How Japan's Biggest BBS Keeps Things Simple

zedsville points out an article at Wired proving that plenty of people (at least in Japan) are willing to brave BBS environments without all the fancy layers to screen out spam or online provocateurs: "It's a profile of Hiroyuki Nishimura, the man behind the Japanese site 2channel. Nishimura set up the simplistic BBS in 1999, when he was an exchange student in the USA. The site has no registration or web handles or moderating, no mechanisms to filter out flames and trollish behavior, and no mechanisms to help users find the most insightful comments and topics. But this ugly, lo-res site gets about 500 million pageviews a month. Nishimura doesn't police the contents of posts to his bulletin board, which has resulted in numerous libel claims. 'I used to show up in court,' he says. 'Then one day I overslept, and nothing happened. So I stopped going.' Nishimura has lost about 50 lawsuits and owes millions of dollars in penalties, which he has no intention of paying. 'If the verdict mandates deleting things, I'll do it,' he says. 'I just haven't complied with demands to pay money. Would a cell phone carrier feel responsible when somebody receives a threatening phone call?'"

Comments

This is quite interesting actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

He has put the equivalent of a black board and a box of chalk on the Internet and only erases things the court orders him to. A rather interesting and unfiltered reflection of society.

I'd think that marketing people would be all over something like this. Want to know what people really think of companies/products/people etc. look at these blackboards and learn. Marketing data that can't be achieved in probably any other situation.

Sure, it has a high noise level, but just the same, if there is a lot of noise surrounding the object you are studying it says something about that product/company/service/law etc.

I like it

Re:This is quite interesting actually...

[Shagg]

He has put the equivalent of a black board and a box of chalk on the Internet and only erases things the court orders him to. A rather interesting and unfiltered reflection of society.

I agree, it's a revolutionary idea. Maybe he can call it "USENET".

BBS?

[kharchenko]

I was all excited to read about a BBS that's still running .. and being popular. Wow ... wait, your old-school, simplistic BBS is actually just a web site .. with tons of banners, flash and other crap. Man, I am getting old!

Re:BBS?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Disclaimer: this is something that I originally wrote on a BBS. So it's appropriate but not an "original for today."

The BBS never really died. Thats a myth perpetrated by Slashdot (if ever there were a central repository for groupthink, Slashdot is it) as well as self-proclaimed pundits in the tech trade rags who are always waxing eloquent about the "next big thing." Sure – the Internet did change the world, and it continues to do so. But when it comes to people interacting with each other online, that process began when Ward Christensen and Randy Suess put their first system online in 1978, and it has continued uninterrupted since then. It moved from dialup to the Internet.

Today, various developers are finding new and innovative ways to optimize their messaging platforms for different audiences. For example, millions of American teenagers are now BBS users: they are all subscribed to a large BBS called MySpace. Responses to this assertion which begin with the words "But MySpace isnt a BBS, its a" will be summarily ignored because they indicate that you havent given more than ten seconds of thought to the subject. Forums, chat, email doesnt all of this sound more than a little bit familiar? Even the "BBSs are from yesteryear" groupthink over at Slashdot is particularly ironic, considering that Slashdot itself is basically just a big BBS optimized for the reporting and discussion of tech news.

You can call it a BBS, or you can call it groupware, or you can call it "social software" (the new favorite buzzword for the tech marketing dweebs). Call it whatever you want but its basically the same thing. Messaging is messaging. Its just a question of how you optimize it for your audience.

Re:Japan just likes it 1.0

[zedsville]

You should keep in mind that lots of people in Japan are accessing the web on their phones. I think that's why so many sites there are still very simple, without a lot of bells and whistles.

Re:But... The REAL question is

[iMacGuy]

2ch has over 10x the traffic Slashdot does - it's by far the biggest forum in the world. So, uh, yes?