Tokyo-based Internet company Istyle Inc. announced on Feb. 3 its intention to list itself on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers Market (Tosho Mothers). The planned date of the IPO is March 8, 2012.

Istyle's flagship service @Cosme (pronounced "atto kosume," — www.cosme.net) is the country's largest cosmetic and beauty product community website. And as far as I can tell, it also seems to be the world's largest website of its kind — probably due to the huge love Japanese women have for makeup.

As @Cosme's tag line, "Everyone's word-of-mouth site," suggests, the main content of the site is made up of user-generated reviews of more than 200,000 cosmetic products — such as lip gloss, moisturizer, foundation, mascara and so on — from around 23,000 brands. Two million members write some 9.4 million reviews monthly, while approximately 5.5 million visitors go to the site to check the reviews. The total website traffic is a staggering 300 million page views per month.