The 140 character micro blogging service on Thursday launched a Japan-based version of Twitter. Its entrance marks a remarkable history into a country popular U.S Social networks like Facebook and MySpace are yet to capture real audience.

Japanese Twitter is far more exciting that English twitter for so much can be said in Japanese characters. The company is serious about expanding greatly in Japans waters and eventually into other territories around the world.

Twitter’s Cofounder Biz Stone who was present at the launch in Tokyo said “It’s an excellent opportunity for us to see where we can go in Asia in general because Japan represents a leading edge, with advanced mobile usage”.

Over the next few months the company will roll out the site in Spanish, German, French and Italian.

Japanese’s celebrities, politician, newspapers, radio stations and companies eager to take advantage of twitter’s marketing potential are starting to sign up.

According to Digital Garage’s Rocky Eda, the key expansion in Japan is to develop a locally friendly mobile platform. Japan has a high percentage of mobile users and most twitter users access the service via their mobile phones. Mobile-based writers account for 40 percent of regular blogging in Japan and about a quarter of Mixi users rely on their mobiles to update their pages.

While Twitter already operates a mobile site in English, many of its features are incompatible with Japanese language usage. Instead, many mobile users here had been relying on third-party platforms like “movatwitter.”

The new Japanese mobile version was jointly developed by Twitter and Digital Garage, and is compatible with the country’s major carriers and the quirks of the local market. Emoticons can be embedded into messages, and users can directly update their profile without having to turn to their PC.

Yukari Matsuzawa, Twitter’s Japan country manager, says that users — and their own ingenuity — will ultimately determine Twitter’s fate in Japan.

“As Japanese people creatively start to use Twitter, it will help define what the tipping point will be,” she said. “It will be a combination of excellent innovative users in Japan, as well as more celebrities and influential people.”… Read more

A newcomer to the crowded ranks of the capital’s social media arrives this week: after establishing themselves in a number of large American cities, Foursquare launches in London today.

A “location-based social networking site wrapped in a social-gaming paper“, Foursquare allows users to ‘check-in’ at various points around the city using a mobile device, updating friends and contacts of their whereabouts, and slowly build up points and ‘badges’. At its essence, it allows you to build up a real-time itinerary, listing all the places you’ve been across town, and share that information with friends. Wondering if that gallery opening is worth going to? You can use Foursquare to see if any of your mates have been, and get the low-down from them. …Read more

Samsung today announced the availability of Samsung Corby S3650, a mobile phone designed to support the digitally connected lifestyles of today’s young mobile users.

The Samsung Corby is a full-touch handset that places users at the center of the social media revolution with a wide range of social networks support, such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

The Samsung Corby is notable for both its body design and colors – which mark a significant break from the way full touch phones are usually designed. It is available in bold color options such as Jamaican Yellow, Cupid Pink, Minimal White, and Festival Orange so that users can choose their favorite colors…Read more

The viral contagiousness of online social media and web 2.0 has also infected the mobile domain. The rise of social networking applications on mobile devices has guided the attention of the industry to the interlinked nature of mobile networks/communities. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is an emerging and innovative tool that allows a detailed understanding of networks of users. Knowledge about the relationships between mobile users is a great asset as it can be used to create more effective advertising campaigns. The analytics also reveals consumer preferences and indicates lifestyle patterns. These insights enable service providers to more effectively market new services and optimize customer management… Read more

“Mobile Lounge,” the first mobile-only community exclusive to a single wireless carrier, provides a social network for Virgin Mobile USA customers to share ideas and opinions. Its robust user interface allows users to see which friends are online and features micro-blogging capabilities, discussion boards, chat rooms and profile creation and contests.

Virgin Mobile USA also continues to offer rewards to its customers. Members of Mobile Lounge can earn points for writing blogs, posting photos and winning contests, and then redeem those points for credits for wireless usage. This builds on the success of Sugar Mama and Studio V, an online community where Virgin Mobile USA customers create, share and sell their own ringtones and wallpapers for rewards.

Mobile Lounge is accessible on Virgin Mobile USA mobile phones such as the Shuttle, Flare, Slash and others from the VirginXL storefront, which provides members with access to all of the latest services, games, ringtones and news … Read more

With the rapid growth of social networks, mobile phone giant Nokia is betting that mobile social networking could potentially be bigger than existing web-based social networking as the plan to ship hundreds of millions of mobile phones with Geolocation features in the next 24 months.

The world’s largest phone manufacturer sold nearly 440 million handsets in 2007, accounting for 40 percent of mobile phones sales worldwide and expects that number to grow in 2008 as the global market is set to grow by around 10 percent this year.

The firm plans to ship around 300 million GPS-equiped phones by 2010 according to Niklas Savander, Executive Vice President, Services and Software at Nokia World.

Should the firm sign the vast majority of the new mobile phone owners (and potentially open the scheme up to other mobile phone manufacturers), Nokia could be creating a social networking entity bigger than Myspace and Facebook combined. … Read more