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Japanese Programmer Community ‘Qiita’ Passes 10,000 Users

Qiita, an online programmer community for programmers in Japan, has just surpassed the 10,000 registered user milestone.

Qiita was created by Increments Inc., and since it was initially launched back in September of 2011, the site has grown to see more than 150,000 unique visitors each month. The company notes that this total is approximately 40 percent of the total number of programmers in Japan (estimated to be 400,000). Qiita features close integration with social coding platform Github, allowing users to sign up with their Github or Twitter credentials. Once you have an account, you can share tips or code with others on the platform, or follow the public stream or specific topics (or tagged items) like Python (see below) or JavaScript. Qiita user Juanito Fatas has a great step-by-step annotated explanation of the interface in English for those who don’t read Japanese [1].

As for a business model, Qiita does have some advertising on site, and the company also holds events for programmers like hackathons or coordinates with companies who are looking to connect with programmers in Japan. Increments’s other product offering is a relatively new Mac application for programmers called Kobito (with a very cute logo, pictured right), which became available back in April and since then it has been downloaded by over 4,000 developers. The app is described as a note-taking and archiving tool, and included among its features is Markdown previewing, syntax highlighting, and code publishing via Qiita integration. Like Qiita, there isn’t an English version just yet, but I’m told that could possibly come along in the near future.

There used to be an English interface, but it was closed to focus on the Japanese side. English support could return in the future, although I’m told there isn’t yet a concrete plan.