自2010年底以来，日本传统媒体就十分推崇Facebook，并对其进行连篇累牍的报道，这种趋势与2009年至2010年他们高度关注Twitter在日本的表现如出一辙。与此同时，Twitter却逐渐淡出了日本大众媒体的视线。

但不久前的日本大地震却改变了这种形势。假如推行实名制的Facebook在日本覆盖率不仅仅是2%的话，它应该是一个理想的传播平台。但这一时期，真正发挥作用的却是Twitter，它成了万百上千万日本民众在电话无法接通状态下，向亲友报平安的有效工具（游戏邦注：但Twitter在这一时期也成了许多谣言和小道消息的源头）。

据博客主Edgefirst透露，因为地震中有不少传统渠道被中断，日本报业传媒公司就利用Twitter帐号作为辅助渠道，进行新闻报道。日本东北地区新闻媒体的Twitter帐号粉丝增长了500%至700%，国家报纸的官方帐号粉丝也大为增长。通常来说，日本报纸因为担心流失读者，所以一直很排斥互联网，但这场灾难却促使互联网成为他们的重要传播渠道。

非日本籍用户在该国Facebook平台的活动十分活跃，许多海外用户也通过Facebook热议这场大地震。但使用日语讨论此事的Facebook用户却并不多见，其数量远逊于Twitter和其他网络服务的情况。

下图是Socialbakers所显示的4月4日Facebook日本用户相关数据：

facebook-japan-stats-20110404

从上图中可以看出，日本Facebook用户在1月初《社交网络》这部电影上映期间的数量增长最为明显，但在3月11日则完全停止增长。

在4月5日则出现了一些异常的情况，据Serkan Toto的博客所称，Facebook仅在当天就增加了50万左右的日本用户，目前Facebook日本用户总数超过了300万人，增长了20%。

facebook-china-stats-on-20110405

据读写网报道，Facebook在中国大陆4月5日的用户却消失了25万左右。

facebook-southkorea-stats-on-20110405

而韩国也在同一时期流失了10万用户（约占2.5%）。

facebook-taiwan-stats-on-20110405

台湾地区在同一天也流失了100万（约占10%）的活跃用户！

这种现象不禁让人困惑，中国大陆和台湾地区的用户究竟是否流向了日本，如果按常理来推测，应该是日本用户流向其他亚洲国家才对。

facebook-japan-stats-20110417-with-events

目前Facebook平台也并发起任何“转移到日本Facebook”的活动，所以这一现象着实令人费解。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Facebook Japan Paused Growth By Earthquake, But Gains Back From… China?

At the beginning of April, I was almost writing up an article about how the Eastern Japan earthquake affected social media battle. Since the end of 2010, Japanese traditional media had been in great favor of Facebook as “the next big thing from US”. Their endless coverage was very similar with what was done with Twitter in 2009-2010, and eventually, Twitter’s appearance on mass media became rather small.

However, the disaster changed the game. Facebook might have been a good platform with its real-name policy if Japanese Facebook penetration was not about 2% of population. (Although the real victims in the disaster areas could not use any social media by black-out,) Twitter was the cure for tens of millions people who wanted to confirm their friends safety under disconnected phone. Twitter also helped that people who had to walk back to their home at the night of the earthquake in greater Tokyo. Many raw information (, false rumors and corrections as well) were circulated on it for weeks.

A blogger Edgefirst summed up that how Japanese newspaper companies utilized/opened their Twitter accounts to cover up their stopped and delayed distribution. Twitter accounts of some Tohoku region newspapers added 500-700% followers. National paper’s official accounts got notable gain, too. Generally speaking, Japanese newspapers are anti-internet with fear for losing their readers, but this disaster seemed to encourage web amiable factions.

Non-Japanese residents’ English activities were huge on Facebook. Many support from overseas were discussed on Facebook as well. But in Japanese language, there were less activities happened from Facebook, if you compare them with Twitter and other web services.

Here is the population graph of Facebook Japan users recorded by Socialbakers after the quake. Screenshot on April 4th.

The number of Japanese Facebook users were sharp rising around the release of the movie “The Social Network” in early January, then, March 11th quake completely stopped the trend. The graph above is from April 4th.

Then, on April 5th, something strange was observed on Socialbakers (and Facebook’s ad tool, as Socialbakers is only recording numbers from it).

In Japan, as Serkan Toto pointed out on his blog, half a million user joined Facebook in a day. That made over 3 million users, Facebook population increased 20%.

In China, ReadWriteWeb showed that over quarter million Facebook users disappeared on the same April 5th.

I checked other countries in East Asia. South Korea lost 100,000(2.5%).

Taiwan lost one million active users(10%) on the same day!

So it seems as if massive users moved out from Taiwan and China to Japan. If it was opposite way, it could happen as some people evacuated from Japan to other Asian countries. (still the number is unbelievable high, though)

There were no campaigns like “changing your location to Japan on FB (for showing support or something)” as far as I know.（source:asiajin）