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| Niconico: http://niconico.jp |
Today, VKH presents to you a very special interview with a member of the dwango/Niconico team; Andrew Lampert! Mr.Lampert has kindly agreed to take the time to answer some questions for us. After a long while of trying to come up with a few, we turned to you, our readers to find to what you are interested in! We got quite a few interesting ones and chose the best out of the selection for this mail interview. Enjoy!
First, would you please introduce yourself (or your organization) to our readers!
My name is Andrew Lampert and I'm the Head of Operations for the English version of Niconico that we released in October 2011. I moved to Japan after graduating university in 2007 and started my
life here as an English teacher. I've been studying Japanese and jumping around IT companies since. I'm currently working for dwango, the subsidiary of niwango that runs Niconico.
What has been the goal of dwango and/or Niconico?
Our goal is to create a platform where people can interact with one another, easily find and share content, unlike other video sites that are limited to one-way consumption.
Prior to the launch of the English version of the website, what sort of things were happening in the process of preparation?
A whole lot of translation. We also had to test connection speeds around the world, set up international PayPal compatibility, and build new tools and pages that the multi lingual versions of Niconico (Taiwanese and English) use that aren’t available on the Japanese side (such as translating videos).
Are you guys planning on releasing the website in different languages (other than English)?
For now we’re set on extra languages. If the need is there, we can always add new languages.
Will all the videos that are available on NicoNico Douga be available on the English version? Or are some limited to either versions?
All videos are available on all 3 versions. They are quite literally mirror images of each other so any video that is added to any of the 3 versions is accessible to everyone regardless of their settings.
With a site like YouTube around, do you think Niconico is as popular in Japan? What about outside of the country?
As I mentioned earlier, YouTube is one of many of Google’s products, one that only allows one-way consumption of videos. You watch a video, watch another, then close the video. There’s a lot more to do on Niconico. Hence, Japanese users tend to spend more time on Niconico, about 4 times more actually.
http://japandailypress.com/youtube-gets-top-spot-but-japanese-viewers-prefer-niconico-for-socializing-2123738
Niconico is constantly ranked in the top 15 websites in Japan and about has over 30 million users, which is about 1/4 the population of Japan! We don’t have as big of a presence outside of Japan, although most Japanophiles have at least heard of us.
As a Japanese music website, we mostly known Niconico for the live streams of shows like 摩天楼オペラでナイト. What sort of planning goes behind that?
Nico Live is run by the Nama team. I’m not too familiar with their department, but it seems like a very long, convoluted process.
When it comes to live broadcasts how are the bands chosen as well as topics that are covered?
Unfortunately I have no idea how broadcasts are chosen for the Japanese side. However, I can talk about how Nico Live Broadcasts are chosen for the English side. It’s quite simple, I see what’s coming up, try to determine if it would be popular with our English viewers, and post it up. It’s a lot of guess work on my end as there are so many shows and I don’t have the time to translate and prepare English commenting rooms for every show.
What role does the social networking sites allow Niconico besides promotional abilities?
Social networking is awesome. I’ve transformed our Facebook page, from a one-dimensional PR page into a place where users share their ideas, ask questions, and discuss the site and its culture. I love interacting with people via social media and I believe it’s a crucial part of our site’s banding and future growth.
For the videos on Niconico, as well as the live streams, people are required to have an account. Why is that?
I plead the fifth! hah! But yeah, sorry, I can’t answer this.
Unlike YouTube, Niconico provides live streams and, unlike Ustream, you provide the ability to upload videos. Niconico is a very unique video sharing site. Is there a reason behind such convenience?
Absolutely - We’ve tried to create an all-in-one community.
YouTube provides jobs by offering paid partnerships to it's users when their channels and/or videos reach a certain popularity or a certain number of owes in a short amount of time (aka, monetizing Their videos.) Does Niconico do this as well? If not, so you think it will be offered?
Niconico has their creator incentive program. You can see details of it here:
http://commons.nicovideo.jp/cpp/about/
Sorry, Japanese only!
What are some of the things that happen behind the scenes?
Well, let’s see. We’re getting rid of USA everywhere it’s used on the English site. I fought this before the release, but my advice fell on deaf ears. It has been our biggest complaint since release. As for larger company behind-the-scenes activities, we’re all pulling up our sleeves getting ready for the Chokaigi 2 in on April 27-28.
In social networking, does Niconico experience many mentions or contact?
Contact, yes, mentions, no, not so much. I created our Twitter account, personally only a few months ago and I haven’t put much of my time into it until very recently. I recently turned off the private messages feature on our Facebook page to encourage users to post their questions directly. My goal is to create a more group-oriented discussion in the wall posts.
Why does Niconico choose to take such an active position in the community, versus similar websites like YouTube that act more as a bulliton board for others to post on?
My guess is that it’s because Google runs almost everything on the internet. Whether you’re watching videos, checking your email, searching for stuff, or running a website yourself, you’re using Google products. That’s not the case for dwango. Our product is Niconico. We want people to come in and enjoy our services as much as they can while they’re visiting.
What are some of the most memorable experiences on Niconico?
The company 忘年会 (end of the year party) was pretty incredible. All 1000 or so of our employees got together and ate and drank for several hours in a huge convention center. We also played bingo. The first winner got a 46 inch TV, Wii U, and a few games.
What are the future plans for the company and website?
I unfortunately can’t say a lot for the site and company as a whole as I’m the guy doing the English site. My future plans are to get enough people on the English site that we can start implementing more features exclusive to the Japanese site.
Would you please send a message to our readers!
If you want to see us do well - comment on the English version. That is the #1 thing that separates us from the rest and unless we can encourage the English internet how fun it is to comment directly on videos while watching, the English site doesn’t have a future. You can see more about this topic here:
http://blog.nicovideo.jp/en_info/2013/03/post-038685.html
Sharing blog posts, liking our Facebook page, and watching Nico Live and Videos on Niconico of course go without saying though! And if you ever have any ideas, questions, concerns, complains, or anything Niconico related, don’t hesitate to start a conversation on Facebook or Twitter.
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| Niconico English logo |
VKH would like to thank Mr. Andrew Lampert for taking the time to answer our questions!
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