TwitCasting attracts Japanese teens tired of Facebook

ntttttttttttt

As teens around the world are fading away from Facebook, Japan is no exception. While short messaging app LINE dominates the tech headlines, TwitCasting is the “it” app among teens in Japan.

TwitCasting Live is an extremely simple app that allows you to broadcast live movies via Twitter or your Facebook account with almost no latency. More than half of its four million registered users are teenagers. About 1,330,000 college students are registered users and that is about 50% of all the college students in Japan.

There are two reasons why TwitCasting exploded in Japan — high penetration rate of smartphones and real time communication. Some 84% of high school students own a smartphone in Japan. TwitCasting’s livestream is specially tailored for smartphones and you can broadcast from anywhere on the 3G/LTE network. Lots of users gain tens of thousands viewers every broadcast and a lot of them are teenagers and students.

Outside of Japan, it is most used in Brazil, accounting for 13% of its total users. Big Brazilian singer Ivete Sangalo (9 million Twitter followers) is a regular user and the Brazilian version of the Occupy movement is another popular content gaining millions of viewers. The app can be used in English and Portuguese and the company is looking to branch out in Silicon Valley to reach out to users globally.