As Twitter Goes Down, Japan Teases a Return to Mixi

Mixi logo held by two hands against an electric background
A mixi revival?! Fears over Twitter's future since Elon Musk's takeover have led some in Japan to consider social messaging like it's 2004.

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The big social media news of the week has been the Twitter brouhaha. Elon Musk’s confusing plan for converting Twitter to a paid service has many talking about jumping ship. In response, Japanese Twitter users have floated dusting off a social service that’s seen barely any activity since the mid-2010s.

I’m (Twitter) Blue

A recap for those whose lives don’t revolve around Twitter drama (you lucky bastards).

Last month, Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter. He promptly laid off a chunk of the staff and vowed to revamp Twitter Blue into a pay-to-play “verification” system.

Musk also declared that anyone who didn’t buy into Twitter Blue would eventually see their engagement take a nosedive. Such a move would effectively spell the end of Twitter as a free social media service.

It hasn’t quite gone according to plan. First, Musk’s team may have laid off a bit too many people. Multiple reports say Twitter is trying to convince some ejected employees to climb back into the rocket[1]. If they don’t, some former insiders say the service could slowly start crumbling[2].

To make matters worse, the number one topic of discussion on Twitter in the past week has been which post-Twitter service to hop to. A healthy percentage seems to be gravitating towards the open-source, distributed social media service Mastodon. Countersocial and CoHost are also enjoying a surge in popularity. Some users are even running back to Tumblr, which not-so-coincidentally abolished its nudity prohibition just as Musk took over.

As of this writing, people seem to be using these services primarily as Twitter backups. (Though I’m seeing increasing activity on Unseen Japan’s Mastodon account.) But that could change in an instant.

Twitter and Japan

Twitter
Picture: ぺかまろ / PIXTA(ピクスタ)

It took a few days for the panic surrounding Musk’s acquisition to bleed into Japanese Twitter. But bleed it did. Like everyone else, Japan now finds itself discussing alternatives should the whale fail one final time.

In Japan, messaging apps of any kind fall under the rubric of “SNS”, or “Social Networking Service”. It’s a broad term that encompasses a number of services that serve different purposes. For example, the top SNS service in Japan is LINE, which is a messaging app like Facebook’s WhatsApp or Tencent’s WeChat[3].

In terms of SNS apps, Twitter comes in third place behind LINE and YouTube. Social media marketing firm comnico estimates the app enjoys 45 million monthly users.

However, as in many other countries, Twitter has an outsized grip on the national conversation. Trending issues on Twitter make the national news with regular frequency.

So it’s no surprise that Japanese Twitter users would be as concerned as everyone else. In particular, the news that Musk was considering making Twitter an exclusively paid app generated a firestorm of discussion.

And that led some users to start muttering about mixi.

Some of you will hear “mixi” and be all “ahhh, fond memories”. The rest of you are probably just scratching your heads. So here’s a rundown.

Mixi: Back to 2004

Launched in 2004, Mixi started as an invite-only social media network only open to those 18 and over. The service works mostly like a Japanese version of Facebook.

In its heyday, mixi was popular – though not quite as popular as Twitter. The service peaked in 2011 with a total of 15 million daily active users. However, when Twitter took off in the mid-2010s, it took a large bite out of Mixi’s user base. Twitter’s speed, the network effect of going viral, and its support for anonymity ultimately won the day.

The service never died, though. mixi’s parent company, MIXI, managed to create several additional streams of revenue for itself independent of its social media service. Its most successful product is the mobile game Monster Strike (モンスターストライク, or モンスト). According to one source, as of 2020, the company did 72.3 billion yen (appr. USD $500M) of revenue.

The service still has its rabid fans. In 2019, ITMedia ran a survey of 1,879 mixi users. 70% of respondents said they use the service every day[8]. However, a separate survey by the marketing firm SheepDog in August also showed 50% of people in Japan have no idea what mixi is[9].

In other words, mixi is operating more as a niche site – a fate shared by other once-roaring social media services, like Tumblr.

The calls for a mixi retreat

Mixi has actually trended on Twitter quite a few times in the past few years. However, it’s usually in the context of people unearthing their ancient journal entries and suffering immense embarrassment. People use 黒歴史 (kurorekishi, dark past) to refer to the experience of logging in to their still-extant mixi accounts and scrolling their notes from 15 years back. One user reported being so embarrassed they deleted everything[10].

With the uncertainty around Twitter, mixi started trending again. But this time, instead of cringing at their decades-old fanfic, users brought up the real possibility of returning to the service should Musk’s canary die in the coal mine[11].

One user argued: “While the world’s users are wondering which unfamiliar social networking site they should use, Japanese people have a bit of an advantage because we’ve got mixi, which is like a family home holding your dark past.”[12]

Even some Japanese celebs are getting in on the act now. Dave Spector, a TV producer and Japanese talent who appears on numerous variety programs, threw his vote behind mixi recently.

Appearing on TOKYOMX’s Barairo Dandy, Spector said that payment diluted the meaning of verification. (Spector’s account is currently verified using the old procedure, which required submitting proof of identity and notability to Twitter.) However, he also admitted he’ll likely pay for Blue, given that he has 1.9 million followers on the platform[13].

Will everyone really bolt?

Talk is cheap. Currently, there aren’t any clear signs of a flood of users returning to mixi. Contrast that with the huge spike that services such as Mastodon have seen since the Musk takeover[14].

I’ll bet good money that executives at MIXI are hoping that changes. The company has had several challenging financial years in which it’s seen its profits plummet. Monster Strike suffered a huge dip in 2020 that took a chunk out of the company’s revenue. More recently, MIXI saw a 68% drop in net income between April and September. Rising costs recently forced it to stop game development[15].

My own (mostly uneducated) guess is that most Twitter users will land on one of Twitter’s competitors. Users want something that mimics Twitter’s potential openness and reach – and Mixi isn’t it.

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What to read next

Sources

[1] Elon Musk is asking Twitter employees to convince the engineers he laid off to come back, including those who can carry out his Twitter Blue subscription plan. Business Insider

[2] Here’s how a Twitter engineer says it will break in the coming weeks. MIT Technology Review

[3] 【2022年11月版】人気ソーシャルメディアのユーザー数まとめ. comnico

[4] Mixi. Wikipedia JP

[5] mixiまだ使っている人、7割が「毎日利用している」. ITMedia News

[6] 「mixi」の認知度 10~20代前半の5割「知らない」と回答. ITMedia News

[7] 株式会社ミクシィの決算/売上/経常利益を調べ、IR情報を徹底調査. Kigyo Log

[8] mixiまだ使っている人、7割が「毎日利用している」. ITMedia News

[9] 「mixi」の認知度 10~20代前半の5割「知らない」と回答. ITMedia News

[10] 令和に「mixi」が再び話題に “黒歴史日記”が時代を越え脳内にカムバック. Sirabee

[11] 「もうmixiに帰るしか」Twitter大量解雇に不安広がる ”避難先”探すユーザーたち. Yahoo! News JP

[12] user yukky115 on Twitter

[13] デーブ・スペクター、Twitter有料化に反対 「本当に取るならmixiに戻る」. NicoVideo News

[14] Mastodon usage spikes after Musk’s Twitter takeover. Insider Intelligence

[15] MIXIの4~9月、純利益68%減 ゲーム開発中止で特損. Nikkei

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