Those are all good points, but they don't say much regarding nicknames vs. real names, they say that the Facebook concept itself may not work very well in Japan, real names or no. :-)<p>The only thing that touches on real names is unwanted friend invites, since real names makes it easier for people to find you and possibly try to friend you. I don't know if that's gonna be a dealbreaker though, I think people can overcome that with the limited friend profiles?<p>Anyway, the article tries to predict the failure of Facebook in Japan on the grounds of it not being like all previous virtual communities, i.e. about groups of people already online making new circles of friendship. But Facebook was never such a virtual community, it was always about modelling your real-life social network, about hooking up online with people you were already friends with, not the other way around. And having real names is a crucial part of that.<p>Facebook may very well fail in Japan because of different privacy expectations, but changing it to make it more similar to existing community products is pretty bad advice.