Yahoo Japan has launched their version of a social news sharing site with a Digg-esque feel; Minna No Topics (Everyone’s Topics).
The service lets Yahoo Japan users submit different stories under multiple categories and then users of Yahoo Japan can then vote on the stories in Digg like fashion by hitting the “Plus Score” button.
Instead of the Digg This box, in an anime fashion, little cartoon characters are placed above the Plus Score button. The selection of cartoon character seems to be random, as there is no relation between their selections and the categories, user names or amounts of Diggs (or ‘Plus Scores’).
Like Digg, users have their own profile pages, can leave comments on stories, and other stories are also suggested. I do not however see a button similar to the Digg bury option.
Minna No Topics also uses tags for navigation (the second most popular tag is YouTube) and offers channels such as Newsing (news), BuzzURL(recently submitted) and Choix (blogs) for up and coming stories.
Yahoo Japan is basically the Internet in Japan, ranging from broadband to cell phone to television services.
And since most Japanese use Yahoo Japan for blogging, searching, communities, Q&A and social networking; on both the PC and mobile, Yahoo Japan is a logical fit for such a service.
If you can write Japanese and have news, female targeted (most Japanese bloggers are female) or shopping items which would appeal to the Japanese market, I highly suggest giving Yahoo Japan’s Minna No Topics a try and you might become surprised by the amount of incoming traffic and links that you earn.
