Last year saw many changes for Japanese Internet users as people began to shift from Japanese social networks to international ones, and from regular cellphones to smart phones. The international influence was felt in other web-based areas too. So what can we expect for 2011?
Twitter: The 2010 results for Yahoo! Japan's annual search rankings were not that different from those in 2009. But one buzzword that did jump up drastically was "Twitter," which hit eighth place while previously it wasn't even in the top 100. For Japanese Internet users, 2010 was Twitter's year.
During the year, TV news and drama featured Twitter, and it gained many high profile users, including ex-Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. There were also about 100 books published with "Twitter" in the title.