日前，日本最大的两家网络公司Mixi和CyberAgent宣布，将于2月1日成立一家合资企业Grenge，专门面向日本最大的社交网站之一Mixi开发社交应用。

mixi

据游戏邦了解，CyberAgent旗下最著名的产品是Ameba博客平台，注册用户已达1240万人。Grenge公司的注册资金为500万日元（约合60.6万美元），CyberAgent拥有51%的股份，另外49%则为Mixi所掌握。

Grenge将从今年4月开始，为日本功能性手机和智能手机开发应用软件，计划到2012年3月向Mixi平台植入8款应用。据称这家新公司到今年9月份有望创造600万美元的销售额。

游戏邦还发现，Mixi原先一直以“中立”的社交网站服务供应商自居，但这次的动作却明显有违这个立场。日本另外两大社交网站Mobage-town和GREE自从2009年、2010年向第三方开发商开放服务后，它们的用户规模几乎双倍增长，Mixi很有可能是出于竞争的考虑，所以不得不采取这一行动。

Mixi在2009年还成立了一个Mixi基金会，主要资助那些供应社交应用的初创小企业。从那以后，Mixi又相继投资了不少公司，比如东京社交游戏初创企业Pikkle（投资160万美元）。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

For Social App Development: Mixi And CyberAgent Launch Joint Venture

Japan’s social apps boom isn’t ending: Today, two of the country’s biggest web companies, namely Mixi and CyberAgent, announced they will launch a joint venture to produce social apps for mixi, Japan’s biggest social network, on February 1. CyberAgent is best known for its massive Ameba blog platform, Japan’s biggest (12.4 million registered users).

The new venture, which is called Grenge (no website yet), is capitalized at 5 million yen ($606,000) and owned 51% by CyberAgent and 49% by mixi. Grenge is expected to produce apps for Japanese feature phones and smartphones from April this year. By March 2012, the plan is to have deployed a total of eight titles on Mixi.

Grenge is expected to generate $6 million in sales by September this year.

What’s interesting is that with this move, mixi is moving further away from its position as a strict, “neutral” social network/graph provider. Its big rivals in terms of user numbers, mobile gaming networks Mobage-town and GREE, have been doubling as platform and app providers since they opened their sites to third-party developers in 2009/2010.

In 2009, Mixi established the so-called Mixi Fund to invest in startups that provide social apps. Since then, big M has invested in several companies, for example in Tokyo-based social games startup Pikkle ($1.6 million).（source:asiajin）