About

Pixiv (site domain: www.pixiv.net), usually stylized as pixiv, is a social networking service for illustrators in Japan, comparable to DeviantArt on the English web.

History

In 2007, the Japanese programmer Takahiro Kamitani, who hit upon the idea through Flickr, launched Pixiv^[1] on September 10th as a beta test. The website went under a renewal on December 18th into what it offers now. Later, Pixiv came to support multiple languages, including Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean.

Pixiv announced that the number of community members reached 20 million in 2016^[2] and then increased to 84 million in September 2022.^[3]

Features

High Affinity with Doujin

Trends in Pixiv are often coupled with those of the Doujin (popular social trends) market as many Doujin circles register accounts and make posts promoting illustrations for their books released at Doujin conventions or e-commerce sites. For example, Touhou Project fan art accounts for 5.8% of all illustrations.

Pixiv Encyclopedia

Pixiv Encyclopedia^[4] is Pixiv's online glossary that offers information about many memes/fads relevant to illustrations through users' voluntary contributions.

Project

In Pixiv, Project (企画, Kikaku) means user-generated events centered around posting illustrations in the same themes. Pixiv's officials offer the exclusive tag for running projects, "Project Catalog" (企画目録) and pages listing the catalogs.^[5] Except for a few large-scale projects represented by Pixiv Fantasia, users usually hold casual events that utilize template images and the "illustration response" feature.

Illustration Response

Illustration Response (Japanese: イメージレスポンス) is a trackback feature in weblog tools that Pixiv's officials implemented on September 15th, 2008 to encourage smoother collaborations among users. Pixiv users use this feature less to send completed illustrations as a response but often to share exploitable templates to enjoy drawing together in specific themes. On Pixiv, those are called "Illustration Response Project" (イメレス企画, Imeresu Kikaku). Expression Practice and Bottle Meme are famous successful illustration response projects.

Pixivision

Pixivision^[6], formally called "Pixiv Spotlight," is Pixiv's official curation service that has provided tutorials on illustration techniques, interviews with creators and trending tags/topics, including the home-grown memes, on the illustrators' community in both Japanese and English since 2014.

Pawoo

Pawoo^[7] is a Mastodon channel initially launched by Pixiv on April 14, 2017. It became the world's largest channel by earning 100,000 users just two weeks after its launch, and its number had increased to 200,000 in August of that year, thanks to its additional features for illustration-sharing. On the other hand, many other Mastodon channels have blocked Pawoo because of loli contents. In December 2019, Pixiv afforded this service to another company and withdrew from its running.

Related Memes

For the complete listing of memes that Pixiv is contributed, check out KYM Collection – Pixiv.

Search Interest

External References