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2024 Year in Review
9 months ago
This is a year-end review of how the sites Furbitron monitors fared in 2024, and how that compares to past years.
tl;dr:
2024 saw double-digit percentage drops in submissions on five of the eight sites Furbitron monitors. The only two sites that had an increase in submissions were e621 and e6AI. 2024 was the fourth year ever where FurAffinity did *not* have year-on-year growth.
tl;dr, but as a table:
Submission IDs
site.............................2024............2023.......... v%
Buzzly.....................11,190.........17,590.......-36%
e621.....................771,700.......723,000........+6.7%
e6AI........................62,890.........19,070....+230%
FurAffinity........4,363,000....4,566,000.........-4.4%
FurryNetwork.......30,340.........50,640........-40%
itaku....................301,300.......429,300........-30%
SoFurry...............127,100.......149,400........-15%
Weasyl................115,300.......141,100........-18%
(submission ID counts are rounded)
In July, Furbitron updated the "e621 tag backlog" experiment to include data from late 2023 and the first half of 2024.
Buzzly had about 11,190 submissions in 2024, as compared to 17,590 submissions in 2023. 2024 was the second year that Buzzly did not have year-on-year growth.
Buzzly experienced fast growth in late 2021 and early 2022, but the post rate dropped off a lot in mid-March 2022. This low post rate continued throughout 2022 and beyond.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that Buzzly would have 12,300 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was lower than predicted.
Buzzly does not use numeric submission IDs, so Furbitron cannot check the latest submissions to get the highest submission ID. Instead, Furbitron queries Buzzly's API to get the count of submissions Buzzly claims to have had since Furbitron's last query, and adds that count to a running total.
2024 was the best year ever for e621, with about 771,700 submission IDs.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that e621 would have 760,000 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was higher than predicted.
e621 reached submission ID 5,000,000 on August 21, 2024.
e621 had year-on-year growth every year from 2008 to 2024. It launched in spring 2007 and had about 14,100 submission IDs that year; 2008 was the first full year of operation, with about 10,700 submission IDs.
e6AI had about 62,890 submission IDs in 2024, its second full year of operation.
e6AI specializes in AI-generated images, and is operated by the same people as e621. e6AI went online around mid-October 2022, and had about 860 submission IDs through the end of 2022.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that e6AI would have 52,100 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was much higher than predicted.
Furbitron does not yet fully support e6AI. You can see statistics for e6AI on the "All > Statistics" and "All except FA > Statistics" pages, but the individual pages for each graph don't exist yet. Full support is planned for the future.
FurAffinity's owner, Dragoneer, passed away suddenly on August 6, 2024. He had been dealing with some health issues, but his sudden loss was unexpected.
On August 20, an attacker gained control of FurAffinity's domain and pointed it away from FA's servers for a time. The attacker also gained control of FA's Twitter/X account. FA was offline for a couple of days while FA's staff regained control of the domain and checked for any other damage the attacker may have done.
On Furbitron, this outage can be seen as a short horizontal section on the line in late August on the past-year graph for FA,and as a short horizontal section on the solid grey 2025 line, just before day 240, on the year-on-year graph for FA.
This outage was correlated with small bumps in the post rate at SoFurry, Weasyl, and Itaku.
2024 was the fourth year ever where FurAffinity did *not* have year-on-year growth; it ended 2024 with about 4,363,000 submission IDs, as compared to 4,566,000 for 2023. The post rate for 2024 was relatively consistent before the outage; after the outage, it wasn't quite as high as it was earlier in the year.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that FurAffinity would have 4,440,000 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was lower than predicted.
FurAffinity launched in late 2005 and had about 12,000 submission IDs that year; 2006 was the first full year of operation, with about 320,600 submission IDs. It had year-on-year growth every year from 2005 to 2020.
FurryNetwork had about 30,340 submission IDs in 2024. This was the slowest full year for FurryNetwork.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that FurryNetwork would have 31,100 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was a little lower than predicted.
FurryNetwork had a slight bump in its post rate in mid-August, 2024. This may be related to Dragoneer's passing in early August and the FA outage later in August.
FurryNetwork's best year ever was 2016, with about 1,063,000 submission IDs. It launched in summer 2015 and had about 286,800 submission IDs that year.
itaku had about 301,300 submission IDs in 2024, making it the second-best year for itaku so far.
itaku had a very slight bump in its post rate in mid-August, 2024, and a slightly larger one in mid-September, 2024. The August bump may be related to Dragoneer's passing in early August and the FA outage later in August.
itaku reached submission ID 1,000,000 on December 12, 2024.
itaku first went online around October, 2020, but had a very low post rate through about June, 2021. itaku had about 38,900 submission IDs in 2021, and 243,000 in 2022.
SoFurry had about 127,100 submission IDs in 2024. This was a decline from 149,400 submission IDs in 2023.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that SoFurry would have 125,000 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was slightly better than predicted.
SoFurry had a slight bump in its post rate in mid-August, 2024. This may be related to Dragoneer's passing in early August and the FA outage later in August.
SoFurry's best year ever was 2017, with about 166,700 submission IDs. It launched in spring 2006 and had about 6,700 submission IDs that year; 2007 was the first full year of operation, with about 23,900 submission IDs.
Since at least August 2013, SoFurry has been developing a new version of their site, which they currently call SoFurry Next. SoFurry has not yet announced when SoFurry Next will go into production. When that happens, Furbitron's data collection for SoFurry will most likely be interrupted for at least a few days, until it is updated to handle the new site and its API.
Weasyl had about 115,300 submission IDs in 2024. This was a decline from 141,100 submission IDs in 2023.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that Weasyl would have 104,000 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was better than predicted.
Weasyl had a slight bump in its post rate in early August, 2024. This may be related to Dragoneer's passing in early August and the FA outage later in August.
Weasyl's best year ever was 2014, with about 526,000 submission IDs. It launched in fall 2011 and had about 40 submission IDs that year; 2012 was the first full year of operation, with about 77,200 submission IDs. 2024 was the slowest full year for Weasyl since 2012.
The submission ID counts in this post have been rounded off. They should be within about 1% of the un-rounded counts.
The owners of the various sites can directly query their site's database, so they may publish slightly different numbers than are found here.
The numbers here come from Furbitron's monitoring of the sites listed. The historical data was mostly gathered from the sites in September 2021. e621 provides a dump of their site database, so the historical data for e621 came from that dump in September 2021. Since then, Furbitron has done "live" monitoring of each site, once a day.
Thanks!
Furbitron
furbitron.com
tl;dr:
2024 saw double-digit percentage drops in submissions on five of the eight sites Furbitron monitors. The only two sites that had an increase in submissions were e621 and e6AI. 2024 was the fourth year ever where FurAffinity did *not* have year-on-year growth.
tl;dr, but as a table:
Submission IDs
site.............................2024............2023.......... v%
Buzzly.....................11,190.........17,590.......-36%
e621.....................771,700.......723,000........+6.7%
e6AI........................62,890.........19,070....+230%
FurAffinity........4,363,000....4,566,000.........-4.4%
FurryNetwork.......30,340.........50,640........-40%
itaku....................301,300.......429,300........-30%
SoFurry...............127,100.......149,400........-15%
Weasyl................115,300.......141,100........-18%
(submission ID counts are rounded)
Furbitron itself
In July, Furbitron updated the "e621 tag backlog" experiment to include data from late 2023 and the first half of 2024.
Buzzly
Buzzly had about 11,190 submissions in 2024, as compared to 17,590 submissions in 2023. 2024 was the second year that Buzzly did not have year-on-year growth.
Buzzly experienced fast growth in late 2021 and early 2022, but the post rate dropped off a lot in mid-March 2022. This low post rate continued throughout 2022 and beyond.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that Buzzly would have 12,300 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was lower than predicted.
Buzzly does not use numeric submission IDs, so Furbitron cannot check the latest submissions to get the highest submission ID. Instead, Furbitron queries Buzzly's API to get the count of submissions Buzzly claims to have had since Furbitron's last query, and adds that count to a running total.
e621
2024 was the best year ever for e621, with about 771,700 submission IDs.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that e621 would have 760,000 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was higher than predicted.
e621 reached submission ID 5,000,000 on August 21, 2024.
e621 had year-on-year growth every year from 2008 to 2024. It launched in spring 2007 and had about 14,100 submission IDs that year; 2008 was the first full year of operation, with about 10,700 submission IDs.
e6AI
e6AI had about 62,890 submission IDs in 2024, its second full year of operation.
e6AI specializes in AI-generated images, and is operated by the same people as e621. e6AI went online around mid-October 2022, and had about 860 submission IDs through the end of 2022.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that e6AI would have 52,100 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was much higher than predicted.
Furbitron does not yet fully support e6AI. You can see statistics for e6AI on the "All > Statistics" and "All except FA > Statistics" pages, but the individual pages for each graph don't exist yet. Full support is planned for the future.
FurAffinity
FurAffinity's owner, Dragoneer, passed away suddenly on August 6, 2024. He had been dealing with some health issues, but his sudden loss was unexpected.
On August 20, an attacker gained control of FurAffinity's domain and pointed it away from FA's servers for a time. The attacker also gained control of FA's Twitter/X account. FA was offline for a couple of days while FA's staff regained control of the domain and checked for any other damage the attacker may have done.
On Furbitron, this outage can be seen as a short horizontal section on the line in late August on the past-year graph for FA,and as a short horizontal section on the solid grey 2025 line, just before day 240, on the year-on-year graph for FA.
This outage was correlated with small bumps in the post rate at SoFurry, Weasyl, and Itaku.
2024 was the fourth year ever where FurAffinity did *not* have year-on-year growth; it ended 2024 with about 4,363,000 submission IDs, as compared to 4,566,000 for 2023. The post rate for 2024 was relatively consistent before the outage; after the outage, it wasn't quite as high as it was earlier in the year.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that FurAffinity would have 4,440,000 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was lower than predicted.
FurAffinity launched in late 2005 and had about 12,000 submission IDs that year; 2006 was the first full year of operation, with about 320,600 submission IDs. It had year-on-year growth every year from 2005 to 2020.
FurryNetwork
FurryNetwork had about 30,340 submission IDs in 2024. This was the slowest full year for FurryNetwork.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that FurryNetwork would have 31,100 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was a little lower than predicted.
FurryNetwork had a slight bump in its post rate in mid-August, 2024. This may be related to Dragoneer's passing in early August and the FA outage later in August.
FurryNetwork's best year ever was 2016, with about 1,063,000 submission IDs. It launched in summer 2015 and had about 286,800 submission IDs that year.
itaku
itaku had about 301,300 submission IDs in 2024, making it the second-best year for itaku so far.
itaku had a very slight bump in its post rate in mid-August, 2024, and a slightly larger one in mid-September, 2024. The August bump may be related to Dragoneer's passing in early August and the FA outage later in August.
itaku reached submission ID 1,000,000 on December 12, 2024.
itaku first went online around October, 2020, but had a very low post rate through about June, 2021. itaku had about 38,900 submission IDs in 2021, and 243,000 in 2022.
SoFurry
SoFurry had about 127,100 submission IDs in 2024. This was a decline from 149,400 submission IDs in 2023.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that SoFurry would have 125,000 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was slightly better than predicted.
SoFurry had a slight bump in its post rate in mid-August, 2024. This may be related to Dragoneer's passing in early August and the FA outage later in August.
SoFurry's best year ever was 2017, with about 166,700 submission IDs. It launched in spring 2006 and had about 6,700 submission IDs that year; 2007 was the first full year of operation, with about 23,900 submission IDs.
Since at least August 2013, SoFurry has been developing a new version of their site, which they currently call SoFurry Next. SoFurry has not yet announced when SoFurry Next will go into production. When that happens, Furbitron's data collection for SoFurry will most likely be interrupted for at least a few days, until it is updated to handle the new site and its API.
Weasyl
Weasyl had about 115,300 submission IDs in 2024. This was a decline from 141,100 submission IDs in 2023.
Based on data from January to early July, 2024, Furbitron predicted that Weasyl would have 104,000 submissions for all of 2024. The actual result was better than predicted.
Weasyl had a slight bump in its post rate in early August, 2024. This may be related to Dragoneer's passing in early August and the FA outage later in August.
Weasyl's best year ever was 2014, with about 526,000 submission IDs. It launched in fall 2011 and had about 40 submission IDs that year; 2012 was the first full year of operation, with about 77,200 submission IDs. 2024 was the slowest full year for Weasyl since 2012.
Notes and disclaimers
The submission ID counts in this post have been rounded off. They should be within about 1% of the un-rounded counts.
The owners of the various sites can directly query their site's database, so they may publish slightly different numbers than are found here.
The numbers here come from Furbitron's monitoring of the sites listed. The historical data was mostly gathered from the sites in September 2021. e621 provides a dump of their site database, so the historical data for e621 came from that dump in September 2021. Since then, Furbitron has done "live" monitoring of each site, once a day.
Thanks!
Furbitron
furbitron.com
👏 👏 👏 Keep up the tracking. I look forward to your updates every year end!
