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Technorati and Digital Garage just announced that they will work together to set up Technorati Japan which will be established as a subsidiary of Digital Garage and will distribute Technorati services in Japan. I am a co-founder and former co-CEO of Digital Garage. Digital Garage was a company that Kaoru Hayashi and I established in 1994 and we merged his advertising business and my Internet business together. We ran the company together and did a bunch of things like bring Infoseek to Japan. I later left the company to help run Infoseek Japan when it was spun out. This is the first real work I've done with Digital Garage since I left. It is really deja vu. When we brought Infoseek to Japan, people didn't understand the concept of ad impressions and we had to do a lot of teaching. We had to explain that impressions and clickthroughs could be measured unlike sponsorships and ads in magazines.
With Technorati Japan, we're going to go through a similar process again, this time explaining that it's now about conversations. We need to explain that companies and people can see what other people are saying in real time and participate in the conversations, and that it's not about banner ads anymore. I'm also excited that we will soon have a Japanese Technorati site for all of the Japanese bloggers.
We hope to get the service running sometime next year, but we're going to get started right away trying to get people to understand what this real live web and conversation stuff is all about.
Obviously, Japan is just the first step in our international strategy, but it's nice being able to do it with a team that I know and trust. It's also fun watching my old family meet and work with my new family. And last but not least, welcome to our family Gen. Gen left Sony and joined Digital Garage to work on Technorati Japan.
Congrats on the expansion to Japan. This sounds like a great opportunity.
Any job openings for Technorati Japan for those who already call Japan their home? :p