Rakuten, who is one of Japan's biggest and most successful e-commerce companies announced that they invested US$100 million to Pinterest. In recent years, Rakuten has been aiming to replicate their success in Japan in the global market. They have aquired Buy.com in 2010, and Kobo in 2011. They've been also making more acquisitions and investments in Asian and Europe. Rakuten said that there were many overlap between e-commerce and social media,

Yahoo!, SoftBank and Alibaba Group jointly announced that they have reached an agreement on Alipay. Under the agreement, Alibaba Group will continue participating in Alipay's future financial performance, including a future IPO or other liquidity events. The agreement structures the relationship between Taobao and Alipay in order to preserve the value within Taobao, which provides that Alibaba group is appropriately compensated for the value of Alipay.

Yahoo Japan announced that their year on year net profit rose 7.69% in last quarter )April-June( in advertising revenue. When Yahoo Japan decided to adopt Google's technology in its web searches in last December, many expressed their concern that it could have negative impact on Yahoo Japan's business in 2011. However, they've been recording a continued increase in revenue. For the past quarter, Yahoo Japan's operating profit also increased 3.3% to ¥38.

Yahoo Japan will run a Yahoo Point Campaign in March. During a month of March, all registered users )Yahoo ID is required( will gain Yahoo points every time they search. Members can use Yahoo points to pay for several services including Yahoo Music, Yahoo Shopping and Yahoo Travel. Detail: http://search.yahoo.co.jp/campaign/2011a/ )in Japanese( It's an interesting campaign, but why you should pay )give away points( for the use of search?

Aun Consulting announced that Japanese SEO industry grew to 194 billion yen market in 2010, which was a 18.6% growth from 2009. According to the report, SEO outsourcing category grew 22%, SEO In-house category grew 19% and SEO Tool industry grew 6%. Aun predicts that the SEO industry in Japan will grow to 220 billion yen market in 2011. No related posts.