As social networking services providers like Facebook and MySpace beef up their services to attract users, the battle lines are increasingly being drawn on foreign soil.
Facebook and News Corp's MySpace lead the global market and are making forays abroad, but they are coming up against a host of smaller players staking out local turf. In Japan, Mixi Inc, DeNA Co and other home-grown companies dominate the market.
Their strength lies in game offerings -- both casual games for users like commuters on trains and hard-core games for serious players at home -- as more and more people look for entertainment on social networking sites.
Social networks let users interact with friends via blogs, games and photo sharing. Experts say the key is keeping content fresh and innovating the product, to retain fickle Netizens who tend to hop between newer, more interesting sites.
Many of the Japanese operators, for instance, have shifted their main business to mobile phones.
"It's all about the product development capability," Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief executive officer of Japan's No. 3 social networking operator, Gree Inc, said last month at the Reuters Global Technology Summit.
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