For years we have envied Japanese fellows for having their own, and in some ways a better, Youtube, which is Nico Nico Video. The main draw wasn't because it had better stuff than Youtube, but because it has an anonymous comment system where anyone can post without having his username being revealed to everyone else but the site admins. The greatest and most lulzy part was that your comments streak across the video in whichever manner and color you want! This led to a lot of crazy spam comments Youtube would destroy at first site, but is generally well-accepted here (you can turn the scroll off if comments are obstructing the video, but that's half the fun taken off if you ask me).
But, non-Japanese could not even view any content because everything in the site required a mandatory log in, which no one could handle if they didn't know even a bit of the language to navigate the confusing site and layout.
And finally, there's now a beta site of Nicovideo in English! Know what this means? You too can sign up and view all the site's videos, whatever you want! It's of some significance to us because many Taiko videos on Nicovideo cannot be found anywhere else. Granted, you still have to type the Japanese names into the search box, but you can do that a lot easier, right?
People with Japanese accounts can log into the English site just fine too (like me). Currently you can't upload any videos unless you're in the Japanese site, but you can link videos over from Youtube and DailyMotion if you've got stuff up there, and now you can have spam scrolling all over your videos!
I checked out the most popular video at the moment, which happened to be nyancat. New Japan-borne meme confirmed?
People seem to be excited. Getting into the spirit of Nicovideo from day one! A lot less 'wwwwwww' spam, but it still exists. Personally I'll stick to 'lololololololololol' if I comment.
You can get to Niconico beta through here!
