As we watch the first ten years of the 21st century fade into memory, and we turn our attention to the brand new decade ahead, the embedded presentation above is an opportunity to place a bookmark between the two decades and illustrate exactly where Japan digital culture stands at the beginning of 2010.

I have collected 27 pages of facts and statistics which I think most clearly define the immediate landscape of digital in Japan. Some of these figures will be recognizable to some of you, and some might be surprising and new, but over the next few weeks and months, I will refer to them as I continue to highlight some of the crucial trends developing in Japanese digital culture - particularly as it influences Japanese digital marketing.

Please subscribe to this Posterous for occasional updates in somewhat longer form, or, for more regular links to Japanese digital articles and research, you can follow either delicious.com/saren or twitter.com/saren.

As always, please leave a comment or post a question.

Presentation Sources and Credits

1. Image by heiwa4126
2. Reference: Forrester, July 2009 "Global Online Population Forecast, 2008 To 2013" ; Image by pacificit (Flickr)
3. Reference:eMarketer.com; Image by marufish (Flickr)
4. Reference: Google Ad Planner, November 2009; Image by heiwa4126 (Flickr)
5. Image by kirainet (Flickr)
6. Reference: emarketer.com "Japan Mobile Brief" 10/07/2009; Image by cocoarmani (Flickr)
7. Reference: emarketer.com “Japan Mobile Brief” 10/07/2009; Image by toyohara (Flickr)
8. Reference: emarketer.com Graph #105687; Image by kengz (Flickr)
9. Reference: emarketer.com ; Image by Beckii Cruel (YouTube screenshot)
10. Reference: emarketer.com; Image by Saren (screenshot)
11. Reference: mobikyo; Image by y4rd1n4 (Flickr)
12. Reference: Kei Shimada of Infinita as quoted in Contagious Magazine; Image by cloneofsnake (Flickr)
13. Reference: Kei Shimada of Infinita as quoted in Contagious Magazine; Image by stephencannon (Flickr)
14. Reference: techcrunchies.com; Image by dlisbona (Flickr)
15. References: MMD Labs/WirelessWatchJapan; Image by cavorite (Flickr)
16. Reference: Google Japan (via blog.gaijinpot.com); Image by kamoda (Flickr)
17. Reference: Kei Shimada of Infinita as quoted in Contagious Magazine; Image by jfchenier (Flickr)
18. Reference: Fortune.com and 9to5mac.com; Image by moojie (Flickr)
19. Image from Mixi.jp
20. Reference: Google Ad Manager, December 2009
21. Reference: Goo Research (via What Japan Thinks); Image by gyazickr (Flickr)
22. Reference: emarketer.com Graph #107876; Image by spilt-milk (Flickr)
23. Reference: Kei Shimada of Infinita as quoted in Contagious Magazine; Image from Gree.jp
24. Reference: CNET Japan; Image from mbga.jp
25. Reference: Asiajin.com; Image from Pixiv.net
26. Reference: Google Ad Planner, November 2009 ; Image by ottonassar (Flickr)
27. Image by yamagatacamille (Flickr)
28. Image by heiwa4126

Additional thanks for the following individuals for writing me thoughts and comments: Oliver Reichenstein, InformationArchitects.jp, Lawrence Cosh-Ishii, Mobkyo; Jim O'Connell; Manny Santiago, HESO Magazine; Michael Keferl, CScout Japan; Alan AKA shibuya246; Hawken King; David Scripps, Appliya.com; and Alan Yu, ngmoco.com

In both my day job, and while surfing from the couch, I want to know what’s hot in the digital world – right this very minute. For my generation and below, the pulse of the web is so much closer to our experience, as opposed to a ticker running on CNN or MSNBC. Sorting through the RSS feeds to pull out the patterns of the day can quickly become an overwhelming task if you are with some crucial shortcuts and online filters. The following is a list of a few of my favorite shortcuts to digital zeitgeist nirvana:

1. Delicious.com/popular

Not a lot of attention is paid to this Yahoo! property, but it’s still one of the better social bookmarking sites on the web. With a great established user base from it’s time as an independent, and some significant improvements to the UI over the last year, delicious.com has remained a relevant daily stopover to pick up on the zeitgeist of the web. The popular page displays the top links bookmarked in previous 24 hours, so you can pretty much catch the newest, and most collectable links as they rise over the course of a day.

2. Tweetmeme.com

No doubt the current trend of “real time” everything is due in large part to the rise of twitter. So, obviously, it would be good place to start when tracking the pulse of the web in real time. Twitter does have a lot of currency from the Trending Topics that display on the sites sidebar, and that’s important to monitor, but Tweetmeme.com is a great running list of what is being linked to on Twitter, sorted by the number of tweets. The menu bar has a lot of great buttons, and features are released now and again to keep things fresh.

See Also: Digg.com and Reddit.com, however their news cycle is a little bit longer, and less immediate, and you really have to appreciate the audience to become a loyalist to either site.

3. The Hype Machine – Popular on Twitter Today

Related to TweetMeme is the Hype Machine listing of the MP3s that have been posted (and discussed) on blogs all over the web. Songs on the list are sorted by thier points, which are calculated by how many tweets each post has generated. Each MP3 is playable, so you can listen, and stay on top of what music is being discussed on any given day.

Remixes of previously popular songs are by far the most exchanged songs on the web.

Also in the music category would be the MTV Top 100 Most Viewed Today. Which lists the video files on their site by how many views it has accumulated in the last 24 hours.

4. Youtube.com Most Viewed Today

A listing of the most played videos of the day, and now includes a content box with the “Trending Topics.”

5. Google Hot Trends

Updated every 30 minutes this page will track what the most search terms are within any 30 minutes period.

6. Top  Facebook Applications

A great resource for trends in the social media space is AllFacebook.com. As the statistics for the amount of time spent on Facebook continue to grow and astound, keeping on top of which applications are growing the quickest, and have the most daily active users, is a great indication of where all that time spend is going. AllFacebook.com tracks both the top applications, by active users, and also the most popular Pages by Fan growth.

7. search.twitter.com

This is important if you want to limit your real-time updates to specific keywords, people, or subjects of your choosing, not the cloud’s. Pop in a phrase, noun or name and up comes the current chatter about them. Great for following up on a snippet you overheard on the bus, or on some screen out of the corner of your eye in an elevator.

See also: OneRiot.com.

How about you? Do you have any quick pages to reveal what the world is interested in at this very moment in time? Leave a comment with your favorite.

Straight from the world wide interwebs, a collection of some of the more interesting end-of-the-year lists.

1. 10 Web Trends to Watch in 2010 by Pete Cashmore of Mashable.com.

2. TrendWatching's 10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010

3. Six Social Media Trends for 2010 by David Armano (@armano) posted on HarvardBusiness.org.

4. ReadWriteWeb's Year end lists: Top 10 International Web Products of 2009, Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2009, Top 10 Mobile Web Products of 2009, and Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2009.

5. Web Design Trends for 2010 by Jacqueline Thomas on webdesignledger.com.

6. Top Digital Trends For 2010 by Nuri Djavit and Paul Newneson of Last Exit (lastexit.tv), posted on digitalmediabuzz.com (also posted to iMediaConnection.com).

7. 2009 Year-End Google Zeitgeist: (US) (Japan).

8. The Future Of The Web: Where Will We Be In Five Years? By Cameron Chapman on Noupe.com.

9. Gartner's Top 10 Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012

10. Best of CSS Design 2009 from WebDesignerWall.com.

11. Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer's CEO.

12. AdWeek's Best of the 2000s Lists.

(Added 12/16/2009)

13. What You Watched and Searched for on YouTube in 2009, from the YouTube Blog.

(Added 12/17/2009)

14. 7 Social Media and Web Analytics Predictions for 2010, from Social Media Today

15. What the Trend?'s Top 50 Twitter Topics of the Year from AdAge

Bonus Lists:

The New York Times Ninth Annual Year in Ideas.

Please leave a comment with other suggestions.