Parmy, Inc. provides a new micro-blogging service, “Serend”.This service is different in that it is in conversation format, and Parmy is aiming to provide a casual “gossip” community for users.

A famous micro-blogging service which has also gained popularity in Japan is “Twitter”. Twitter became popular worldwide by its feature “tweets”, which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters. However, because Twitter was designed solely to “tweet”, a user needs
In Twitter, a user puts a “@” sign before their replies to a certain post. However, because the posts are listed in chronological order, it is difficult to distinguish which posts the replies were posted to or which posts are the most popular. Twitter also has a rule made by the users, which is to put hash tags when using as a community (a “#” sign is added to the posts of the same category to be distinguishable). Therefore, for users with little literacy, it is difficult for them to post to a certain category or to find a popular category.
On the other hand, conversations or community features can be found on Bulletin Board services such as “2channel”. However, it is difficult for users to join these spaces casually because they are public spaces and each has their own unspoken rules.
“Serend” provides a new space which neither Twitter nor other existing services provides. “Serend” is similar to Twitter in the way that their system enables users to post short comments of up to a 100 characters. The difference is that 1) it is in sled-style, 2) the posts and comments are listed in pairs in chronological order, and 3) the comments are posted by categories.

The sled style enables users to add comments instead of @ signs to their replies. In this way, a user is able to distinguish instantly which posts received a reply or which posts received the most replies.
In addition, the posts and replies are both listed in chronological order so the posts which have many comments stand out and users can easily find the most popular posts. In the test phase, there were popular posts which received more than 100 replies by introducing this feature.
Last of all, the users select the categories when posting the comments. Currently, there are 6 major categories besides the main “Home” where all the comments are posted, which are “Daily”, “Sports”, “Gossip/Entertainment”, “IT” and “Hobby”. Users can also choose a certain category when viewing the posts.
“Serend” also has several features to entertain the community. The most popular posts are automatically extracted by the time of post or by the number of comments. Another feature is the “record notice”. When a user’s post becomes popular and it renews the users’ record in the number of comments, the user receives a “record notice”. In this way, there are fun features for all users.

The main target of this service is women of the age 20-30. You can tell that the main users are them by browsing the service website. For example, the main genres of conversations are cooking, lunch, television programs and fashion, which are popular genres for women of that age. We can see that the service is properly serving its purpose to provide a “gossip space” for users.

“Serend” started its test operation in June 2009 and officially opened on August 20. As of July 2009, 30 thousand users are accessing the website per month and comments are posted at the speed of 1 per 20 second. There are constantly new posts so you can always visit the website to find something new and interesting.
Twitter has become popular among Japanese users, while “Hatsugenkomachi” has been receiving great support from Japanese women. On the other hand, “Serend” is providing a space which neither Twitter nor Hatsugenkomachi has provided. The service is sure to gain popularity like the two existing services in the near future.