Hmm, maybe I'll sign up just in case they close the loophole. Do they reveal Mixi users' email addresses? I imagine not, given it's such a private site and what I've read of the habits of Japanese social networkers. Otherwise I'll use the australia.edu addy. Also, how long did confirmation emails and suchlike take?

Last edited by ruiner (2010 March 14, 6:19 pm)

Signing up took me all of 5 minutes with a valid .edu email address. No idea how long it takes for the Australia.edu thing. I've heard some people getting it right away, and I've heard others not getting a reply for days.

As for Mixi, I don't think they care too much about who signs up, so long as they aren't spambots, crooks, or other potential malfeasors. I think they figure that people coming from .edu domains are people who are genuinely interested in learning Japanese or Teaching Japanese.

I think the blocking of non-.edu addresses from overseas was their lame attempt to prevent spambots, etc. Not that I necessarily agree with it, but I think that was their thought process, because they're kind of paranoid about system abuse.

Note that if you don't get any friends in 30 days, you get booted, and you can't access any of the main features of Mixi (apps, community, for example) without having friends.

There was also a brief mention that if you have a valid email address in Japan (but not a big service like Yahoo... something like from a hosted domain in Japan), that would work, too. No idea if that's true or not, and I wouldn't want to be the guinea pig.

Last edited by rich_f (2010 March 14, 6:50 pm)

Yeah, it could be your uni's spam filter. Some people have complained that their schools have overactive spam filters that ding out the confirmation emails.

So much katakana in the interface, even for regular words.