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Recap on ads, IMVU ownership, Adblock, and why I was right.
10 years ago
A little over a month ago, I posted a very long journal titled FA is now owned by IMVU - a serious analysis of a bad idea. I removed it, but here is a summary of what I said:
Unfortunately, Dragoneer has been keeping the cards close to his chest, so there is little to go off of. This is the summary for those of us that don't want to wade through the fluff:
- In January 2015 (two months ago), FA was transferred from Ferrox Art LLC to IMVU.
- FA will "continue to operate independently".
- US$20,000 has been invested by IMVU into new servers and hardware.
- There will be "some added advertising". IMVU has pledged not to interfere otherwise (paid accounts, pop-overs/unders, etc.) and Dragoneer has it "in writing that things will not be changing EXCEPT for the better", which is as vague as it sounds.
- Dragoneer claims that "nobody from IMVU has DB or admin access to the site or forums".
What Dragoneer has not said is a bit more important:
- The value of the sale was not disclosed anywhere, nor even alluded to. Dragoneer deflects questions asking for the sale's valuation by pointing out that he refused offers with higher valuation. Several people have refuted this by pointing out offers with considerable valuations and reasonable control structures (one states $50,000 for only 54% split ownership). Money seems to have been involved in the sale.
- Dragoneer (presumably) did not consult legal counsel before signing away the site, and is forwarding questions to the CEO /VP of IMVU instead of a lawyer. (Again, any promises the CEO /VP make are legally worthless.)
- The content of the contract (term s of sale) were not explicitly disclosed with the exception of the above. (Touching on this later.)
- IMVU, as the owner of the site, ultimately has full control over it, regardless of their pledge to leave creative control to the current admin staff.
- FurAffinity is currently not profitable and had to run a donation campaign to stay afloat. Serious flaws arose from their transparency efforts (again, touching on this later).
- Dragoneer confirm ed that he signed an NDA regarding the sale and cannot discuss specifics.
- As of January 4, one of the two DB servers is not being used because FA's codebase cannot yet run on multiple servers.
- As of January 4, FurAffinity owed $10,000 in back taxes.
How does this stack up today?
✓ FA no longer operates independently, as claimed by Dragoneer. Yak confirmed that IMVU gave specific requirements to the FA staff, which resulted in the implementation of the intrusive advertising we saw yesterday (and, if you haven't blocked it, we continue to see part of today).
✓ The server & hardware investments continue to be underutilized because FA's code changes focused entirely on the implementation of advertising; not the implementation of distributed databases (which are needed to use the new servers).
✓ IMVU's pledge not to interfere with intrusive advertising has been broken.
✓ Dragoneer's promise that he has it "in writing that things will not be changing EXCEPT for the better" has been broken.
✓ Any further terms of sale still haven't been disclosed, beyond Yak's admittance that IMVU instituted specific advertising requirements.
✓ Any further transparency efforts have failed, since IMVU continues to retain full control of FA's finances, which are now out of FA's staff's hands.
Unsurprisingly, my predictions came true:
We already know that IMVU makes some obnoxious ads. Here's a collection of some of them. If you don't have an ad blocker, you've probably seen similar ads running on FA before. Notice the ad content - very, very few involve furries, and those that do generally sport a more "kemonomimi" style (that is, they typically retain their hum an shape and simply add a "furry" skin image and some accessories). Here's an excellent example. If you're into that, great - but the vast majority of us on FA have more animalistic characters.
Basically, you can expect to see either IMVU's out-of-place ads, or third-party ads with no relation to the furry community. Is this something you're willing to put up with if the tradeoff is vague promises of better performance?
No surprise that most users saw IMVU's "out-of-place ads", and a few others saw "third-party ads with no relation to the furry community".
Another thing I nailed:
More importantly, will IMVU actually maintain FA at a significant loss? Obviously they are not saying much about the deal, but any fool could tell you that FA will now see two changes - a large portion of its users will adopt ad blockers (hurting both IMVU's ad revenue and the clickthrough rates of FA's traditional homebrew advertisers), and they will now have money funneled out of potential upgrade funds to support IMVU's requirement to run a profit.
Again, no surprise that tons of people have installed Adblock Plus to hide the ads, which hurts FA's advertisers (unless you implement a custom filter). I went so far as to write a journal detailing how to hide the new ads but leave the artist ones which has been extremely popular. Even then, I've seen a ton of people just use Adblock to block all ads, which hurts our community as well. So far, I've only had one person tell me that the new ads are a positive change.
IMVU's target clickthrough rates will not meet their expectations by any means. So, prepare for some drastic measures to monetize us, which may include those oft-denied paid accounts they promised they wouldn't do.
Last point, which I also got spot on:
Dragoneer has gone on ass-damage control since posting the news, saying that he has it "in writing" that only positive changes will be made. What is the definition of a positive change? Is that positive in IMVU's perspective, or Dragoneer's perspective, or the users' perspective?
He also claims that he retains creative control. This means dick in lawyer world. Letting him retain creative control is the equivalent of a parent patting their kid on the head and saying "that's nice honey, go play outside, okay?"
Make no mistake. Unless Dragoneer says otherwise, IMVU now has full, final, overarching control over all of FA's operations. That does not mean they will exercise their right to jam their cock in things, but if IMVU tells the admin team to implement paid accounts and they say no, IMVU is well within its legal rights to work around (or simply fire) the admin team. Their ability to stand up for the best interests of the community have been sold off for an undisclosed sum . If IMVU wants to close the site tomorrow, they can.
Yak's post confirmed that Dragoneer was either misinformed or lying. Invasive advertising is not a positive change, and the team was made well aware (likely in advance of the original announcement) that such advertising would have to be added. So, they did not retain creative control as they were promised. IMVU did, indeed, exercise their right to jam their cock in things.
Blow me.
Unfortunately, Dragoneer has been keeping the cards close to his chest, so there is little to go off of. This is the summary for those of us that don't want to wade through the fluff:
- In January 2015 (two months ago), FA was transferred from Ferrox Art LLC to IMVU.
- FA will "continue to operate independently".
- US$20,000 has been invested by IMVU into new servers and hardware.
- There will be "some added advertising". IMVU has pledged not to interfere otherwise (paid accounts, pop-overs/unders, etc.) and Dragoneer has it "in writing that things will not be changing EXCEPT for the better", which is as vague as it sounds.
- Dragoneer claims that "nobody from IMVU has DB or admin access to the site or forums".
What Dragoneer has not said is a bit more important:
- The value of the sale was not disclosed anywhere, nor even alluded to. Dragoneer deflects questions asking for the sale's valuation by pointing out that he refused offers with higher valuation. Several people have refuted this by pointing out offers with considerable valuations and reasonable control structures (one states $50,000 for only 54% split ownership). Money seems to have been involved in the sale.
- Dragoneer (presumably) did not consult legal counsel before signing away the site, and is forwarding questions to the CEO /VP of IMVU instead of a lawyer. (Again, any promises the CEO /VP make are legally worthless.)
- The content of the contract (term s of sale) were not explicitly disclosed with the exception of the above. (Touching on this later.)
- IMVU, as the owner of the site, ultimately has full control over it, regardless of their pledge to leave creative control to the current admin staff.
- FurAffinity is currently not profitable and had to run a donation campaign to stay afloat. Serious flaws arose from their transparency efforts (again, touching on this later).
- Dragoneer confirm ed that he signed an NDA regarding the sale and cannot discuss specifics.
- As of January 4, one of the two DB servers is not being used because FA's codebase cannot yet run on multiple servers.
- As of January 4, FurAffinity owed $10,000 in back taxes.
How does this stack up today?
✓ FA no longer operates independently, as claimed by Dragoneer. Yak confirmed that IMVU gave specific requirements to the FA staff, which resulted in the implementation of the intrusive advertising we saw yesterday (and, if you haven't blocked it, we continue to see part of today).
✓ The server & hardware investments continue to be underutilized because FA's code changes focused entirely on the implementation of advertising; not the implementation of distributed databases (which are needed to use the new servers).
✓ IMVU's pledge not to interfere with intrusive advertising has been broken.
✓ Dragoneer's promise that he has it "in writing that things will not be changing EXCEPT for the better" has been broken.
✓ Any further terms of sale still haven't been disclosed, beyond Yak's admittance that IMVU instituted specific advertising requirements.
✓ Any further transparency efforts have failed, since IMVU continues to retain full control of FA's finances, which are now out of FA's staff's hands.
Unsurprisingly, my predictions came true:
We already know that IMVU makes some obnoxious ads. Here's a collection of some of them. If you don't have an ad blocker, you've probably seen similar ads running on FA before. Notice the ad content - very, very few involve furries, and those that do generally sport a more "kemonomimi" style (that is, they typically retain their hum an shape and simply add a "furry" skin image and some accessories). Here's an excellent example. If you're into that, great - but the vast majority of us on FA have more animalistic characters.
Basically, you can expect to see either IMVU's out-of-place ads, or third-party ads with no relation to the furry community. Is this something you're willing to put up with if the tradeoff is vague promises of better performance?
No surprise that most users saw IMVU's "out-of-place ads", and a few others saw "third-party ads with no relation to the furry community".
Another thing I nailed:
More importantly, will IMVU actually maintain FA at a significant loss? Obviously they are not saying much about the deal, but any fool could tell you that FA will now see two changes - a large portion of its users will adopt ad blockers (hurting both IMVU's ad revenue and the clickthrough rates of FA's traditional homebrew advertisers), and they will now have money funneled out of potential upgrade funds to support IMVU's requirement to run a profit.
Again, no surprise that tons of people have installed Adblock Plus to hide the ads, which hurts FA's advertisers (unless you implement a custom filter). I went so far as to write a journal detailing how to hide the new ads but leave the artist ones which has been extremely popular. Even then, I've seen a ton of people just use Adblock to block all ads, which hurts our community as well. So far, I've only had one person tell me that the new ads are a positive change.
IMVU's target clickthrough rates will not meet their expectations by any means. So, prepare for some drastic measures to monetize us, which may include those oft-denied paid accounts they promised they wouldn't do.
Last point, which I also got spot on:
Dragoneer has gone on ass-damage control since posting the news, saying that he has it "in writing" that only positive changes will be made. What is the definition of a positive change? Is that positive in IMVU's perspective, or Dragoneer's perspective, or the users' perspective?
He also claims that he retains creative control. This means dick in lawyer world. Letting him retain creative control is the equivalent of a parent patting their kid on the head and saying "that's nice honey, go play outside, okay?"
Make no mistake. Unless Dragoneer says otherwise, IMVU now has full, final, overarching control over all of FA's operations. That does not mean they will exercise their right to jam their cock in things, but if IMVU tells the admin team to implement paid accounts and they say no, IMVU is well within its legal rights to work around (or simply fire) the admin team. Their ability to stand up for the best interests of the community have been sold off for an undisclosed sum . If IMVU wants to close the site tomorrow, they can.
Yak's post confirmed that Dragoneer was either misinformed or lying. Invasive advertising is not a positive change, and the team was made well aware (likely in advance of the original announcement) that such advertising would have to be added. So, they did not retain creative control as they were promised. IMVU did, indeed, exercise their right to jam their cock in things.
Blow me.
cats don't understand business
pls stahp you are suppose to be cute not smart
*literally falls out of his chair laughing*
I'd also add that the ads often contain links to malware/spyware.
Haven't heard of a confirmed case of a drive-by malvertising attack on here yet, but that is just a matter of time until Adsense gets compromised [again].
They'll blame Google, of course. But they had to know that flipping the switch for 3rd party ads would expose us to security threats. So the collateral damage is worth it to them to make a quick buck.
Time for IMVU to divest this site and sell it back to the community. We wholly reject the new owners with every fibre of our being.
Aggressively advertise your move, delete all your content from this site.
Be proactive.
You know what else hasn't changed FA? Complaints.
Remember how all of those people left from the past dumbass changes (including the IMVU sale)? Nothing happened.
Now, this time hardly anyone leaves but we all throw a shitfit, and the change gets reversed before the day's end.
I'm not sure why you would say complaints don't change FA, because they definitely did this time. Leaving... not so much.
the side bar was a blip on the complaint radar for me, i don't get how people are willing to flip cars over such an insignificant issue (spoiled by living an easy life if that's a huge issue for them i guess). honestly all the other sites also shrink your submission anyways, you have to either open the pic in a new window by itself or download it to see it full size.
and i tend to believe Nelly's explanation for not seeing the ads more because i am not in the US.
Also, sidebar wasn't anything special. People bitched enough.
I'm also using the Beta UI. I liked the actual sidebar.
But I fully acknowledge that's a personal complaint. I didn't summon up any bile for it =P
http://i1303.photobucket.com/albums.....psghi2rrzp.png
The individual who made that remark did verify that he was part of the initiative to purchase Furaffinity, but they have not added anything more to that statement you see here.
Placing aside our emotions and bias, we really don't know what is going on here. We don't know what kind of decisions were considered and even avoided during all of this. And it is Dragoneer that is to blame on the lack of communication, both before and after the deal.
If he had gone the route of PR and had included the population's opinion, things would be drastically different today.
(ps, deleted two comments because they wouldn't chain to this one)
And that's the best case scenario - some users report intrusive ads with sound and video.
All because Neer couldn't keep his wallet in his pants.
I'd just like everyone to calm down a little; we might well kill FA on our own.