So nearly two years has passed since I last posted on this blog and in the meantime social media has developed further with Twitter appearing and Facebook maturing and now much talk of Enterprise 2.0. And this Typepad version is seriously out of date!
What has finally sparked me to blog here again is the discovery that people are finally answering the question I was asking - how should communications technologies and in particular, social media software, be adapted for cross cultural use, and more specifically, how they be effective in multinational corporations.
It looks like Cindy King has been ploughing this furrow for a while now. And I have to confess, despite my own supposed cross cultural sensitivity, when I first followed a link to her site, I did indeed fall into the trap of supposing her to be fluffy and not serious, purely because of the colours and design of her site. She turns out to be well aware of this
54.3% of 820 Japanese respondents to a September 2006 Nikkei Business survey (subscription required) say they read blogs. 68.8% read individual diary style blogs, just under 60% read news/business blogs, just under 20% travel blogs, 15% or so read restaurant or cooking blogs (I have commented before that this is a particularly popular blog topic in Japan), 10 % read health/diet blogs and just under 10% read blogs on internet shopping. 75% do not use social networking sites, 17.8% do and 6.7% are registered on one but never use it.