This post is written by codemonkey, the lead developer of 2ch who was involved in removing the tracking software Hiroyuki had inserted into 2ch.net
Things to know:
* 'Hiroyuki' recently purchased 4chan from Moot.
* 'Hottolink' is a Japanese big data analytics and data mining company. They specialize in mining and selling the data behind social media, blogs, and bbs/forums. They currently only provide service to Japanese and Chinese companies, utilizing data from 2ch, twitter, weibo, blogs, etc. Services they provide are product performance analysis and marketing solutions based on social media data.
* 'Niconico Douga' is Japan's equivalent of youtube. Hiroyuki is some kind of employed with their project. Hiroyuki's company Brazil Future Search provides the search solution for Niconico douga.
* '2ch.sc' is Hiroyuki's pirate site of 2ch.net. Hiroyuki made 2ch.sc to fulfill his contracts to Hottolink which provides him with millions of USD per annum according to Hottolink's published financial report[1].
* 'Brazil Future Search' is Hiroyuki's search engine company specializing in real-time search solutions. They currently provide search for Niconico Douga and 2ch.sc and others.
* 'Effyis' is a company that runs boardreader.com. They were recently bought out by Hottolink as the first expansion into the US market.
How Hiroyuki will sell 4chan data:
Step 1: Brazil Future Search will make a real-time search engine for 4chan text data only. They will forgo images because images are not important in data mining.
Step 2: The new 4chan search engine will provide data to Effyis (boardreader.com).
Step 3: Boardreader.com will add 4chan search to their board search.
Step 4: Effyis (boardreader.com) will provide a firehose of data to Hottolink (their parent company) to use in data mining.
Step 5: American companies will begin purchasing analytics data from Hottolink.
Step 6: There is no step 6, you have already had your data sold to the highest bidder.
After Hiroyuki's initial announcement of purchasing 4chan, Hottolink stock has risen 60 points. This is likely due to insider trading; Hottolink has yet to publicly announce anything regarding 4chan.
You can read Hottolink's strategy in their published English financial report:
[1] http://www.hottolink.co.jp/pdf/english/ir20150828.pdf
Good day.