mixi Information

Founded in 2004, Mixi has over 21.6 million registered users, accounting for roughly 80 per cent of the social network market in Japan. It was heavily influenced by Friendster, and remained the most popular social networking site or micro-blog until 2010 when Twitter overtook it. It tried to fight back against Twitter by allowing users to send tweet like messages of 150 characters from 2009, but this change didn't stop people flocking to Twitter, and while both Facebook and Twitter user numbers are still growing, Mixi's numbers are remaining rather static. One of the big attractions of Mixi over Facebook was the ability it gave users to fine tune their privacy controls to dictate who could see specific posts and uploads. Users could even see who had viewed their profiles. However, Mixi removed this feature in mid-2011, and users were not pleased with the change.