The uphill battle that MySpace has fought in some Asian cultures underlines the difficulties encountered with different value-systems.
As Tony Elison, senior vice president at Viacom International Japan, said, "MySpace is about me, me, me, and look at me and look at me and look at me, in Mixi, it's not all about me. It's all about us." Mixi is the Japanese equivalent of MySpace - sort of.
The Japanese and the Chinese are much more cliquish and group thinking than American culture. So when something is offered that highlights an individual, it's not as alluring to the masses.
It's like when I was taking Mandarine Chinese lessons from a Chinese national. When my family and her would go somewhere, she was almost scandalized they 
we would separate from each other and go look at other things individually. She considered it a group activity.
She also mentioned how American tourists would disrupt tour guides as the minute they got off of a tour bus, they would scatter all over the place, something rarely experienced in their culture. The guides literally had no idea how to handle it.
MySpace will also struggle within these cultures as they will never be able to do it in the same way that Mixi in Japan will be able to, for example.
The main thing to keep in mind is if you're marketing to those in other other cultures in a big way, is that it's important to do it in ways that cater and give respect to them. Taking Mixi and Japan as an example again, Mixi Inc. President Kenji Kasahara said concerning MySpace, "It's not going to be easy for them to increase market share in Japan, this tends to be a winner-take-all market, and also-rans have a hard time. No one is going to want to join (a social-networking site) that their friends aren't in."
The strategy of MySpace at this time is to try to draw in users who want to check out American musicians who are offering music and other content that may appeal to some Japanese. They are also trying to use its partnership with Softbank to sign up some Japanese artists to the site. Some Japanese believe this may work as a niche strategy, but would never appeal to a large number of people in Japan.
In Asian cultures, most of the time a social site will appeal to those in an existing group who want to use it to keep on relating to one another. They aren't like the American culture who look to find new friends or express themselves on MySpace. Still MySpace says they're not going to try to adapt, but will keep it the way it is in America.
This will probably mean that their whole strategy will be to simply reach a niche audience within these markets. Something we can learn from if it's too difficult to migrate the cultural divides.
Comment Preview