NicoNico Douga’s dreams of world conquest may be over before they have begun, as it seems Google has acquired a service, Omnisio, which offers a strikingly similar feature set, including the ability to blanket videos in comments. The service is currently in beta on YouTube.
The features offered are different, some might say quite different – comments show as speech bubbles, rather than being tickered, and, in the current beta at least, these “annotations” can only be added by the video poster. However, on the original site, comments can be added by anyone, filtered, and slides can be added, so it seems likely these features could find their way back onto YouTube.
The service itself had few actual videos, and the oldest is only from 10 months ago, so it definitely seems to be a technological acquisition by Google, since it could hardly be accused of being popular. The site’s content also reeks of the Valley, so it may have been a done deal that this company would be wrapped into a larger one.
The quality of comments is comically dire (though to be fair, most comments are people experimenting with the comments), so at least Nico’s almost equally worthless, but colourful and eyecatching, comments will have some advantage, until Google copies the ticker.
Irrespective of whether these feature represent a direct analogue to NicoNico Douga, it does not take much insight to see that Google is aware of Nico, and likely to experiment with, and perhaps copy outright, the kind of features which helped Nico ascend to popularity (although it will have difficulty copying the otaku community who are mainly responsible for this rise, though this will not concern them outside the Japanese market).
The end for Nico? It remains to be seen, and certainly their Japanese position is relatively secure for the moment, though with Google rolling out these features whilst Nico struggles to turn a profit, and serious overseas expansion for Nico still a way off, their position is starting to look much weaker.
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Nah.. NicoNicoDouga is not affected since most of us here are not interested in MTV, Political, World News and couples of crap user-made videos.
blunt truth resolves all problems
:D
ggs
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wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
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I personally don't like the comments flowing across the screen while I watch a video. Most of them are "wwwwwwwwwwwww" anyways.
The only real reason to use nico over youtube is for higher quality videos anyways.
I tend to feel the same way; sometimes they are visually interesting, or amusing, but usually they are dross, like, it has to be said, most of the videos on Nico or YouTube.
Ya a screen of just
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
just so their post shows up across the whole screen is just stupid, I always turn them off
I use Nico for its awesome Videos youtube will Never have. Almost All of the videos in youtube I like, were From Nico. I don't care about the comment features and such, its the video uploads that make Nico a billion times more awesome than Youtube
Best use of annotations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpuv7VPb2rA&fmt=34 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpuv7VPb2rA&fmt=34]
Nahh even if the google could create that system they wont have as many people as nico has.
As Nico contents is millions time greater than googles.
Eh. The fact that it's uploader-only, and not true public comments, makes it a completely different thing.
The original has everything Nico does and more, so I would expect them to roll out the rest later...
GLHF Nico.
Sensationalist title = not appriciated.
Explain how this does not mean YouTube is about to copy Nico's features, and therefore remove their only competitive advantage, and I shall happily change the title.
Otherwise - Nico may very well be doomed to be the next Veoh.
Veoh's still cool...
lol wuts veoh
lols
somehow i see this as a plan to combine nico viewers into google...
it's so gona fail