![]() ![]() Much of Viki’s popular content hails from South Korea, including K-dramas What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim and Descendants of the Sun, reality programs like Queendom 2 and Running Man, and annual awards shows for music and acting. Today, the site once funded by donations from early users like Miller now offers two tiers of paid subscriptions as well as a limited free plan with ads. The founders didn’t invent the concept of community-powered subtitling - before high-speed internet existed, anime fans were trading “fansubs” on VHS tapes and laserdiscs - but they weren’t shy about wanting Viki to eventually become, according to a blog by co-founder Jiwon Moon in 2008, a new “ grand cultural Silk Road.” Viki developed software that allowed multiple people to subtitle a project simultaneously, and in 2013, three years after its official launch, the company was acquired by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten for $200 million. ![]() The site’s name combined the words “video” and “Wiki,” reflecting a desire to translate videos using crowdsourced contributions. ![]() “Sometimes dramas would never get finished, or a website would be obliterated, and then you’d have to go looking around, trying to scrounge up another website to find the same drama.” Viki was born in 2007 as, a project by three college students at Harvard and Stanford. “It was just horrible, the wait,” Miller recalls. That’s all the compensation Miller says she needs: “The platform itself is for volunteers - those of us in obsession mode.”īefore Viki, overseas fans who wanted to watch subtitled Asian TV shows or films found themselves playing monthslong games of roulette with piracy sites. For their efforts, top contributors get a free Viki subscription. Viki declined to share an exact number, but Miller estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of people participating in the system the 2015 book The Informal Media Economy put the number at more than 100,000. For over a decade, Miller has been part of the global community of unpaid users who translate video content on Viki into more than 150 languages. Instead, she’s busy working on her laptop as a volunteer for Rakuten Viki, a streaming service that adds subtitles to entertainment produced primarily in Asian countries. The 50-year-old stay-at-home mom spends about six hours a day sitting in her living room in La Vernia, Texas, in front of a large TV that’s never turned on. Sheree Miller has pretty much given up on American television. ![]()
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