1. Mixi essentially IS Facebook; they've constantly been updating and adding things to the interface that make it more and more facebook-like. All they need to do now is take all of the feeds they've made and integrate them in popularity/chronological order.

2. The communities he talks about are the same as Facebook groups. You can make friends in either one, though mixi communities tend to have topics people talk in more than in most Facebook groups I've seen.

3. Mixi not only allows you to control who your friends are, but also allows you to see who's visited your profile (and when!). It also allows you to delete your OWN footprints from visiting other people's profiles a few times every month. On top of that, you can see how recently someone's been active on Mixi. It's terrible (great?) for OCD stalkers.

Perhaps this author's article is based on selection bias; though; of all of the people I know on facebook who are Japanese, a number of them are Japanese people interested in English or who have been to America -- they largely use it for the same reasons that everyone else in America does: to keep in touch with friends and post stuff. Others are simply Japanese people using it with pretty much only Japanese people: they seem to do the same thing, without the influence of Americans "teaching" them the "right" way to use facebook. I also have a few professional acquaintances that I'm friendly with; they use it in the same way as the people I mentioned before.

Perhaps the professional accounts the author is encountering are accounts made solely for professional use. Some Americans I know do that as well, since there really ISN'T a requirement that you use your real name.

Also, Japanese who have been abroad defiantly do use it differently. One example is photos. I notice Japanese who have been abroad or have lots of foreign Facebook friends share far more photos than those who haven't.

Perhaps my article overplayed the professionalism of Japanese Facebook account. The accounts I've seen aren't on par with LinkedIn on their focus towards being professional. However, I get the feeling that Japanese Facebook users are much more conscious of what non-friends will think of their account than western users are.

I wonder how much of that is just Facebook, though; when I started using Facebook heavily about a year ago after having an account since the beginning, I was completely lost about how to upload/tag/organize pictures. Facebook wasn't much help with its cluttered interface.

As far as self-consciousness, I don't think it's necessarily a Facebook thing... Mixi users are just as self-conscious and "groom" their profiles to be just-so -- the same for their profile pictures, which are their public face. I would argue that it's more a facet of Japanese society than of Facebook in particular.

I sort of think that the Japanese Facebook population of frequent users is still a bit too small to judge, too...

Edit: I meant to say this before, but mobage and gree are both much, much more popular with people under 18 than adults in my area. I wonder how much of that has to do with the commercials.

Edit 2: I just realized this, but I wonder how much of LinkedIn's lack of popularity has to do with the conservativeness of business culture in Japan in general. I mean, they have standardized forms for resumes and personal history here.

[Edit: I need to remember not to make Japan jokes because people take me seriously. FB accounts are also popular with Japanese people with recent experience abroad and those with many foreign friends, at least in my social circles in central Japan (like Kansas, minus the white people). Of approximately 70 people at my previous day job, two admitted to having Facebook accounts when asked for a show of hands at a meeting, and one of those was me.]

:D

I don't use my real name and neither do many people I know.