Table of Contents
Niconico
Niconico (ニコニコ),1) formerly Niconico Douga (ニコニコ動画),2) is a popular Japanese website known for its video sharing service, but they also house several other services. It was launched on December 12, 2006 by Niwango under Dwango, now a Kadokawa subsidiary.
They originally used YouTube videos as a source, but a DDoS attack had forced YouTube to block Niconico Douga around February 23, 2007, resulting in the website to require accounts and start hosting videos locally shortly after. Also, please be aware of the tag registration system.
Summary
There are people who believe that Niconico is just a video-sharing service, but this is a narrow-minded view. To put it in better words, it's a large website that empowers content creators with many different services. However, the climate can be harsh since it does have roots in 2channel, vandalism is rampant, then you have issues with copyrights of both corporations and the users that contribute to the service.
List of Niconico services
As previously mentioned, Niconico offers many different services and they always seem to be experimenting with newer services to see if they end up sticking. I mean, it's a long list of services and applications that there's probably a reason why nobody has translated the full thing yet. To keep this article somewhat concise, I'll only list the services that are active at the time of this writing.
| Service | Possible English Translation(s) | Description | Launched |
|---|---|---|---|
| Niconico Douga ニコニコ動画 www.nicovideo.jp | • Niconico Douga • Niconico Moving Image • Niconico Video | A video sharing service with barrage-style commentary. The main feature. | 2006-12-12 |
| Niconico Namahōsō ニコニコ生放送 live.nicovideo.jp | • Niconama • Niconico Live • Niconico Namahoso | A live broadcasting/streaming service. | 2007-12-19 |
| Niconico Daihyakka ニコニコ大百科 dic.nicovideo.jp | • Niconico Encyclopedia • Niconico Pedia | An online encyclopedia service. Requires a premium account to edit. | 2008-05-15 |
| Niconi Community ニコニコミュニティ com.nicovideo.jp | • Niconi Community | A community gathering and exclusivity service for creators. | 2008-07-15 |
| Niconi Commons ニコニ・コモンズ commons.nicovideo.jp | • Niconi Commons | A video material “sharing” service. A pun on Creative Commons. | 2008-08-15 |
| Niconico Channel ニコニコチャンネル ch.nicovideo.jp | • Niconico Channel | A multi-content, monthly subscription platform for creators. | 2008-12-05 |
| Niconi Koukoku ニコニ広告 nicoad.nicovideo.jp | • Niconico Ad • Niconico Advertising | A service that lets people advertise on their favorite videos. | 2009-03-10 |
| Niconico Jikkyō ニコニコ実況 jk.nicovideo.jp | • Niconico Commentary • Niconico Jikkyō • Niconico Live Commentary | A live commentary service. | 2009-07-24 |
| Niconico Seiga ニコニコ静画 seiga.nicovideo.jp | • Niconico Image • Niconico Seiga • Niconico Still Image | An illustration sharing service. It's similar to Pixiv, but came several years late. | 2009-11-14 |
| Niconico News ニコニコニュース news.nicovideo.jp | • Niconico News | A general news service. | 2010-10-29 |
| Niconico Rittai ニコニ立体 3d.nicovideo.jp | • Niconi 3D • Niconi Solid | A 3D model “sharing” service. | 2014-05-02 |
| N Anime Nアニメ anime.nicovideo.jp | • N Anime • Niconico Anime | A general anime information hub that also links to the legal streaming options. | 2018-04-25 |
| Niconico Q ニコニコQ q.nicovideo.jp | • Niconico Q | A quiz and questionnaire service. | 2018-07-05 |
| Niconi Koken ニコニ貢献 koken.nicovideo.jp | • Hogehoge • Niconi Contribution | A better way for creators to show their appreciation for supporters. | 2021-06-09 |
| NicoFT NicoFT nicoft.io | • NicoFT | An NFT marketplace for member passes. | 2023-03-28 |
List of categories and genres on Niconico Douga
For over a decade, videos were classified using a “large category / small category” tagging system, but this was changed to a “genre / category” tagging system on June 26, 2019.3) It also meant that the category ranking pages were deprecated and entirely overhauled. Unlike the prior system, the new system appears to be more flexible in the sense that uploaders aren't required to attach a genre anymore.
Version history
Niconico will occasionally announce a version upgrade that brings a lot of changes (i.e. features, services) to the website, but I'm leaving those out because there's a lot of them.
| No. | Version | Timespan |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | ニコニコ動画(仮) Provisional | 2006-12-12 ~ 2007-01-15 |
| 02 | ニコニコ動画(β) Beta | 2007-01-15 ~ 2007-02-24 |
| 03 | ニコニコ動画(γ) Gamma | 2007-03-06 ~ 2007-06-18 |
| 04 | ニコニコ動画(RC) Release Candidate | 2007-06-18 ~ 2007-10-10 |
| 05 | ニコニコ動画(RC2) Release Candidate 2 | 2007-10-10 ~ 2008-03-05 |
| 06 | ニコニコ動画(SP1) Service Pack 1 | 2008-03-05 ~ 2008-07-05 |
| 07 | ニコニコ動画(夏) Summer | 2008-07-05 ~ 2008-10-01 |
| 08 | ニコニコ動画(秋) Autumn | 2008-10-01 ~ 2008-12-05 |
| 09 | ニコニコ動画(冬) Winter | 2008-12-05 ~ 2008-12-12 |
| 10 | ニコニコ動画(ββ) Double Beta4) | 2008-12-12 ~ 2009-10-29 |
| 11 | ニコニコ動画(9) 95) | 2009-10-29 ~ 2010-10-29 |
| 12 | ニコニコ動画(原宿) Harajuku6) | 2010-10-29 ~ 2012-04-30 |
| 13 | ニコニコ動画:Zero Zero | 2012-05-01 ~ 2012-10-17 |
| 14 | ニコニコ動画:Q Q7) | 2012-10-18 ~ 2013-10-07 |
| 15 | ニコニコ動画:GINZA GINZA8) | 2013-10-08 ~ 2018-06-27 |
| 16 | niconico(く) Crescendo9) | 2018-06-28 ~ 2020-08-09 |
| 17 | ニコニコ(Re) Re | 2020-08-09 ~ 2022-12-12 |
| 18 | ニコニコ(eR) Er10) | 2022-12-12 ~ |
List of known userscripts
Most of this information comes from their Greasemonkey article.
Also, use Tampermonkey or Violentmonkey instead.
- General userscripts for Niconico
Niconico Link Corrector- Replaces JavaScript links with HTML links.
- Userscripts for Niconico Douga
- Histogram Heat Graph - Adds a heatmap for the most commented parts of the video.
- Userscripts for user pages and playlists
- SmartNicorepo - Filters for user page activity. Removes non-uploads by default.
- Userscripts for the search engines
- Add Niconico Tag Search Tab - Adds a tab for searching through a specific tag.
- Show Niconico Pagination on Top - Copies the pagination buttons above the results.
- Niconico Ranking NG - Removes the “video ranking” part of the search results.
- Nicovideo Search Spam Reporter - Adds clickable report buttons onto thumbnails.
- Userscripts for Niconico Seiga
- MOD_Seiga - This will reveal “Shunga” thumbnails automatically and, when viewing an image, adds the “full screen” (フルスクリーン) and “save image” (画像を保存) buttons.
- Niconico Seiga (Manga) Helper - It apparently adds a client-side wordfilter to manga pages.
- Niconico Seiga NG Script - Allows you to blacklist users from the search results.
- Shunga Thumbnail Unmask - Reveals thumbnails for works marked “Shunga (R-15)”.
- Userscripts for Niconico Namahōsō
- NicoNama Alerts (Simple) - Alerts you of live streams that match your search results. It'll also check for live streams housed on other streaming platforms as well.
- Prevent Seekbar Movement - This prevents the “seekbar” (video progress bar) jumping to the live stream, allowing users to watch previously recorded parts of the stream.
- Userscripts for Niconico Encyclopedia
- NicoDicBBSViewer - Expand an article's thread like a 2channel browser.
- Niconico Encyclopedia BBS NG Feature - Allows you to filter the users in an article's thread.
- Add Nicopedia Menu - Adds a tiny menu, mostly things below the footer, to the sidebar.
- Userscripts for Niconi Community
- Niconi Community BBS, New Post Checker - Checks for new posts in a community's board.
Notes
- It originally started out as “Niwango Video” (ニワンゴビデオ) at “niwavideo.jp” for a short time.
- There used to be a Spanish-language and German-language version of the website.
- For some reason, search results are now a playlist and the option to disable “autoplay” is buried, so you have to go into “video list” (動画リスト) and disable “autoplay” (連続再生).
- In the English interface, the names are “up next” and “play on repeat”, while the “autoplay” that appears in settings actually just stops the video from playing when the page is loaded.
External links
- Niconico - The front page of Niconico.
- Niconico Douga on Niconico Encyclopedia
- Niconico Douga on Pixiv Encyclopedia