...and I feel fine.

A year ago when Project Phoenix was announced and some time had passed for the fall out to fall into place, I had made an editorial about the state of Fur Affinity(1). In it I concluded that time would tell whether the new promise would take flight or just smother the ashes.

And indeed a year did tell it all. With the acquisition made by IMVU, it is clear that Project Phoenix had failed. That project was the last chance for Dragoneer to utilize fandom resources to maintain a fandom site that has grown far beyond the small niche it had started as. In essence it is flattering that an outside company would have any interest in acquiring it.

But to me, it was an inevitability. The fandom is growing. The userbase for all furry sites across the board is growing. The Big Furry Four: Furaffinity, SoFurry, Inkbunny, and Weasyl are now in the top 75,000 sites in traffic on alexa and rising. FurAffinity itself is now in the top 4,000 in the world.

In the US? It's ranked around 1,250. And it's growing still.

So with such a sizable user-base there is advertising revenue to go around. It's very tempting for an outside organization that wants to put in ads to do so. But there's just one problem. The owner is too stubborn to sell out his community. He wants to remain independent. He throws everything into his last stand "Project Phoenix".

But it doesn't work out. Zauch doesn't, or cannot, follow through on his promise. And even worse, because of promises unfulfilled, the userbase starts to lose trust in the leadership. This causes the amount of people willing to donate finances and equipment to go down. This causes the owner to become in desperate financial straits.

Ripe for the takeover.

Of course, with FA being- ya know, FA, the person taking it had to be big, but also eccentric. Not a group that would see a site as FA beneath them and not wanting to be associated with.

There is no doubt in my mind that had IMVU not bought FA, then FA would have been in deep financial trouble... deeper than it's in right now and there would have been no way to have salvaged the wreckage. The selling was a desperate move. Some would say an inevitable one. From what I've seen Dragoneer is very much a person who likes control over their environment. And when he doesn't have control he tries his best to hide the fact he doesn't. In an ironic sense this made him an okay fit maintaining a fandom website, as furs are skeptical creatures by nature, and also like control over their environment.

But now that it has happened, now what?

Well, Dragoneer now has more to worry about than an impatient user base, he has actual bosses. It's not us he has to convince of his leadership abilities. It is instead others who have charts, and benchmarks, goals that need to be met and things that need to be done. And if he fails this time? Well... I've been in the working world long enough to know what happens then.

There are fears on what will happen. If IMVU will take advantage of their new position. I will say this. At first they will not. You don't buy a new car to drive it in a ditch. They want to retain the userbase, and throw some ads up and see if they can make revenue. They want to get the car purring so it can make enough money to stay up, and maybe some extra.

But if the car is a lemon? Well, they'll sell it... and THAT is when people should start counting the days. Of course, if it seems a lemon at first, they will try to salvage it, change the 'spark plugs' if you will. Hand out some pink slips, see if a new team can make it run.

So the flow will probably go as follows over the course of several months:
IMVU places advertisements on site - dragoneer runs site.

Profit? Things keep going. Slump? Make "Staff adjustments"

Profit? FA run with new team. Slump? Sell it.

New owners come in, repeat until success or death.

If you want an example, look to Neopets. Viacom acquired it from its original owner, who then sold it to JumpStart. Viacom turned it into a powerhouse, before the staff tanked the economy and because of this caused users to play less as their time was worth less in the grand scheme of things because Neopoints were becoming more and more worthless. The Jumpstart, with less resources is having trouble even keeping the site functional.

This seems a bit of a bold prediction. But remember, I did say last year, that a year would tell us if the Pheonix rose or fell. It fell. Now I'm saying in a year's time we will know if FurAffinity will thrive, or die.

(1) https://www.flayrah.com/5552/fur-affinity-announces-project-phoenix-weasyl-traffic-spikes