Since listing on the Mothers Stock Exchange in December 2008, the number of members of the SNS "GREE" has been growing at an accelerating rate. At the time of listing, the number of members was 8 million, but by April 2009 it had reached the 10 million mark. In September, it had surpassed the 15 million mark. Not a day goes by without seeing a TV commercial that highlights mobile games such as the fishing game "Tsuri★Star!" and the gardening game "Hakoniwa," and in June 2009, the company posted a 7.1-fold increase in ordinary profits compared to the previous year.
GREE, which originally started as the personal website of President Yoshikazu Tanaka, launched a service combining mobile game distribution and SNS three years ago. In addition to being an SNS where members can interact with each other, the site has gained the support of users through a system where members can purchase in-game items by purchasing points.
What was the secret behind President Tanaka's successful shift towards mobile services and growing the company into one of the major social networking sites?
The voices of the present should be compared with past history.
Yoshikazu Tanaka, CEO, GREE Born in Tokyo in 1977. After graduating from Nihon University's School of Law, he joined Sony Communication Network. In 2000, he joined Rakuten. In February 2004, he launched "GREE" as a remove background image personal company. In December of the same year, he founded GREE, Inc. and became its president.
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Yoshikazu Tanaka, CEO of GREE, was born in Tokyo in 1977. After graduating from Nihon University's School of Law, he joined Sony Communication Network. In 2000, he joined Rakuten. In February 2004, he launched GREE as a personal company. In December of the same year, he founded GREE, Inc. and became its president.
The key to innovation is not to suddenly come up with something, but to notice signs of change. To do this, it is important to listen to the voices of users rather than studying the services of other companies. Google did not start its search engine as a result of thoroughly studying Yahoo. Moreover, Twitter (a microblog where users post short messages to each other) was not created by studying Google. Innovation that is accepted by many people is born as a result of always thinking about what users want. However, listening to the voices of users does not necessarily mean simply reflecting those voices in the service as they are. Rather, it is important to compare the "voices" that are the raw information of the "present" with the "past" history of that industry or field.
For example, before we started our current mobile services, when we collected feedback from users who primarily used mobile phones rather than PCs, we heard things like "PCs take a long time to start up," "I can't play while lying down," and "The screen is too big." Around the same time, the Nintendo DS and PSP were becoming popular in the gaming industry, and it seemed to me that the heyday of home gaming consoles was coming to an end. The "common sense" that games were something to play at home and that you wanted to play on a big screen was beginning to change