Yahoo Japan launches blog tool
Yahoo Japan, owned mostly by Softbank and partly by Yahoo, on Tuesday launched a test, or “beta,” version of Yahoo Japan Blogs, a free service that lets users post blogs and up to 2GB of images, comment on other blogs, and associate their blogs with animated representations of users known as avatars.
The launch could have implications for Yahoo users in the United States, too. Yahoo’s Asian blogging services are striking in that they precede any offerings or previews by Yahoo for its flagship portal. And Yahoo’s lateness to the blogging game is all the more notable thanks to significant investment by Yahoo’s main portal competitors, including Google, MSN and AOL.