If You Tweet It, Japan Will Come

Japan loves a craze. And the excitement for Twitter in Japan these days is reaching a fever pitch. Magazines explaining the Twitter phenomenon crowd newsstands, and television news programs run specials about the microblogging service.

The latest evidence of Japan’s embrace of Twitter came at a Friday night “tweetup,” a gathering arranged on Twitter, in a packed banquet room in Tokyo’s Ebisu neighborhood attended by none other than the start-up’s co-founder and CEO, Evan Williams.

During a speech, Mr. Williams noted how the first tweetup he attended in Tokyo two years ago had 40 people, while this year’s gathering drew 500, with corporate sponsors like Sapporo providing free beer and Coca-Cola Japan supplying soft drinks. During that period, the company has grown from 20 employees to 250, Mr. Williams said, drawing an “ooooh” from the crowd.

Mr. Williams said the service has taken off in Japan, setting a world record for most tweets per second in the aftermath of its World Cup victory against Denmark. The crowd responded with thunderous clapping. Mr. Williams wrapped up his comments by asking the audience for patience “as this is just the beginning.”

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