Apr
22
New look at Big in Japan!
Our team is growing and to celebrate we have a new logo and a new
website. Out with the old, in with the new. The site still needs some
work, but it is getting closer. What do you think?
Jan
4
This week on ShopSavvy!
Scott Ryan and Jason Hudgins will be heading to the Crunchies in San Francisco to pick up our Crunchie (assuming Mike used refurb voting machines from the 2000 Florida presidential election). In all seriousness, Mike and his team at TechCrunch have been a great asset to the community over the years and it makes sense to pay them back by showing up despite the fact that ShopSavvy is the longest shot in the history of longshots (I encourage everyone to show up if possible). You can still vote: http://tinyurl.com/savvyvote
While Scott and Jason are getting to San Francisco I will be boarding a plane, headed home from AndroidDevCamp Amsterdam where I will be giving the keynote (note to self: prepare something!).
Meanwhile, Ryan will be spending ALL week coding (24/7) getting ShopSavvy ready for our EU launch – we will be live in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic and Austria. Hopefully, ShopSavvy will be ‘Big in Europe’ – Jonas honored us with another Godzilla poster/t-shirt design for our EU launch (what do you think?):
Dec
7
Why is your company called Big in Japan?
We do interviews about ShopSavvy and our company almost daily and the most common question is, “Why is your company called Big in Japan”. I figured it was worth a post.
The phrase ‘Big in Japan’, according to Wikipedia, “was originally a scornful phrase applied to rock bands that failed to sell many records in the US and the UK. During the 1960s and 70s, Japanese pop culture was not yet considered very cool in the English-speaking world. Thus, though a band might have tens of thousands of Japanese fans, it was not considered truly successful: the band was only big in Japan.” Of course, by the early 90’s Japan had become cool and everyone wanted to be big in japan so the phrase lost its original meaning.
Now that we have the origin covered, I will give you some of the reasons that had nothing to do with the name. First, some of you have asked, “was the name inspired by Tom Waits…?” Nope David, I had no idea Tom even sang a song called Big in Japan, but thanks for the new reference:
Others have asked how long ShopSavvy has been available in Japan; I assume they think our company is Japanese. Our application is only available in the US and the UK currently and none of us have even been to Japan. However, we will be in Tokyo meeting with NTT DoCoMo for our Japanese rollout in a month or so.
The next favorite question is whether not we named the company after the Alphaville song – Big in Japan. Of course, the song is burned into my subconscious; becoming popular in the U.S. in the late 80’s. But, no we didn’t really think about the song when we named the company.
Fewer people remember the punk band from Liverpool called Big in Japan, but no, we didn’t name it after them either.
The real reason is rather silly. A colleague and I were sitting in a hotel in San Francisco during the Web 2.0 conference a few years ago after listening to Sky Dayton talk about how everything related to cell phones was “Big in Korea”. We had an interview with INC magazine later that day and needed a name for our tool business. I said, “how about Big in Japan?” Thinking that it would look cool on t-shirts we went with it. More than a year later we combined our consulting (WeblogsWork) and our tool business (Big in Japan) and during a conversation with new hire he said something that convinced me we should dump WeblogsWork in favor of Big in Japan. He said, “Whenever I tell anyone that I work for Big in Japan they smile” I thought, ‘what better reason could we possibly have for choosing a name?’
Earlier this year we refocused our business for a third time and the name seemed to make even more sense – i.e. since mobile phones are so much bigger in Japan than they are here in the US. I wish I had a better reason, but that is it. It was a split second decision that stuck.
P.S. The domain we use ‘biggu’.com is the Japanese word for Big. Of course I wish we had biginjapan.com, but I have never been able to get the owners to call me back.
Aug
14
Blog Monitoring
We have been talking about blog monitoring for some time. Last year we began offering it as a service. Soon it became clear to us that monitoring served as a crutch for many companies allowing them to feel good, but ultimately not making much of a difference. We would produce reports and client’s wouldn’t have the slightest understanding of what we were talking about. They were not in the conversation, instead they were simply reading the translated trascripts we provided.
Today we still help companies monitor blogs, but instead of doing the monitoring we teach them the “how” and the “why” allowing them to join in the conversation. Josh Hallett, our go-to-guy for design, wrote about his experience with Nikon in a post titled, “Big Thanks to Nikon.” Josh details how Nikon’s team read his blog post about the D80 and his need for a new SLR before its release.
Nikon, to their credit, found Josh’s blog, recognized his interest in their product, understood his need and provided a solution. I suspect they created a “fan for life” in Josh and it doesn’t hurt that he was already talking about Nikon.
If your organization needs to listen better. Start by listening for problems – i.e. to avoid getting Dell’d – before they become nightmares. Then begin listening to your fans, and think of ways you help your average-everyday fans become rabid sales machines for your company!
May
3
Amber MacArthur Hearts Big in Japan
Shame we didn't get to meet Amber MacArthur at SXSW, as she's evidently a fan of Big in Japan. She talks about the Big in Japan toolkit on this episode of CommandN.
Then Alex and I did an Inside the Net interview (mp3) with Amber & Leo, all about Big in Japan and the building block ecosystem of newer Web apps.
Technorati Tags: alex+muse, amber macarthur, biginjapan, brian oberkirch, commandn, inside+the+net, leo+laporte
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