Internet in Japan Since the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake

The cherry blossoms are in full bloom here in Tokyo. At the weekend, parks were filled with an overwhelming number of people enjoying Hanami parties under the flowering trees. There is almost no visible impact of the disastrous Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake & tsunami from last month. Tokyo, spared the tragedy of the Northeast of the country, saw most companies resuming normal work hours soon after the earthquake, and many schools retaining their usual schedules. Restoration of infrastructure in the severely damaged northeastern region of Japan continues at a fast pace.

Something remarkable during this natural disaster was that while electricity, water supply, gas and mobile phone reception was lost in many areas, internet remained live in some areas and played a crucial role as an information gathering device. Twitter and other social media were used as real time information sharing platforms and gained recognition for their usefulness. In this article, we would like to review the roles major search engines, portal sites and social media played in assisting with the effects of the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake and tsunami.

Major Search Engines

Yahoo! Japan

Yahoo! is the most popular portal site in Japan. It is the search engine of choice for more than 60% of Japanese internet users. It aims to be the 'life engine' of Japan and has been serving Japan as the valuable source of information in times of emergency.

For example, when a medium sized earthquake occurs, representatives of Yahoo! Japan News, Yahoo! Japan Weather, and Yahoo! Japan Disaster Information receive an email warning containing related details. If a large earthquake happens, the above representatives report to the office and prepare appropriate content for the site. In the case of Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake, the disaster-related information page was published within a few hours, and continues to be updated and to grow more useful.

From Monday March 14th, a few days after the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake, a 70-person team spread between Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, provided service in 24 hour shifts. On that day, a record-breaking 2.37 billion page views was reported by Yahoo! Japan. Considering the 1.3 billion population of Japan, you can see that many people relied on Yahoo multiple times during the crisis.
Beginning with news about the disaster and emergency contact information, the coverage expanded to information on assistance for reconstruction, and sites with information for children. Currently, the disaster information contents are categorized into the following four sections:
* Disaster Information (in Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean)
* Assistance for Reconstruction　
* Power Outages and Rolling Blackouts
* Nuclear Power Plant Information

Google
Google also responded extremely quickly to the situation. Google Person Finder was published within two hours of the earthquake. Google's search specialization was put to use for finding out about the safety of loved ones.
Google continued to upgrade its Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake support services under Google Crisis Response.

Over the following 2 weeks, more than 30 related services were published, including a Google map with the rolling blackouts information, and a specialized Google Translate for Crisis Response. Google also collaborated with other companies to create contents such as 'road status map' (with data from Honda), and a YouTube channel with video messages from people in the afflicted area (footage provided by television stations). Google continued its vigorous expansion of Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake support services including a YouTube-based Person Finder channel, a Picasa-based evacuation center name list, and twitter live search updates regarding the situation. Within the company, employees created project lists for required Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake support services and specialists around the world rallied to volunteer their services, including teams based in the United States, Australia, and Korea. Some of these services were completed overseas during the night-time in Japan, enabling Google to work round the clock. A Google employee reported that since Google is a global company, somebody in a different time zone is always available to help. The fast development of these services was made possible by this kind of international teamwork.

Social Media

Many people used social media as a primary means of communications because phone lines were often congested.
The Internet connection remained live even in some of the disaster struck areas. People posted about their safety and shared information via Facebook and Twitter. On April 4th, 2011, IMJ Mobile published an intriguing report on the usage of Twitter and Facebook after the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake, and reported "Twitter was used more as a tool to collect real-time information while Facebook was used more as a tool to check the safety status of people. Most people used the tools separately for each purpose."

According to this survey, Within 72 hours of the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake, 83.5% of users utilized Twitter for information gathering, 47.5% for information sharing, and 39.1% to find out the safety of the friends and acquaintances. As for Facebook, 56.0% of the people used it to find out the safety of the friends and acquaintances, 46.8% for information gathering, and 38.3% for information sharing.

(IMJ Mobile 4/4/2011)

78.5% of the people found Twitter useful after the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake and 62.1% for Facebook, accordingly. More than half of the users found both tools useful. When asked whether to continue using these tools, 91.0% of the people were positive about using Twitter, 86.3% for Facebook, both proving a high level of satisfaction. 59.2% of Twitter users and 54.2% of Facebook users would recommend their friends and family members to use these tools. It seems that the penetration level of these tools will continue to increase.

Facebook
Various pages were published on Facebook in relation to the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake and were used as an active information sharing platform. According to socialbakers, a Facebook statistics site, active Facebook users surpassed 3 million people in Japan on April 5th, 2011. The total monthly visitor number was about 6.03 million (Nielsen Feb. 2011). It quickly reached 3% of the total population from its stagnant 2.5 million users before.
http://www.facebook.com/jishin.info
http://www.facebook.com/touhokujishin
http://www.facebook.com/0311earthquake.info
http://www.facebook.com/fight.japan

Twitter
As mentioned above, 80% of the users value Twitter highly. Twitter attracted most attention since the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake. To share accurate information with the public in real time, the Office of the Prime Minister opened Twitter and Facebook accounts.

On April 5th, the Japanese government called for local government and central government offices to open their own official twitter accounts for emergency information transmissions. With the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake as a trigger, if more public offices begin to use social media actively, it is likely to increase the adoption of the service. User numbers continue to rise from 21- million people as of February 2011 (Data from Doubleclick Ad Planner).

mixi
Japanese top SNS site, mixi also started its own information page (http://mixi.at/a52AkXT).
mixi users could create their own 'communites', information sharing pages for users with mutual interests. Many users created various Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake related communities. Since the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake, mixi has strengthened the stability of its system and encourages users to take advantage of their community tool.

A few of the leading Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake related communities opened by mixi users are:

General Information
"Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake Information":
"Major Earthquake Network":
"Tohoku Earthquake Community Links":

Victim Support Information
"Life Savor Information・Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake":
"Earthquake Victim Support Community":
"Tohoku Earthquake・Health Counseling Room by a Doctor":
"Tohoku Earthquake-Serious Disease・Disability・Elderly Support":
"Tohoku Earthquake Support from Kansai":
"Tohoku Earthquake Support, Chugoku & Shikoku":

Regional
"Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake (Iwate Prefecture Only)":
"Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake Support (Nigata)":
"Evacuation Centers in Ofunato・Tohoku Earthquake":

To find out the safety of loved ones, you can see the last login time of your friends by visiting their pages. In areas with internet connection and no phone lines, you can confirm the safety of your friends through mixi and send messages to them easily. Thorough using 'mixi voice', a mixi version of tweeting, you can announce your current condition and 'mixi check-in' shows your position through mobile phone GPS or base station location.

Since the Tohoku-Pacific Ocean Earthquake, search engines, portal sites and social media have not only filled the gap left by telephone and television media, but also played an innovative role in transmitting & sharing information, which is likely to help increase adoption of various social media to broader Japan. This might be a good time to think about these media services, with their enormous information infrastructures, and about how they might be most constructively used in similar situations. I hope that the way social media companies and search engines reacted innovatively to support people in the event of this crisis also serves as a useful example for services in other countries, should similar needs arise.