Business Week writes:
How big is the social networking craze on the Net in Asia? Global investors will get a far better sense on Sept. 14 in Tokyo. That’s when Japan’s fastest-growing social networking site, mixi, will launch a much anticipated initial public offering. While mixi is no MySpacethere are currently 5 million users at mixiits membership has quintupled in the past year. At 7 billion page views a month, mixi trails only Yahoo! (YHOO) and Google (GOOG) in Japan in online traffic and is the No. 37 site globally, according to Alexa.com.
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These days, mixi is facing tough competition. Gree and Any (other SNS’s) are growing in popularity, and MySpace, Microsoft (MSFT), and Softbank are slated to join the crowd soon in Japan. Net portal Yahoo! Japan and online retailer Rakuten have set up their own social networking service, and South Korea’s Cyworld has recently entered the Japanese market, too.
