Japan: Popularity of Q&A services · Global Voices
Chris Salzberg

Results of a survey by NetRatings Japan, Inc. [ja] released on May 23rd and posted at japan.internet.com [ja] revealed some surprising trends [ja] among Japanese Internet users. Among other things, the survey found that while the amount of time that people spend on the Internet is going up, the number of page views is flat, contrary to what many expected.
The survey also found that popularity of Q&A services, particularly Yahoo!'s Chiebukuro  (知恵袋) service started in 2004, have skyrocketed in recent years. From a total of 1.72 million page views on Chiebukuro  in 2006, the figure increased to 12.62 million page views by March, 2008. (Other popular Japanese Q&A services [ja] include OKWave [ja], goo's “oshiete!” [ja], and Hatena Question [ja].) The study pointed out that while the reach of Yahoo! Chiekibukuro [ja] was 25.7% in Japan, the reach of the comparable “Yahoo! Answers” service in the U.S. is only 9.4%. Wikipedia also has a higher reach at 37.8% in Japan, compared to 24.5% in the U.S. (A different study, translated at What Japan Thinks, indicated that Japanese trust Q&A sites almost as much as they trust Wikipedia.)
In a post entitled “Japanese like Wikipedia and FAQ”, blogger lattice remarks on the differences between Japanese and American Internet users:
日本人はアメリカ人と違って、人前でオープンに議論するということが苦手である。「人には聞けない事をこっそり調べる」という欲求にネットは合っているのかもしれない。ネットのＦＡＱが流行るのもそうしたこともあるのかもしれない。身近の人間には訊きずらいが、ネットで匿名だと訊きやすいので初心者ＦＡＱなども大いに賑わう。ネット上の「教えて君」である。これも自分では積極的に調べようとしない、安易にネットで訊けばいいという、やはり思考停止の反映の１つにも思える。それに対してYahoo!知恵袋のように丁寧に答えてくれる人もいるが、思考停止を指摘するのが「ググレカス」であろう。
しかし何かネットで調べようとするとき「Google先生に訊いてみよう」とばかりキーワードを入れると出てくるのがYahooで」と言われているようなものだからである。それがネットだからといえばそうではあるのだが。
In other results, the survey also confirmed the incredible popularity of Japanese tarento on the Internet. The blog [ja] of actor Kamiji Ysuke in particular was reported to have around one million visitors, with a single entry drawing between ten and fifteen thousand comments over a span of just a few hours. So numerous are the comments on tarento blogs that some have even speculated [ja] the comment-writers may not be human [ja].
Thanks to Taku Nakajima and Yu Yamamoto for suggesting and researching this topic.