As the recognition and popularity of the software grew, Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborate content creation. According to Crypton, a popular video with a comically altered software mascot holding a leek, singing Ievan Polkka, presented multifarious possibilities of applying the software in multimedia content creation. Soon after the release of the software, users of Nico Nico Douga started posting videos with songs created with the software. Nico Nico Douga played a fundamental role in the recognition and popularity of the software. Unlike general purpose speech synthesizers, the software is tuned to create J-pop songs commonly heard in anime, but it is possible to create songs from other genres. The data for the voice was created by actually sampling the voice of Saki Fujita, a Japanese voice actress.
The name of the title and the character of the software was chosen by combining 'hatsu' (初, first), 'ne' (音, sound), and miku (未来, future). Hatsune Miku is the second Vocaloid2 after Sweet Ann and the first installment in the Vocaloid2 Character Vocal Series by Crypton Future Media released on August 31, 2007.
