mixi

But most people on Mixi do not know her real name, nor have they seen what she looks like.

With Mixi in its seventh year, it is starting "to feel old, " said Mitsuyo Nakata, a Web designer.

Mixi has grown by letting users sign up with pseudonyms, and gives its subscribers fine-tune controls over who sees posts and other uploads.

In her five years on Mixi, she has never uploaded a photo of herself.

Mixi, meanwhile, has been adapting some techniques of other popular Silicon Valley start-ups.

A new arrival to Forbes' Japan 40 Richest List is a 32-year-old Kenji Kasahara, who created social networking site Mixi, Forbes said.

News of MySpace's imminent arrival caused Mixi shares to fall 7 per cent yesterday.

Facebook faces large, established competitors, including Japan's Mixi, Tencent QQ in China and Vkontakte of Russia.

Most similar to Facebook is Mixi, started in 2004.

Mixi has more than 21. 6 million members.

And Mixi, the dominant site in Japan, went public this week in a spectacular debut on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.