Bilibili

Bilibili (stylized bilibili), nicknamed B Site, is a video sharing website based in Shanghai where users can submit, view and add overlaid commentary on videos. Since the mid-2010s, Bilibili began to expand to a broader audience from its original niche market that focused on animation, comics, and games (ACG), and it has become one of the major Chinese over-the-top streaming platforms serving videos on demand such as documentaries, variety shows, and other original programming. Bilibili hosts videos on various themes, including anime, music, dance, science and technology, movies, drama, fashion and video games, but it is also known for its extensive kuso-style parodies by subcultural content creators. Bilibili provides a live streaming service where the audience can interact with streamers. Bilibili also offers games, mostly ACG-themed mobile games, such as the Chinese version of Fate/Grand Order. Bilibili is also known for its scrolling danmu ("bullet curtain," 弹幕) commenting system. In 2015, it was estimated that Bilibili served over 50 million users, and 75% of them are under the age of 24. Quarterly results released in Q3 2021 indicate that the company's platform has grown to serve around 237 million monthly active users. In the third quarter of 2022, the number of average monthly active users reached about 332.6 million, including 28.5 million paying users. Inspired by similar video sharing websites, Nico Nico Douga and AcFun, Xu Yi (, known as "9bishi" on the internet) founded Bilibili in 2009. At the time, Xu Yi was an AcFun user and wanted to create a better website than AcFun. He spent three days creating a prototype website named Mikufans.cn as a fandom community of Hatsune Miku. As it grew, he reshaped the website to specialise in video sharing and launched it on 14 January 2010 with the name Bilibili, which is the nickname of the protagonist Mikoto Misaka in the anime A Certain Scientific Railgun. Bilibili also names many of its features after the anime. Bilibili celebrates Mikoto Misaka's birthday on its homepage every year on 2 May.