Twitter, the blockbuster U.S. microblog on which users can post no more than 140 characters, launched Wednesday in the land of haiku, Japan, expecting to strike gold from the country's cell phone addiction. The website lets users send terse sentences -- or "twitters" -- onto constantly moving bulletin boards telling people what they are doing or thinking at that instant.
The new Japanese-language site will be a test case by posting advertisements, a first for Twitter, which was launched in 2006 by San Francisco-based Internet start-up Obvious.
Despite the site's popularity in the United States, one-quarter of access to Twitter in February originated from Japan, said Hiroki Eda, a senior executive at Digital Garage, a multimedia group that handles Twitter in Japan. Twitter does not publicly disclose its number of users.
© AFP
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Altria
Great, another way to annoy friends and acquaintances with up-to-the-minute details of your boring life.
movieguy
I enjoy hearing what my friends are up to on sites like that. It's better than bitching and moaning anonymously about society on message boards where you can hide...
regev
a windy palm by the roaring see as thoughts grow shorter a twit
capone
altria ...BINGO !
kenbrady
Actually, about 20% of all Twitter tweets came from Japan before there was a localized version, not 25%. Still, this makes perfect sense.
Scrote
I'm on the train.
capone
hi i'm walking
capone
a bus just went by
borscht
I just upchucked in my sake cup. Ooo, it rhymes.
zaichik
Effectively a haiku blog, then, but without the artistic merit....