Why do the Japanese use Facebook for work communication?

At the end of a meeting a last week to discuss a potential new project, the department head- one level down from the CEO- decided that the next step was to get in touch with someone he knows to get feedback on the idea. He closed the discussion by saying “I’ll send him a Facebook message this afternoon.”

I’ve repeatedly observed this behavior lately in Japan: many people tend to use Facebook over email or LinkedIn for professional communication. It’s possible that this is confined to the tech/media/startup space, but I’m not so sure. A few other instances I’ve run into this: My team was in the process of retaining an independent hardware design consultant; throughout the process he refused to use email to communicate with us- a leading public Japanese internet company- and used Facebook group messages instead. After every professional conference or dinner gathering, new Facebook friend requests inevitably follow the next day (no LinkedIn invites, ever). It appears to me that professionals in Japan have created a use for Facebook that I didn’t quite understand.

At this point, I had to find out why. After that meeting I asked my boss and a few others why they used Facebook for work communication, and it seems that there are at least three reasons: First, and most simply, Linkedin has not taken off in Japan as in other parts of the world. Specifically, the feedback was to the tone of “The only people that add me on LinkedIn are headhunters, and I don’t trust them,” or “If people see me using LinkedIn, they’ll think I’m looking for a new job”: basically everyone on LinkedIn has an agenda, and that agenda is not something they want a part of. Second, I’ve heard that “you can see what people have been up to on Facebook, and that helps you to stay in touch and start conversations.” Nothing new or specific to Japan here- this is something that Rapportive does for many users, for instance- perhaps the only difference is the lack of awareness of these types of tools in Japan.

Lastly, and to me most importantly, the overwhelming reason why Facebook seems to be preferred over email is that Japanese users see it as more informal. In Japan, as in the US, the structure, format and content of both email clients and content evolved from written letters: the difference is the degree of formality that has been traditionally observed in Japanese written communication, which is truly stifling (see here for a quick overview: http://www.tofugu.com/2013/06/04/how-to-write-letters-in-japanese-an-introduction/). As a result, while in the US/UK, we may start off with “Dear so-and-so, Hope things are well”, sending a Japanese work email demands multiple standard introductory greetings and a cognitive overhead of complicated word choice that takes away from the convenience of electronic communication; one often has to read through one to two paragraphs here to get to the actual point of the email. However, it seems that society has collectively decided this is unnecessary when the message is sent via a social networking platform.

So how do I interpret this user behavior? One easy answer is that I think there is demand for a great Social CRM product in the market that provides a better experience when using these tools for business (something like a lightweight version of ConnectedHQ before the LinkedIn acquisition); typing messages and keeping track of conversations in Facebook is too tedious. My main takeaway, however, is nobody likes the formality and process inherent in doing business here: since the only way to circumvent formal email structure was to use another tool, people have jumped on that. So, for anyone working in Japan for the first time, don’t feel too pressured to learn every single nuanced business rule: many Japanese themselves find it overbearing and would rather do without it…….Oh, and last thing: if you want to do a deep recruiting search in Japan, skip LinkedIn and go for searching on Facebook. This is where everyone builds their business network anyways.