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IMVU acquires FA by tsunderdog
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6588324/
Time will tell if this is a good move or not, but I'm very worried this is a step in the wrong direction.
IMVU acquires FA
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Comments
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IMVU does have the potential to save FA from destroying itself. Now that staff are going to be held accountable and will be required to make changes to create profit for the parent company, we may see improvements. Wikipedia claims IMVU has a specific business strategy that has allowed them to stay profitable for over a decade, and one of the founders is spreading the business concept to other entrepreneurs. More likely, though, I am just... anxious that this is the thing that destroys the website and the safest plan for the users is to have homes elsewhere when shit goes down.
As for the spyware, seems about right for a site riddled with ads. Proceed with caution.
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Well, whether they finally get FA's shit together, or sink it once and for all, I think we'll all be better off in the end for this.
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If it fails it's going to be a very drastic hit for furry business.
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In the short run, true, but something else would fill that hole in the market quickly enough.
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Probably only in the short run. The fandom is literally borderline older than the internet, starting with community made "fanzines" that were diustributed offline if I recall well what I heard of the time of the original convention. It's certainly older than FA itself.
FA going down would just means that things might become a bit more decentralized again. Which is not necessarily a bad thing depending on how things would go. It's not like contenders already don't exist. Any holes would just basically get filled naturally by people moving on to these.
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What I'm saying is that FA has the monopoly. Some other site will undoubtedly get the monopoly later on. Even so, leaving FA has been more or less a kiss of death for furry content producers and as much as I hate the website I have to admit I haven't ever gotten as much business as when I used FA.
Why can't it have been another site - a better, more reliable site with actual leadership, is the real question.
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Fur Affinity only even came to be in the first place because SheezyArt (which was like DeviantArt only they allowed porn) stopped allowing porn. Then all the furries were like "oh shit where do we go now" and half got behind this new Fur Affinity thing Jheryn was working on and the other half went to Y!Gallery ... and then they too came to FA when Y!Gallery kicked them out and went no-yiffs-humans-only-Final Destination.
Fur Affinity exists because furries were already using some other website that suddenly collapsed and so they needed a new home to move to and FA was it. From the very beginning, there was never anything special about FA except its somewhat fortuitous timing. Why do you think that kind of easy transition won't just happen again when FA goes away, or the site furries move to after that, or probably the site they move to after that?
We'll be fine. It's nice to have one big central furry site but there's no reason it has to be FA and there never was. Neer just likes to pretend otherwise because he likes being the King of Furries.
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Fun fact: Bad Dragon has announced that they'll be making their own gallery site. Keep your eyes peeled on that one, I suppose.
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Oh God, but their admins are deplorable sexual predators too. I wanted FA to collapse so we could get AWAY from that.
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I'm a little shitted off because even though I hate FA so much, I did know that I would get a big boost in a following over there. I've been posting art for about a year to my art tumblr and I have only 90+ followers, and every time I post something on FA I will get 5+ depending on timing and content. So I'm a little urgh, but this is funny and I'm hoping that with just enough posting and making more content I'll be fine here
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I'm hoping that the potential loss of FA means that other sites will get more attention from art buyers. Leaving FA is more or less a kiss of death, but right now Weasyl and other sites are experiencing an increase in the userbase. It'll peter off, but it typically stays at a more populated rate than before a boom. Keep posting, that's all you can do. (FA just has more users, that's all)
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You will be. Just keep building your base one submission at a time, it's already starting to work so just keep at it. You definitely have the talent, the rest is just posting. Here, FA, anywhere. You'll be fine :D
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On the long run I would have to say it shouldn<t matter much how much viewers you have if you make commissions art.
Having a thousand viewer is nice, but doesn't matter much if none of them ever commissions you.
I have a fair bit of commissioners who are FA users. However, after starting to archive where most of my commissioners have contacted me, the great majority of me are folks who contacted me.... over Skype. And while the majority of these folks are FA users, they also are users of other galleries.(on a random note, the Skype detail is one of the thing that first and foremost, engaging with your viewerbase in the first place is possibly even more important than where you post art. Passively posting art somewhere and hoping for commissions will net much less than directly engaging your viewes sometimes. The best commissioners are the ones who're commissioning you not just because you happened to post that one picture that during a set moment in time did something for them, but the ones who commissions someone because they guenuinely like the artist and their personality. They're the ones who keep coming back to an artist to not only having something drawn for themselves, but also support that artist in the long run).
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Hi, Zoey is kind of anxiety-prone when dealing with strangers, so I (her boyfriend) will be serving as her agent/manager/go-between/person-you-talk-to-when-you-want-art-from-her. That is excellent advice and I wholeheartedly agree--as someone who commissions lots of art myself, I really notice and appreciate when the artists are friendly and approachable. I definitely want Zoey to inspire that kind of warm fuzzy feeling in her followers, too! How much harder is it to pull something like that off with our kind of situation, do you think? I imagine there's a bit more of a barrier there when she essentially has to rely on me being social for her, but ... it can still be done, right? Like, it's not impossible? I really want this to work out for her, so any advice you have for either of us would be extremely helpful!
(One thing I learned already just from your comment is that, oh yeah, IM details, great idea! I'm hardly ever on Skype because it's broken and terrible, but I should maybe have Zoey put my AIM/Google Talk/etc info out there.)
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First of all, sorry for the late reply! It's been busy so I couldn't check the internet as much than I wished.
Giving out your contact infos might be a good thing. I'd still recommend getting a Skype despite it's status as it's still a very widely used service.I'll admit it might be a bit of a barrier indeed in your situation but perhaps not something you folks might be unable to get through.
One other thing that helped me get in touch with not only viewers and commissions, but also to get a better hang of interacting with them ha also been hosting livestream.
Like a weekly or biweekly deal of hosting an art stream for a couple of hours that you advertise on your gallery for people to join in and watch your art as well as getting a "chance to chat with the artist". It's a nice way of dealing with people in a more controlled setup(especially with a dedicated moderators(something which in your position as the artist's boyfriend you might be in a good position to do) to handle more troublesome viewers) and starting to develop a relationship with one's viewer base. Done well, it can become an event that viewers will look forward to. It's where I met a lot of the commissioners that I now also have access to the Skypes of for keeping in touch, some of which I can now call not just aquaintances but friends.This said, I'm not a super known artist myself outside of a very specific niche(the tranformation and werecreatures fandoms)nor is my customer base that large but it's the kind of stuff that's worked for me with what viewers and commissioners I have and which I've seen others pulls off to great effect. If you ever want to try livestreams, I've know an artist who has written a lot of very helpful posts regarding running and moderating a livestream channel.
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Ooh, that is excellent thinking. I know we've been playing around with the idea of streaming just in the preliminary stages (just fiddling with things before she officially sets up shop and opens for real) and it seems very promising. I think using those more should work out very well, and yeah, I'd be happy to help with the moderation and just being there to chat up the audience in general. Thank you so much for the input!
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Link
LudoCrow
I'm getting a couple of my watchers bombing me with links about IMVU's purported penchant for adware and spyware on my end.