Bilibili

• 1. Introduction

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  Bilibili was born on the 26th of June 2009, not as a video platform but as a fan shrine. A young user of a rival site named Xu Yi wanted to build something for people who loved the anime character Hatsune Miku. He called it Mikufans.cn. Within months, the site had outgrown its origins. By the 14th of January 2010, Xu Yi had relaunched it under a new name drawn from another anime entirely: a nickname for the electric-powered protagonist Mikoto Misaka in A Certain Scientific Railgun. That name was Bilibili. Today the platform is known in Chinese simply as B站, the B Site, and it serves hundreds of millions of people. But the question worth sitting with is how a Hatsune Miku fan page became the largest offline digital entertainment event organizer in Asia, a satellite operator, and a school builder in rural Guizhou.

• 2. The Site That Comments Back

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  Bilibili's most distinctive feature did not begin with Bilibili. It borrowed the idea from a Japanese site called Nico Nico Douga, one of the two platforms that inspired Xu Yi to build something of his own. The feature is danmu, which translates as "bullet curtain": a stream of viewer comments that scroll across the video itself in real time, visually recalling the projectile patterns of a danmaku shooter game. The comments generally move from right to left, though viewers can disable them. The system allows three formats: rolling, top-aligned, and bottom-aligned. Unregistered users are limited to 20 characters per comment; registered users may post up to 120 and customize font size and color. Video creators retain the authority to save or delete specific comments. A "high-level danmaku" option also exists, but it must be manually unlocked by the content creator. Accessing it typically requires Bilibili coins, a virtual currency earned through daily logins, content uploads, and general platform engagement. These are separate from B Coin, a premium currency purchased with real money. Research has suggested the bullet comment system can satisfy users' needs for leisure and self-expression. The Chinese Ministry of Culture saw a different potential, criticizing the system in 2016 for its capacity to spread hateful or inappropriate content rapidly.

• 3. Rules, Membership, and Community Control

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  In March 2013, Bilibili did something unusual for a growing platform: it deliberately restricted who could join. A limited batch of invitation codes was shared with existing users, and anyone using those codes had to answer 100 questions, mostly drawn from anime, comics, and games knowledge, to earn full membership. The goal was to balance user quality against moderation capacity. On the 19th of May 2015, the question count dropped to 50, with 20 of those covering internet comment etiquette. On the 26th of February 2017, Bilibili reinstated the original 100-question test, setting the passing threshold at 60 correct answers. That same date saw Bilibili implement a formal account-blocking system, giving administrators the power to delete comments and hand out sanctions ranging from temporary suspensions to permanent bans. A few months later, on the 15th of June 2017, Bilibili went further and established what it called a Discipline Committee: a body of community members empowered to review reported violations and vote on the appropriate response. The premium subscription tier launched on the 9th of October 2016, at around 25 yuan per month. From the 1st of January 2018, premium members gained early access to new episodes of animated series, while regular members waited an additional week.

• 4. Sports, Games, and Going Public

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  In October 2016, Bilibili announced it would sponsor the Shanghai Sharks basketball team, which was subsequently renamed Shanghai Bilibili. The choice was deliberate: both the company and the team are rooted in Shanghai. In December 2017, Bilibili purchased an e-sports team originally called IM, rebranding it Bilibili Gaming, known as BLG, to compete in League of Legends. In January 2018, it purchased the broadcasting rights to the League of Legends LPL spring season, the League of Legends World Championship, and League of Legends Rift Rivals. In September 2018, Bilibili added an Overwatch franchise by acquiring Hangzhou Spark, which competed in the 2019 Overwatch League season. By March 2018, Bilibili had filed for an initial public offering of up to US$400 million. The company did not ultimately list on the New York Stock Exchange as initially planned; instead, it listed on the NASDAQ on the 28th of March 2018. Then, on the 29th of March 2021, Bilibili made a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at an opening price of HK$790 per share, raising US$2.6 billion. By the third quarter of 2022, the platform's average monthly active users had reached approximately 332.6 million, including 28.5 million paying subscribers.

• 5. Sony, Satellites, and Original Programming

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  On the 23rd of March 2019, at the AnimeJapan trade event, Bilibili announced a partnership with Funimation, the Sony-owned American anime distributor, to jointly license anime titles for both the American and Chinese markets. A year later, on the 9th of April 2020, Sony Corporation of America announced it would acquire a 4.98% minority stake in Bilibili. The deal came with a separate agreement for Sony and Bilibili to expand anime and mobile game distribution within China. Bilibili was also moving into content creation. It joined the production of a fourth season of Informal Talks, and in August 2020 produced Rap for Youth. In December 2020 came Voice Monster, a competition program for voice actors. One of the more unusual moves was the Bilibili Video Satellite, launched on the 15th of September 2019. Developed by CIOMP, it was the first video remote sensing satellite customized by a Chinese internet company. Bilibili intended it to help uploaders in the technology and humanities spaces, framing the satellite as a tool for raising scientific awareness among young audiences. On the 3rd of February 2021, Bilibili acquired Shanghai Yarun Culture Communications, the parent company of animation studio Haoliners Animation League, adding in-house animation production to its portfolio.

• 6. Mascots, Festivals, and Offline Gatherings

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  Bilibili's two official mascots, named 22 and 33, were chosen by the community in an election that ran from the 7th of July 2010, to the 16th of August 2010. The contest drew 72 submitted artworks. When the votes were counted, both entries numbered 22 and 33 had received exactly 1,824 votes each. Rather than hold a tiebreaker, Bilibili declared both the winners and named them directly after their election serial numbers. Artist Hao, whose full name in Japanese reads as ハオ, created mascot 22. In a 2018 interview, he explained that 22's distinctive hairstyle was designed to evoke a "fluttery, electric shock" look, connecting the character's visual identity back to the meaning of Bilibili's name. The platform's annual Bilibili New Year Festival has run since 2010, when 40 influencers produced content to mark the Lunar New Year. Before 2016, the festival focused on Japanese anime; since then, it has incorporated traditional Chinese cultural content. Advertisers joined for the first time in 2018. The Bilibili Macro Link event, known as BML, has run since 2013 as a large-scale offline gathering, now structured around three distinct performance formats: BML itself, BML SP for overseas guests, and BML VR for holographic virtual idols. Bilibili World, a separate convention launched in 2017, drew 400,000 attendees in 2025 and featured appearances by figures including game designer Hideo Kojima, making it the largest offline digital entertainment event in Asia.

• 7. Schools, Scholarships, and Controversy

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  On the 26th of June 2019, Bilibili's tenth anniversary, the company announced a cooperation with Teach for China to build an elementary school in a village in Dali, Yunnan Province. The following year, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bilibili partnered with a Shanghai educational charity to fund the Bilibili Dream Elementary School in Zunyi City, Guizhou Province, targeting enrollment from low-income farming and working families in rural areas. At Bilibili's 12th-anniversary speech in 2021, Vice Chairman and COO Li Ni announced the Bilibili Happiness Scholarship, with an initial investment of 4,194,172 RMB. That figure was not arbitrary: it matched the total number of "hahaha" and "2333" comments posted on content by creators who had won the Community Happiness Award in 2020-2021. The platform has also drawn controversy. In April 2019, source code from Bilibili's back-end was published on GitHub; the repository gathered more than 6,000 stars within hours before being taken down. Bilibili stated the leaked material came from an older version of its website. In January 2025, a more personal breach came to light: a user reported that an employee identified by the surname Ni had inserted malicious code into the platform's web version after a personal dispute, causing the user's account to display error messages and threats. Bilibili confirmed the incident on the 16th of January 2025, four days after the complaint was filed, terminated the employee, reported the matter to regulators, and offered the affected user a one-year premium membership.