Gree follow-up

As you know, we have had a couple of articles relating to Gree--the SNS based site--here in Japan which has been making significant headway in the market despite what is happening all around us economically speaking. I came across an excellant piece written by Terrie Lloyd covering Gree and the reasons for its success. Below is a short snippet of this article but for a full analysis please follow the link. A great read for those following the online industry here in Japan.

"Several weeks ago we spoke about Internet Social NetworkService (SNS) company GREE as being a value leader forconsumers. We should have added that since their IPO inDecember, GREE has also become a significant profit leader,announcing mid-January that their parent-only net profitwill probably hit JPY3.5bn on sales of JPY11.2bn for thefinancial year ending June 30th. If their forecast iscorrect, then this will represent a profit increase of amassive 500% over the previous year -- a spectacular jump.
So spectacular, in fact, that GREE currently has a highermarket cap than the biggest social media player in Japan,Mixi. This is somewhat surprising because Mixi has far more"assets" at work, such as 15m users, versus GREE's 8m; bothPC and Mobile coverage, versus GREE being almost 99%Mobile; and a long-term proven profit/growth model.Nonetheless, on Friday GREE was worth JPY126bn in marketcapitalization while Mixi was worth about half that, atJPY73.6bn."