Online bulletin boards (electronic bulletin boards) refer to bulletin board-type services used on the Internet. In Japan, bulletin board services began to appear in the 1990s, and since they can anonymously talk and discuss with an unspecified number of others, they have gradually become widespread.

2channel

The most famous of these is probably Japan’s largest “2channel”. It is a historic bulletin board founded in 1999. Currently, the name has been changed to 5channel.

The bulletin board is divided into many categories, and threads of various topics stand in each category. It is still used by a large number of people, and in recent years it seems that it often becomes a hot topic or causes a fire in conjunction with SNS such as Twitter and Facebook.