2ch forum

We live in Malaysia and are very influenced by Western culture. It is understandable that we rarely get to experience the great things that happen in Japan, one of which is the Japanese premier Internet forum, 2channel (or 2ch for short). Here's the wiki: http://www.answers.com/2ch.

2ch is said to be the BIGGEST internet forum in the WORLD! I just checked the stats like a minute ago, and there have been 2,663,086 posts so far TODAY! You can check the stats here: click here. It has reached a high level of significant influence to the Japanese society, reaching that of television and radio.


This was all started by this Japanese guy living in a college apartment in the US named Nishimura Hiroyuki. Now he's a director of two companies and CEO of one.

The reason behind 2ch's success?

• They have more than 600 active boards, relating to topics such as sports, cooking, social issues, anime, whatever under the sun!

• Unlike most Western forums, anonymous posting is allowed (registration is optional). Posting your response is a cinch. Of course, with this rule, you would think that there would be "bad threads" lying around, but:
  

• Decided by board-specific volunteer groups, the latest post in a topic would either raise or lower its position in the topic list. Most boards sort the topics based on its latest post, which is bad coz people love to "bump" their topics. 2ch sorts the topics based on the combination of the latest post and the raise-and-lower ranking.

• There can only be a maximum of 1000 posts per topic. There would be a discussion among the volunteer group as to whether it deserves a new thread. This prevents the rotting of old threads, eases readability (you only read the latest happenings about the topic, after all) and eases the processing of the server.

Of course, there are still many bad apples out there who would want to take advantage of the anonymous posting mechanism. For this, 2ch worked closely with IOSYS to come up with a cute Flash animation called Itte Yoshi 2005.

Itte Yoshi (or its engrish-ized name, It You See) roughly translates to "GET OUT!". The animation mentions the types of posts that would make everyone say "Itte Yoshi!" to the poster.

Here's the animation, in YouTube format. Originally in Flash format for 2ch surfers. IOSYS always makes impressive Flash animations that sync well with the music.



To think that they would make a Flash animation just for the rules of the board... cooool! Giko （ﾟДﾟ） and Mona (´∀｀） are a play of the two popular Japanese emoticons. When the types of posts appear, Giko would appear in the middle and shout "GET OUT!". Simple and effective. Quite sorhai also.

So whatcha waiting for? Get involved in this big Internet phenomenon today! http://2ch.net