Niconico

Niconico, Inc. (ニコニコ), known before 2012 as Nico Nico Douga (ニコニコ動画), is a Japanese video sharing service based in Tokyo, Japan. "Niconico" or "nikoniko" is the Japanese ideophone for smiling.[1] As of 2021, Niconico is the 34th most-visited website in Japan, according to Alexa Internet.[2]

The site won the Japanese Good Design Award in 2007,[3] and an Honorary Mention of the Digital Communities category at Prix Ars Electronica 2008.[4] Between June 8, 2024 and August 5, 2024, its servers were affected by a cyberattack and the website was partially active.[5]

History

Features

Users can upload, view, and share video clips. Unlike other video-sharing sites, however, comments are overlaid directly onto the video, and synced to specific playback times. This feature allows comments to respond directly to events occurring in the video, in sync with the viewer—creating a sense of a shared watching experience. Niconico's atmosphere and cultural context are close to 2channel's or Futaba Channel's. Many popular videos on this site have otaku tastes, such as anime, computer games, and pop music. Niconico offers a feature for users (not just the uploader of the video) to tag videos. Each video may have up to eleven tags, of which up to five the uploader may lock. Frequently, this functionality can be used not only as categorization, but also as critical commentary, satire, or other humor related to the video's content. Certain tags may have an explanation attached to them in the form of a Niconicopedia (ニコニコ大百科) article, some being proper descriptions while others having a more comedic tone. The site is also known for its MAD videos and its medleys of popular songs on the website, most notably Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga. Niconico also distributed some original net animations, such as Candy Boy, Tentai Senshi Sunred, and Penguin Musume Heart.[27]

Other features include:

Mylist: each user may create "mylists", which function similarly to a list of bookmarks. Users can have up to 25 mylist folders, but the number of videos per folder depends on the user's membership status. A basic account can have 100 videos per folder, while a premium (paid) account has five times that amount (500). Under this limit, a free member can have up to 2,500 mylisted videos, while premium members can mylist up to 12,500 videos. Daily mylist activity is used to compute the default ranking view, although one may also sort by view or comment count. Mylists may be optionally made public and linked to; for example, to make a list of uploader's works (e.g., original songs or gameplay videos).

Uploader comments: the uploader of a video may attach permanent comments to the video. This feature is suitable for some cases as subtitles, lyrics, or corrections.

Nicoscript: by using special commands in the uploader comments, the uploader can add special effects to the video, including voting, automatic transfer to another video, quiz scoring, and other features.

area served	Worldwide
url	https://www.nicovideo.jp
commercial	Yes
type	Video hosting service
language	Japanese
registration	Optional
owner	Dwango (Kadokawa Corporation)
author	Niwango
launch date	December 12, 2006
current status	Active

History

2024 Ransomware attack

Niconico.com

Features

Business aspects

Income

Financial condition

See also

External links

References