WHILE Youtube has been my primary source of web video entertainment, a newcomer has lately been taking up more and more of my computer screen time.

Nico Nico Douga (www.nicovideo.jp) - in Japanese it means Smile Videos - is chiefly responsible. And I'm not the only one getting hooked.

This video-sharing service, just over a year old, has been increasing its membership steadily, with more than five million accounts signed up so far.

Since July 2007 there have been around one million new registrations every two months.

One of the possible reasons for the fast growth is that anyone who wishes to view videos hosted on Nico Nico Douga has to register first.

More plausible could be its idiosyncratic way of facilitating interaction among users.

Instead of just text comments under the video, Nico Nico Douga users can insert comments that scroll across the video while it is playing.

Comments could also be timed to coincide with specific moments in the video, for instance 'Ouch!' when a character falls.

The effect is that of having a 'real-time' chat while watching the video.

If you prefer to watch videos sans commentary, there is a toggle button to turn super-imposed comments on and off.

But interactive yakking is the point of Nico Nico Douga.

Even as I write this article, almost 729 million comments have been made, or an average of 1,170 comments per video. More than three million new comments are made daily.

Even experts have praised this feature.

The Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organisation awarded a Good Design Award in Communication Design to Nico Nico Douga for its distinctive interface last year.

Nico Nico Douga also scores usability points for high streaming quality. Maximum video size is 512 by 384 pixels, compared to 320 by 240 pixels on Youtube.

Audio quality is also noticeably better on some clips where the original CD-quality resolution - stereo, 44.1KHz sample rate - is retained; Youtube recompresses audio at a duller, monophonic 22.05KHz.

There are also no limits to duration for uploaded content, whereas Youtube limits video length to 10 minutes. For playback, I have found video loading speeds to be pretty fast in comparison as well.

Nico Nico Douga is continually gaining attention.

According to September 2007 data by Nielsen NetRatings Japan, the average time spent per visit per user on Nico Nico Douga is 3 hours 14 min, which is triple that of Youtube, and even exceeding that of Mixi, Japan's most popular social networking site.

This was almost a 50 per cent increase over May 2007, where the average time spent per visit per user on Nico Nico Douga was 2 hours 10 min.

The business-minded may wonder how Nico Nico Douga monetises all that viewership.

Interestingly, Nico Nico Douga also derives revenue from subscription accounts and e-commerce, in addition to the usual method of selling advertisements.

Nico Nico Douga's premium service, priced at 525 yen per month (around S$6.80), differs from the free membership in various ways.

Benefits include the doubling of video storage space to 4GB; videos are accessed from dedicated servers, with assurance that streaming quality will not drop even during peak surfing hours.

According to a press statement by Nico Nico Douga in November 2007, the service had 144,000 premium members, consisting of around 3.6 per cent of the total membership.

Nico Nico Douga also earns revenue from affiliate ads of goods such as CDs, DVDs, books, and software, most of them products listed on Amazon Japan. Monthly revenue from this marketplace is around 15 million yen.

That's not too bad for a service that is still in the release candidate stage. And they certainly are not limiting themselves to just the Japanese market: in October 2007, a localised Taiwanese service was launched.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go watch another video.

Mike Lee is a freelance IT writer.

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