There are websites that are frequently used in Japan but haven’t been heard of in the western world. An example for such a website is Yafuoku, the Japanese equivalent to eBay which we already wrote an article about. Today we will look at another website that is hugely popular in Japan: the blogging site Ameba (アメーバ).

Ameba is a company from Tokyo and the website is exclusively in Japanese, which means using or even researching on it is difficult for non-speakers of the Japanese language. 
Ameba is working like a hybrid between twitter, wordpress and Facebook, users can set up their own blog and can socially interact with other users, readers of their blog or authors of other blogs. The blog part of Ameba is called Ameblo, the words Ameba and blog combined. 

In December 2009, Ameba launched Ameba Now, a micro-blogging platform competing with Twitter. In March 2009 Ameba launched Ameba Pico, a Facebook app for the English market based on the virtual community Ameba Pigg.
Pigg is a blog virtual community in which users can customize an avatar, socialize with people using replicas of landmarks around the world like Shibuya 106 and the Statue of Liberty. In contrast to the blog page Ameblo, pigg is available in English to compete with American based services. 

Ameba is difficult to understand if you don’t speak Japanese but if you do, you might give it a try! If you don’t, try Pigg instead!