JapanLike: New social Japan-related news site
One of the main aims at NihongoUp is for learners of the Japanese language to be exposed to the wonderful and fascinating culture that Japan has. This is why you’ll see ‘Cultural notes’ in lessons, explaining why a certain turn of phrase is relevant, or the significance of certain calender dates, or foods. We also recommend a film upon completion of each level—to further expose learners to all that Japan can offer. Recently however, we have taken our commitment to bringing the Japanese-learning community closer to the culture of Japan one step further.
We are delighted to to announce that we’ve launched a public beta of JapanLike, a new social news website for those interested in Japan and Japanese. It’s fully integrated into NihongoUp so you can use your existing login to rate and discover others’ stories, post new ones, and share them with friends. If you’ve read something that you like—you simply click ‘like’ and that story’s ranking has just increased—so more of the community know about it! Despite only being online for a matter of weeks, there’s already so much exciting and interesting stuff to read. It’s categorised in a number of ways and fully searchable so you’re bound to find something that interests you. And, when you do, our ‘recommended links’ feature introduces you to similar content that may be worthy of your time. Whether you’re an anime fanatic, a technology geek, or just passionate about learning Japanese—there’s bound to be something for you to read.
We’ve even made some browser extensions to make it a little easier for you to submit new stories and view others’ submissions. If you are a J-blogger, there are also several external Like buttons and widgets which you can embed on your website showing only your articles and their JapanLike rating. To make it easier to discover new articles, there is a Twitter feed and Facebook group which auto-posts new and popular stories from the J-Blog community.
To celebrate the launch of the new addition to what is already the most technologically superior and user-friendly Japanese-orientated social community online, we have a lifetime subscription to NihongoUp.com (worth $150) to give away to one lucky member of the JapanLike Facebook page. The winner will be announced on the 1st December so move quickly if you’re not yet a member, and don’t forget to share it with your friends!
The site is pretty simple to use so you shouldn’t have any problems, but if you have any questions or awesome ideas, then just give us a mail or start a new topic at the forum and we’ll do our best to make you happy. We have a long-term commitment to ensuring that JapanLike is the place to go for bloggers to get exposure and for learners of Japanese and those interested in Japan to discover all that Japan has to offer.
I’m really excited by this, and I hope you are too! I have more great product announcements to come in the following weeks, so watch this space, subscribe to the RSS, follow NihongoUp on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.
