Video Comments The Japanese Way (Nico Nico Douga)

Can a geek-driven video portal beat YouTube in Japan?

One of the most spectacular success stories in the Asian web market is currently being written by Nico Nico Douga ("smiling videos"), a video sharing platform from Japan. As one of the country's most visited sites, it still trails the Japanese version of YouTube. But Nico Nico is catching up very quickly.

The site, which is available only in Japanese and requires registration to view videos, managed to attract nearly 6 million registered users since its launch in January 2007. The number of users of the mobile version exceeded the 1.2 million mark in March this year. Nico Nico racks up around two billion page views per month. The site is estimated to carry one twelfth of Internet traffic in Japan. Google Trends for Websites doesn't break out YouTube properties, but it does show Nico Nico to be attracting about as many visitors as Veoh does worldwide (about 1.4 million on a daily basis, see chart below).

Unique characteristics

Nico Nico's most distinctive feature is that members communicate via short texts inserted on top of the video feeds. Entries are time-synched and flow over the frame from right to left. Using different colors, other users can add comments later in the same way. Some videos are virtually covered with thousands of lines of text, which can be filtered or turned off.

This feature sounds totally absurd but is the main reason why users spend twice as much time on Nico Nico as they do on Youtube. Until today, over 1.2 billion comments were added to the 1.1 million videos on the site, up from 600 million in November 2007. The content mainly consists of Nico Nico-"exclusive" material such as video-game sequences, bizarre comedy clips, anime and user-made footage.

Embedding Nico Nico content is restricted, but this Youtube video serves as a good example of what is typically being contributed:

An additional advantage Nico Nico has over the American archetype must be seen in its strong Japanese identity. The site is deeply rooted in this country's geek culture, which is reflected in the Manga-inspired design and wild layout.

Moreover, there is no restriction regarding the length of videos, which are usually higher in picture quality. And, in contrast to Youtube, Nico Nico welcomes uploading of erotic content in its so-called R-18 section.

Three-pillar business model

Niwango, the company operating Nico Nico, is one of 15 subsidiaries of Dwango, a media group listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.