Owner Dwango Alexa rank 186 (March 2017) Registration Yes Type of site Video hosting service | Website www.nicovideo.jp Commercial Yes Launched December 12, 2006 Parent organization Dwango | |
 | ||
TV shows Mangirl!, Japan Animator Expo, Cute High Earth Defense, Sailor Moon Crystal, Love Lab | ||
Vocaloid medley concert 2014 niconico cho party 3
Niconico (ニコニコ, Nikoniko, lit. "Smile"), formerly known as Nico Nico Douga (ニコニコ動画, Niko Niko Dōga, lit. "Smiley Smiley Video") or "Nico-dō" for short, is a video sharing website in Japan managed by Dwango. "Niconico" or "nikoniko" is the Japanese ideophone for smiling. As of September 2015, Niconico is the eighth most visited website in Japan. The site won the Japanese Good Design Award in 2007, and an Honorary Mention of the Digital Communities category at Prix Ars Electronica 2008.
Contents
- Vocaloid medley concert 2014 niconico cho party 3
- Features
- History
- Niconicocom
- Incomes
- Financial condition
- References
Features
Users can upload, view and share video clips. Unlike other video sharing sites, however, comments are overlaid directly onto the video, synced to a specific playback time. This allows comments to respond directly to events occurring in the video, in sync with the viewer—creating a sense of a shared watching experience. Together with Hiroyuki Nishimura serving as director at Niwango until February 2013, Niconico's atmosphere and cultural context is close to 2channel's or Futaba Channel's, and many popular videos have otaku tastes, such as anime, computer games and pop music. Niconico offers tagging of videos. Tags may be edited by any user, not just the uploader. Each video may have up to ten tags, of which up to five may be optionally locked by the uploader, but all others may be edited by any user. Frequently these tags are used not only as categorization, but also as critical commentary, satire, or other humor related to the video's content. The site is also known for its MAD videos and its medleys of popular songs on the website, most notably Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga. Certain original net animations have been distributed on the website, such as Candy Boy, Tentai Senshi Sunred and Penguin Musume Heart.
Other features include:
History
The first version of Niconico used YouTube as a video source. However, as the site became more popular, so much traffic was transferred from YouTube that YouTube blocked access from Niconico. Consequently, Niconico was forced to shut down the service but two weeks later it commenced its service with its own video server. On May 7, 2007, a Niconico for mobile phone users was announced. Since August 9, 2007, "Nico Nico Douga (RC) Mobile" has serviced mobile phones of NTT DoCoMo and au.
As of October 31, 2011, Niconico has over 23,690,000 registered users, 6,870,000 mobile users and 1,390,000 premium users. Due to the limited server capacity, Niwango limits the amount of free users accessible to the website at peak times (7 p.m. to 2 a.m.), based on the time of registration. The website is written in Japanese and the majority of the site traffic is from Japan, although approximately four percent is from outside Japan, notably one percent from Taiwan. A Taiwanese version of the site was launched on October 18, 2007. In July 2008, the website was localized to German and Spanish. The Taiwanese localization was significantly improved in the process. An English-language version was added on October 17, 2012, replacing the Niconico.com website, featuring a new player and translation tools allowing users to translate video descriptions into English or Chinese.
On April 27, 2012, Nico Nico Douga announced it would be renaming itself as Niconico, as well as introducing a new "Zero" version of the website which improves video resolution, along with various other upgrades.
Niconico.com
In 2010, a version in English was in the works, and in April 2011, an English language beta website, Niconico, was launched. This site allowed users to share videos from YouTube, DailyMotion and Niconico and view them in Niconico's player, which includes the commenting system, as well as add English tags to them. Improvements later made to the site allowed users to upload their own videos, with subscribed users able to host livestreams. The site also simulcast select anime titles from June 2011. On October 14, 2011, Niconico announced a partnership with Funimation Entertainment to form Funico, to handle licensing of anime properties for streaming and home video. With the implementation of English language features into Nicovideo.jp, Niconico.com was retired on November 19, 2012 and now redirects to the Japanese website.
Incomes
The main income of Niconico is divided into three parts: Premium-Membership (Pay-membership), Advertisement, and Nico Nico Ichiba (Affiliate).
Registration is needed to watch videos at Niconico. There are two types of registered accounts, Free membership and Premium-membership. The Premium-membership fee is 540 yen a month. As of January 2, 2012, they reached 1,500,000 premium members. They accept three forms of payment: credit cards, WebMoney vouchers and PayPal since February 2011.
Niconico uses Google Ads and other web advertisements. On May 8, 2008, Niwango announced partnership with Yahoo! Japan, and plans to adopt search-related ads and other Yahoo-related services.
Nico Nico Ichiba is a unique advertisement system in which users can place banners freely in each video page. Both video uploader and video viewer can choose items which they want to place, and can place and delete banners in the advertisement area. Users also can know how many times each banner has been clicked and how many items have been bought. Ranking info of numbers of items bought through Nico Nico Ichiba is also officially provided. Items available are from Amazon.co.jp, Yahoo Shopping, and Dwango mobile service.
Premium accounts and the affiliate system were, in the past, only available to Japanese users. Non-Japanese users can now apply for a premium membership on the Japanese site with international JCB cards, WebMoney vouchers only and PayPal, language barrier notwithstanding. Also, as of July 2010, Nico Nico Ichiba has been extended to the Taiwanese website.
Financial condition
In the fiscal year from Q4 2010 to Q3 2011, Niconico has had a gross income of approximately 10.81 billion yen (US$139.1 million as of November 10, 2011), and posts a 670 million yen (US$8.6 million) operating profit.
On October 30, 2007, Niwango and the JASRAC, Japanese copyright holders' society agreed to form a comprehensive partnership and Niwango will pay two percent of its earnings to JASRAC as copyright royalties.