Well, lunch is finished and the avocado seed is drying in the sunshine. It's a beautiful day outside and what am I doing? I'm inside on my iMac.
As I wrote before, I spend some time on Facebook. However, maybe not as much as some people. I read recently (on Wikipedia) that university students spend up to two hours a day on Facebook. Perhaps it's because university is when you spend more time socialising with friends.
Facebook is the most popular social media site in the world. Certainly in the Americas (from Canada to Argentina), Europe, Southeast Asia and Oceania. Northeast Asia is a little different. In China, the most popular site is called QZone, it has 645 million users. How about Japan? Well, the most popular site is another American social networking site called Twitter.
Twitter is unique in that users are allowed only 140 characters. In English, that would be 140 letters. Which is less than the number of characters I've used to write this paragraph.
Japanese is a little different since the phonetic alphabet called hiragana/katagana has one symbol for one, two or three letters. For example, the word avocado (7 letters) in Japanese is アボカド (a-bo-ka-do - four letters) which means I've saved three letters on Twitter. The Chinese characters called kanji are even more efficient. As we know, an avocado is a fruit because is has a seed, and fruit is 5 letters. In kanji it is two letters 果物 - . So we saved three letters, a Twitter saving of more than half in Japanese!
Iran is another country where Facebook isn't the most popular site. In Iran, people communicate using Facenama. I think that someone in Iran knew about Facebook before they 'created' their social networking site. Now, look up the meaning of nama in Japanese - 生 and have some fun with the Iranian site's name.
Uncooked face anyone?
this interesting survey ( http://teapipin.blog10.fc2.com/blog-entry-662.html ) shows that how Japanese love go on Twitter. When I first knew this fact, I was shocked. I can't understand that even Japan has the smaller population than the another countries that ranked in, Japan has the second largest number of tweets... I think one of the reasons that can be concerned is that kind of people called "OTAKU" tweet so frequently in short time. I hope we stay lower.
ReplyDelete"This is an interesting survey ( http://teapipin.blog10.fc2.com/blog-entry-662.html ) that shows how much Japanese love to go on Twitter. When I first read this, I was really surprised. I can't understand that Japan with its smaller population than some other countries that are ranked here, has the second largest number of tweets... I think one of the reasons that can be considered, is that the kind of people called "otaku" tweet so frequently in a short time. I hope we drop lower in the rankings."
ReplyDeleteThanks Ryoko. I read the survey and see your point. A relatively small number of people tweeting a lot can make a big difference. Did you notice that one prominent Asian language that uses kanji is 27th on the list? The government beats Twitter.
Actually,I don't use Twitter but I started using Facebook in this January to share pictures with my enrichment lessons
ReplyDeletefriends. They live all over Japan so Facebook is one of the best communication tool when we don't meet. It's very useful but I usually use the site too much. It's because I was "good" to some companies which I like or actress who I like.They gave me so many interesting news about them for me so I read these.However, it takes long time and I lost my time to do something(study,sleep and so on). Now,I'm trying not to use Facebook so many times because I have to study for entrance exam.
"Actually, I don't use Twitter but I started using Facebook this January to share pictures with my 'enrichment lessons' friends. They live all over Japan so Facebook is one of the best communication tools when we can't meet. It's very useful but I think I use the site too often. It's because I was 'good' to some companies which I like or actors who I like. Facebook gave me so many interesting news stories which I read too often. However, it takes too much time and I can't do other things line studying, sleeping and so on. Now, I'm trying not to use Facebook so much because I have to study for my entrance exams."
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Mizuka. Facebook can take away too much of your time, especially if you have a lot of 'friends'. recently, the advertising has been increasing and those suggested posts also appear on the page, which means more scrolling. So... less scrolling and more studying for us from now on! Sleep well!