2020-7-20
On July 20th, THECOO, which has the membership based community app Fanicon and deals with influencer marketing, announced they raised 710 million yen in funding. The funds were raised via a private offering to 5 companies: Sony Music Entertainment, i-nest capital, YJ Capital, Doroquia Holatheta, and The Da Vinci Project.
Fanicon is a paid members only fan community service. Its selling point is that the communities are made particularly enthusiastic due to the fact that there is no free membership, there isn't much slander or hateful actions, and constructive conversations are common. The services offered differ based on the particular community, but some of the many features that can be used include chatting with the artist who the focus of the community, group chats, selling collectibles, distributing scratchcards, and live streaming.
Along with acquiring the funding, they have remade Fanicon. In addition to defining their service as "With fan, More fun" and making a new logo, they have refreshed Fanicon's UI. Up till now, their UI has been designed to be cool and hip with Youtubers and other online artists in mind, but more recently regular artist and sports team communities have increased in number. The cool and hip design of old didn't really fit the fans, the teams, or the regular artists very well and so they remade the UI to be more generic. At the moment, more than 1700 communities are on Fanicon and recent communities added include ones for AAA's Misako Uno and All Japan Pro Wrestling.
In addition, because of the severe shocks that COVID-19 has brought upon the world of live entertainment, they have been providing the service Fanistream, a ticket based live streaming service, since March 2020 with the goal of helping entertainers create a new source of income. THECOO's allows one to live stream even if one does not have a Fanicon community as long as they pay a fee each time.
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