what the webkare

 
While sifting through my shiny new feed reader this Saturday morning (I just switched from Shrook to NetNewsWire, and I'm not going back), I was pleasantly surprised by TechCrunch's coverage of a unique girl-oriented social networking trend in Japan. A social gaming site called Webkare, aka Virtual Boyfriend, engages users to interact between four virtual characters in attempt to win their hearts. Winning involves some unknown combination of holding pre-set conversations with the boys and becoming friends with other users of the site. Despite the fact that the social networking features are limited, the site has gained instant popularity with more than 10,000 members after 5 days.

I have a good feeling that this is a distinctly Japanese trend, and likely wouldn't translate well in this country unless they created a similar site aimed towards manga/anime fans in the US. That being said, if they tweaked the site to be a social networking game that existed in the Phoenix Wright world, I would be there in a heartbeat. I mean, how cool would that be. But since chances of that happening are slim and I'm rusty on my Japanese, I'll just oogle the cute nerdy webkare to the right for the time being (I choose you, cute webkare-chu).