Japan's most popular social-networking site, Mixi, on Wednesday said it plans to establish a subsidiary in Shanghai to tap China's fast-growing Internet market.
"China's Internet population is increasing at a significant pace, and its online-advertisement market is also gathering steam," Mixi spokeswoman Hirono Kobayashi said.
Internet users in China reached 172 million in 2007, and the figure is expected to reach 200 million by 2010, making it the world's biggest Internet market by user numbers, she said.
Mixi has not yet determined exactly what service it will launch in China, but it will likely be in Chinese, Kobayashi said.
Mixi.jp is Japan's second most visited Web site after Yahoo Japan's portal site. It has 13 million users, or about 10 percent of the population, and gets 11.8 billion page visits a month, Kobayashi said.
Still, Mixi might find it difficult to break into the Chinese social-networking market, just as overseas companies have had trouble establishing a foothold in Japan.
Mizuho Securities analyst Yuichi Sato said the language barrier could prove to be a big hurdle.
"Foreign (social network) operators such as
Mixi users can create an account for no cost through invitation of other users, and can view user profiles or post blog entries, photos, and video clips. The site can be accessed by computers or mobile phones.
The Tokyo-based company was founded in 1997 as an operator of a job search service, started Mixi in 2004, and
Prior to the announcement, the stock fell 4 percent to 1.21 million yen, against a 3.2 percent fall in the Topix index of all first-section shares.
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