content management, like I did and still do in my spare time, it’s a pretty big thing. So anyways turns out this guy is the head of SEO at Excite Japan, a pretty big online directory, search engine and portal. Those of you in the UK might know the name quite well if you browse the net regularly. Excite.com burnt out in the US following the burst of the online bubble, but the Japan (and Italian) branches of the company stayed strong, and in Japan it’s doing quite well.

So we get talking and this guy is telling me about all this new SEO stuff happening out here, including the big new mobile SEO stuff which out here is becoming key in 2007, as a huge portion of the Japanese population accesses online content via their mobile and also uses them for email (SMS is pretty much dead in Japan, though you can still use it). And if you’ve ever rode a train out here you’ll know that to be the case seeing as most people are glued to their mobiles constantly - whether they’re browsing or playing games.

What’s more this is the guy who developed the exblog software, used by over half a million people in Japan to power their blogs. Think of it as a small, Japanese blogspot.com equivalent. I couldn’t believe it - this dude was the one who’d created and developed the engine for exblog and set the whole thing up back in the early 2000s. He’s also responsible for creating an honyaku (’translator’) which is widely used today in Japan, and apparently really popular with students who use it in their exams :lol:. Turns out they get huge spikes in traffic around exam time in the country. Priceless.

As we got talking some more he mentioned how C2C electronic commerce networks have become major points of interest for companies like Excite. In the wake of Web 2.0 (ahhh nothing like catchy terms to describe something) a lot of companies have realised that C2C (Consumer to Consumer) networks hold the key to selling all sorts of goods online. C2C networks like Ebay have proved that already, but now a lot more people (and even governments) are paying attention. There has already been a surge in various new forms of C2C networks over the last few years, especially in relation to music to help counteract the spread and effect of P2P illegal networks and their replacements, and you can expect to see more and more of them and in various new shapes and forms in the coming year, especially for mobile internet.

He also showed me this new project they’re working on - a huge mobile online community a la Second Life but without the virtual 3D element. Called Ekimobi it’s currently got over 300 thousand members and they reckon they’ll reach a million within a year. At the moment Ekimobi is still in the first stages, but it includes such absolutely geeky and pointless things as full 3D avatars and personalised online pages. However their next step, and one I think is definitely intriguing, is the launch of a shop system which will allow people to create customised lists of favourite things (like say albums) and in turn allow people to buy anything from these lists on websites like Amazon Japan. In turn when this happens the buyer and seller will receive points which can then be used to buy things online or even be reedemed for real money. And that’s not all, they’re planning to develop a system whereupon these ’shop lists’ would also be tied in to actual physical locations in Japan, like say Shibuya for example, and be worth more points for the buyer and seller depending on where the shop’s location is - adding an element of real estate into the whole thing as well as making it more ‘real’, rather than creating their own world and locations like Second Life has done.

We also spent some time discussing how he thought the internet would change in coming years, and start to move towards a much more mobile consumed media with laptops and desktops slowly fading out. I can definitely see this happen in a place like Japan, where mobile internet is already a massive part of the market and the way in which people consume it. However I’ve got a feeling it’s not quite going to be such a fast change in other parts of the world. We also discussed how mobile carriers may become a thing of the past soon, as wireless networks expand and become more available everywhere. I’ve got to admit that’s one thing I’ve been surprised about since moving to Tokyo - there aren’t that many free wireless spots around town, that I’ve found anyways. Whereas in Europe it’s definitely becoming more and more common in big urban areas.

Basically I spent an hour being a total geek with this guy and finding out about loads of new stuff. It was wicked and really made my day. It’s definitely one of the perks of the job when something like this happens - and he was a really nice guy too, if a bit geeky and serious. You can tell he loves what he does though - and he spends his weekend with his family watching youtube videos on his Wii! :grin:

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written by Laurent