The Day Viki lost its "first" Position to the big R - New Design?

Viki.com is short and memorable. RakutenViki is stupid from a marketing perspective.

I hope Viki remembers to take good care of its community, or they are going to have to start paying people to segment and subtitle.

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I wouldnā€™t hold my breath.

Itā€™s not that itā€™s a long name, Vacheron Constantin is a pretty long name, too. Itā€™s just that Viki is becoming the shadow partner that provides the slave labor.

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the logo represent perfectly what viki have become : a company brought by rakuten
itā€™s nice to remember us that it isnā€™t viki anymore
this change donā€™t surprise me at all, i was expecting that since rakuten brought viki
For those who donā€™t know rakuten is also priceminister, the only thing they want is money

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Itā€™s a slow news day and I was thinking about this, so I have a theory:

Japan companies are known to not be interested in ā€œexportingā€ their dramas. They are hard to find online, especially subbed.

So, I think Rakuten is going to let the Viki part of the collaboration slowly wither and die on its own, so they can focus on what they want to do business with: original content.

It may be a stretch, but what ā€œbetterā€ way to end a relationship than make the other party want to leave on their own? Other languages are all but ignored and in general volunteers have been having legitimate complaints for a while now.

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the big R in many colors celebrates 20 years !! Why is Viki not under Americas?
Perhaps thatā€™s connected to that as wellā€¦ letā€™s checkout the Mother:
https://global.rakuten.com/corp/about/company/global.html

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for your comments! Your feedback is valuable to us.

The logo change is part of a broader effort to unify the global Rakuten brand. As most of you know, Viki has been a part of the Rakuten family since 2013. Please feel free to check out how our sister brands have also joined this effort!

With the brand unification process, our goal is to improve the Viki experience and to bring you more content that you love. If you have further questions or feedback, please contact us at the Help Center.

Thank you,
The Viki Community Team

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I legit expected this thread to get locked.

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@camiille Thank you for such important updates of whatā€™s happening, so we donā€™t have to
second guess. Although I do understand the business perspective of changing the logo, yet as a Vikian Im sad that Viki isnā€™t placed first anymore as it was once rootedā€¦ and we canā€™t stop progress, yet taking risks could have its price :wink:

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Iā€™ve noticed that Iā€™ve come to use Viki less and less these last few months, because they seem to be getting rid of shows that I was once able to watch or making it so that itā€™s restricted in my region. Viki is no longer the number one place I go to when I want to watch dramas. I feel like there are less and less dramas here for me to watch, I no longer see the need to have a Viki pass to be honest.

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ME, TOO! :laughing: Are we getting paranoid?

Yes, we noticed that, too. A LOT of older shows are getting locked. As if the licences arenā€™t that long as they once were.

But, hereā€™s the thing. This is probably because those couple of years ago, when the shows first were shown, Viki licence team (regularly) negotiated shorter global licences. Maybe because those would be cheaper and/or more likely to acquire.

What I hope is that the reason why there are less licensed shows this year is because they would be more stable throughout the years.

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I have to agree with you. I used to be on Viki all of the time and was getting ready to try to learn to segment so that I could contribute now that I have time to do so on a regular basis. I was even going to try to learn another language and help out in that way as well.

Sadly Iā€™ve seen too many dramas just done away with after people had worked so hard to bring them to us. Viki no longer has the same feel and sense of community that it used to. I only hope that at some point that feeling will come back. If and when it does, Iā€™ll be more than willing to contribute whatever I can to help it grow.