Yahoo! Blogs beta for Japan
Yahoo! Japan has launched a beta test version of Yahoo! Japan Blogs.
Owned mostly by Softbank and partly by Yahoo!, Yahoo! Japan announced that the free blog service lets users post blogs and up to 2GB of images, comment on other blogs, and associate their blogs with animated representations of users known as avatars.
"This is a basic community service," a Yahoo! Japan spokesperson told ZDNet. "Last year there was a blog boom in Japan. Lots of portals have blogs now. So we came in late. But when we start, it will have an impact on a lot of Internet users here."
Yahoo! has yet to offer blogging facilities to web users in countries outside Asia, including the US. The internet company's rivals, including Google, AOL and MSN, have all invested heavily in blogging software.
Yahoo! Japan's blogging site uses technology from Yahoo! Korea's blog site, launched in late 2003, but its front-end systems are independent. Yahoo! Korea is majority-owned by Yahoo.
"Yahoo has a deep history in the online self-publishing and communications space, and we continually evaluate market opportunities where we can leverage our assets to fill a market need," Yahoo! spokesperson Mary Osako said.
"We have not made any announcements specific to Yahoo offering blogging services in the US to date."
Yahoo Japan has not set a date for the general launch of the Yahoo! Blogs service.
4 February 2005
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