Bilibili (BILI): a Leader in ACG with Room to Grow
JAGUAR MEDIA SEPT 8TH, 2020 “CHINESE TECH DEMYSTIFIED” SERIES – EPISODE 5 Bilibili (BILI): A leader in ACG with room to grow Bilibili is often labeled as China’s version of YouTube, but that comparison is only half-accurate. Fundamentally, it is a video sharing and vlogging platform. But if we dig a little deeper, we will find that it caters almost exclusively to a dedicated under-30’s crowd while shunning older audiences, and the video content is overwhelmingly focused on animation, comics, and games (or ACG in short), fashion, pop culture, and music. No news, no politics, no academic discourse, no finance, none of that mundane stuff. Bilibili was founded in 2009 with the intention of being a worthy ACG competitor to AcFun (recall AcFun is the former parent company of DouYu). Bilibili’s founder Xu Yi was formerly a top user with a huge following on AcFun, but grew increasingly frustrated over time with community and website-related issues. And following a series of high-profile disagreements with AcFun management, he decided to sever ties and create Bilibili on the back of funding from now-CEO Chen Rui, a games/animation-loving billionaire investor who currently owns over 20% of the company. Before long, Bilibili saw significant traffic, enough to challenge AcFun’s. Due to this rivalry and history, Bilibili is commonly referred to by the Chinese internet community as “B Site” or “Station B”, while AcFun is nicknamed “A Site” or “Station A”. Fun fact: The word “Bilibili” doesn’t have any literal meaning. Rather, it is a playful reference to a main character from A Certain Scientific Railgun, a popular comic/animation series at the time, whereby “Bilibili” is the sound she makes when firing her weapon.
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