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As an American covering Japan, I depend on blogs and other websites that offer glimpses into daily Japan. I believe many people would be surprised to see how many blogs I have in Google reader in my quest to catch things off the radar that other Japan focused blogs miss.
In a press release today, Japanese newspaper and media outlet Akiba Keizai Shimbun announced the launch of their new English news portal AKIBA Today. Their goal is,
… reporting in a cross media fashion about the latest events, goods and trends of anime, game and manga culture in Tokyo’s “electric town” Akihabara. We deliver business news aimed at otaku or fans of japanese pop culture as well as corporations.
While their site has that sterile newspaper feel to it, their press release leaves me to believe that the site will be worth following. AKIBA Today‘s first goal is to have 5 million page views by the end of this year. That’s a pretty big goal with less than 6 months left. We shall see.
AKIBA Today via FG
*adds in FeedReader*
As you said, it has a sterile look. It likely won’t become a favorite of hardcore Akiba fans.
If they network with Akiba bloggers and have a blog community listing for social-networking and other stuff, they might be able to control a large portion of the traffic flow within the Akiba blogger community. But, if they try to act all slick and above the everyday Akiba blogger regulars, they’ll likely be ignored by the community they were hoping to attract.
the nice thing about the site is that they have links to the articles in Japanese.
thanks for the link. I’m ganna surf on over right now