Japan social network firm finds mobile gaming success

Tokyo

IT was a familiar trajectory for a social network such as Facebook that did not happen to be Facebook: One moment there were tens of millions of users and a multi-billion-dollar stock market valuation. The next, a plunge towards whatever-happened-to-it oblivion.

But the Japanese technology company Mixi, once the dominant social network in its consummately Internet-connected home market, is rewriting the ending to its story, thanks to a striking act of self-reinvention.