A portion of the forum keeps talking about it here and there but it's been around for more than a few months and has become so popular that I think it's about time there was a thread just about this. I hope this is fine by the mods and I don't get blastinated for making a topic...
Spoiler for Information about the site:
Anyway, for anyone who doesn't know it's a
Japanese-only video streaming site that's unusual in that you can write comments that appear
on the video itself and playback with the video at the moment you write the comment. So for example if a funny scene happens at 2:07, I can write "LOLOLOLOLOLOL" at 2:07 and next time anyone comes to watch it, at 2:07 they will see that comment scroll across the screen over the video (there's a limit to how many comments get displayed at one time though, older ones fade away and can't be seen).
It originally started off as simply a method of overlaying comments on videos from YouTube, but YouTube asked them to stop it so they closed for a while and reopened with videos either from their video uploader (SmileVideo), AmebaVision or Photozou.
Membership is free but people who want to upgrade to a paid system can do so and enjoy more colours to write comments in, more uploading and favourites-list space, and a dedicated connection line to the site. Niconico Douga also has affiliation with amazon.co.jp such that a video can have related goods listed under it and people can buy through it (the number who do gets reflected after some time).
The site can be accessed at
http://www.nicovideo.jp . The parent company is dwango which, I think, counts Hiroyuki Nishimura (the so-called founder of 2ch) as one of its key members.
Because of this commenting system it's helped build a particular kind of culture at the site. I'd say it's still mostly populated by bored anime/game otaku, but there are other obscure things you might find there too. It's already got its hordes of memes and specialised words (especially through famous "sora-mimi", namely misheard words from videos - like TETSUKO instead of Let's Go), and some fads are said to have become popularised because of niconico - the recent
Hatsune Miku phenomenon is a good example. You might say a lot of it is rather insular - like the endless iterations of the fan-made "Niconico Symphony" which is a medley of popular tunes among fans on the site, but current events and stuff get to the top of the rankings too (like the recent fuss over Sawajiri Erika). Of course, since the site became fully open to the public there are many concerns that the rankings list is engineered by fans who keep re-entering a video into their favourites list...
But I really wanted to start a thread because right now it's down for upgrading from version RC to RC2, and I read
this pdf about the new features. There's some serious additions, about as big as the the time they added a paid service. For example, they now allow the video creator to delete comments off their video, block comments containing a certain word or even block certain users from writing comments. This is a huge change! I don't think I can get used to it yet.
More importantly I read that they're planning on releasing a
Taiwanese version of the site on the 19th of October. WTF?! Is it going to work? Is it going to get flamed and spammed to no end? It's very interesting but I wonder how well it'll work, honestly... and whether the Niconico model will work when expanded to a much larger audience, especially since IMO the Japanese internet users tended to be rather separated from a good part of the world due to language barriers.
I'm also very interested in how some Japanese companies are taking interest in really partnering with the site to provide streaming contents rather than going on ZOMG COPYRIGHT VIOLATION DELETEZ0R blitzes. Already one current (?) anime, Saishuu Shiken Kujira, is being legally aired on Niconico. But adding onto the fact that
a. the site can support long and relatively good-quality videos
b. the comments make it very fun to watch
c. people are more likely to respond by creating fan-made parodies/videos/etc
d. it's becoming harder to air certain things on TV (...maybe?)
I think it only makes sense to let more anime be legally aired on Niconico. Already every new episode of anime seems to get uploaded there illegally
anyway... And I've always hoped for an
internationally-accessible anime streaming site, all the better if it's got fun comments. So I'm looking forward to see how this develops. (although considering there were all those problems with Youtube, I wonder why they get all enthusiastic when it's a Japanese site...)
I'm sure other people on this forum do watch videos on the site, so does anyone have anything to say about it? Even if it's not about the upgrade. I want to talk about it, but in English!
EDIT: By the time I finished typing it had finished upgrading. LOL. BRB, I'm going to see how it works out!