I'm big in Japan

Facebook's Japan audience more than tripled in the past year, while Mixi.jp was the most-visited social networking destination in Japan with 12.7 million visitors, according to a study based on data from the comScore World Metrix service, MarketingCharts reports.

"The competition between social networks in Japan is beginning to heat up with the recent introduction of the Japanese-language version of Facebook," said Maru Sato, managing director of comScore Japan.

Visits

• The analysis of selected social-networking sites in Japan revealed that Mixi.jp held the leading position in the Japanese market with 12.7 million visitors in June.
• Facebook.com, which recently launched a Japanese language version of the site, has grown dramatically during the past year, gaining 213 percent to 538,000 visitors.
• MySpace.com attracted 1.2 million visitors, up 10 percent from a year ago, while Orkut drew 638,000 visitors and Gree had 455,000 visitors.

Engagement

Orkut ranks as the most engaging of the social networking sites in this study across several measures, including average usage days per visitor (11.5), average minutes per visitor (454), and average pages per visitor (1,557):

Mixi.jp also generates fairly heavy engagement, while Facebook.com and MySpace.com show more modest engagement thus far. "As these newer sites attract larger audiences and become more familiar in the Japanese market, engagement among their users will inevitably grow," Sato added.