Japanese video sharing site February 29, 2008
Posted by fukumimi in Internet.trackback
For those people who come to this blog via a search engine with Japanese YouTube as keywords, I guess I should point you out to Nico Nico Douga.
I don’t think I’ve posted about this before, mainly because I’m not big fans of the 2ch culture which pervades the site. (No coincidence, given the involvement of Hiroyuki Nishimura)
Not a big fan of Dwango which operates the site either.
Anyway, there you have it, Japan’s most popular homegrown video sharing site, rife with the same blatant disregard for copyright but with an extra seasoning of 2ch otaku culture.
God only knows why the site garnered a “Good Design Award” in 2007, but then that Award was given out to over 1000 products and designs last year….. Other “highlights” of last year’s awards. Second Life. A Hermann Miller copycat office chair.
For those who don’t know, the comments on videos on Nico are timecoded along with the video playback. A “comments” toggle-button at the bottom of the video allows you to turn this streaming textual commentary subtitle track on or off.
A complete copyright hole and Japanese companies seem more concerned about attacking the outsider, Google’s YouTube (perhaps something to do with deeper pockets?) than going after Nico. Bizzarre, really. I have Japanese friends who fill their downtime watching entire anime or drama series off Nico.