Ranking (part 2): Nico Nico Douga’s recent ranking revolution

Like most video community websites, Nico Nico Douga does not have one single form, but a plurarity of rankings. The most important form is called, tellingly, “ranking”, but it is not the only one. The “ranking” button is placed in the upper right corner of the start page. When you click on it, you get a list of 100 videos, sorted by popularity. This lit underwent changes in the last week. Until some weeks ago, it was reset daily, and updated hourly. This meant: Every morning at 5 AM the list started anew, and it changed through the course of the day. The ranking related to all videos (and not only to videos of a particular genre) and was based on how many users have bookmarked the video during that particular day. Other forms of ranking were available through drop down menus and tags (I will describe these later in more detail). But the daily ranking was set default. It was clearly the most prominent for the Nico Chuu. And it was highly effective.

However, the programmers and content managers of Niwango were worried about the high turn over in the daily ranking. The daily reset on the default ranking introduced, in their opinion, too much newness. Popular videos became popular very fast, but just as fast they dropped of the ranking. Not all Nico Chuu watch Nico Nico Douga every day. Lighter users tend to miss important videos, so the programmers and content managers thought. As a consequence of such reasoning, a new form of ranking was introduced. Niwango made some fundamental changes: Firstly, they set the weekly ranking as the first default. Secondly, they added (only in the Japaneses version) on the right-top corner of the rankings site another button: "Set as default". This means: You can set a specific form of ranking as your own personal default. Thirdly, they stopped to update the daily and weekly ranking – what you now get, is basically yesterdays, or last week’s ranking. Fourthly, they introduced a new, additional form of ranking: The hot list. It is not anymore based on bookmarks. It is based on the videos that users are playing right now (to be more precise: in the last 10 minutes).

Additional to these fundamental changes, they also re-designed the interface. Formerly, alternative ranking were accessible in a drop down menu (bookmarks by the day, bookmarks by the month etc…, then views by the day, views by the month, etc…). After the re-organisation the interface of the default ranking shows eight buttons, placed next to each other: (1) “Day”, (2)“Week”, (3)“Month”, (4) “All”, (5) “Bookmarks”, (6) “Views”, (7)“Comments” and (8) “Hot list”. The items (1) to (4) are set alternatively, as are the items (5) to (7). The item (8.) is separate. As default you arrive on the item (2) and (5). With one click you can change either the rhythm (1-4), the category on which the raking is based (5-7), or you can directly move to “hot list”. With the additional button "set as default" in the upper right corner you can furthermore change these settings, and start, for example, with the items (3) and (6).

The purpose of this new form of ranking is clear: The changes in the interface make the ranking more usable. The changes in the update function and the fact that the weekly ranking is automatically suggested as default aim to decrease the turnover in the ranking. The button "Set as default" introduces a new form of user-controlled personalisation. And with "hot list", the programmers suggest a new form of semi-synchronous collective experience.

What then happened, took Niwango by surprise. A storm of protest broke loose. The Nico Chuu protested on all channels. They used the Nico Nico Douga bulletin board, Twitter, Mixi, Blogs and 2channel. Some Nico Chuu coined their anger in hard terms: “Nico Nico Douga ended” was one of the comments. Others threatened to stop their premium accounts (=they would stop to be paying subscribers). The almost uniso thrift of the protest was: Get the old ranking back! Two arguments were used most often: Firstly, a weekly ranking will lessen the chance of new videos to get attention. Secondly, a daily update does not provide the Nico Chuu with enough new videos. Especially for heavy users, the ranking is not anymore fluid enough.

Niwango reacted quickly. It introduced a further alternative form of ranking: The hourly ranking. This ranking is not only updated, but also reset hourly. Such a ranking did not exist before at all. It is faster then the former daily ranking (which also was updated hourly, but collided the data during the whole day). It is slower then the hot list, but based on the bookmarks, and not, as the hotlist, on views. The category “hour” was introduced on the new interface – it is thus only one direct click away from the ranking, which is set as default. The default ranking remains weekly reset and weekly updated. This is a compromise of sorts: The deep Nico Chuu get their hourly ranking, but not a daily ranking which is updated hourly, and the weekly ranking is still set as default.

I am not sure whether this compromise is the ideal solution. I will give some reasons for this later in this text (in part 20). Keeping my role as a researcher (even though I have also become a Nico Chuu of sorts, with the according passions), I want to refrain from quick opinions. Before I give my analysis of this latest version of ranking on nico Nico Douga in part 20, I will have a closer look at what lists and rankings are in the parts 3-19. I want to start in part 3 with a look at some of the media theoretical literature and ask, why rankings and lists have drawn so little theoretical attention. This will be the topic of the next post.