"I am willing to bet at this very moment, some furries are tapping away at code to create a new furry art archive."

You bet your ass I am.

There's a visiting fur in my living room who just bought a site to make a new site for people to go to.

He says that the "Yerf Art" style of site is a good idea.

I would sign up immediately and I know MANY of the fandoms top artist would as well. There are plenty of unrestricted sites, plenty of artist who dont want their work associated with porn who have dropped off the public map for years now. They might even come back as well.

Do expect drama, DONT let it get to you

YES!

before I get on my high horse I'll admit I look at porn.

However, I find increasingly as I become old, that I find it so much more enticing to observe my < preferred gender > wearing flattering clothing. The human and the well drawn furry body are artistic, and I don't question the objective beauty of Michaelangelo's David, but there's so much more to enjoy than gratuitous erogenous zones. I do partially blame my profession, everyone looks better in a clean and well pressed uniform.

Just my unasked for opinion.

It's amazing the incredibly talented people we've lost, because they got 'real artist' jobs, and can't be associated with what passes for 'normal' in the fandom today.

Glad I'm not the only one who remembers SCFA/Yerf.

I could imagine a lot of little snots will come on here and make characters that are glorified clones of the more well known characters (Tellephone being an obvious example).

The "New Furs" thing already exist - they're called the AdventureCru :P

Bunnies are smart food! Like furry pomegranates!

Also there's Weasyl, actually run by dedicated relatively smart people.

I'd be open to such a site too, the idea of a website you can show your family would be amazing.

Some valid concerns, true! But it would appear to depend on how tightly IMVU links their existing site to FA. They already feature Furry avatars, and wuff's sure a lot of those players are also members of FA, so the awareness of FA is already out there. Similar to SL and the FA-awareness of the user-base there thanks to the large number of furs and the special "furry areas". It's is already a thing and a change of ownership by itself doesn't really affect that.

So, if IMVU simply announces FA is a 'sister site', and perhaps includes a link or few somewhere or other, there won't likely be a major "sea change" in the distribution of their uses coming to FA. Oh, there's sure to be a lot of "curious about the new shiny" arrivals. But once the initial curiosity has worn off, things ought to fall back to more-or-less normal.

If, on the other paw, they intensively integrate their existing site with FA, the feared flood could very well be a thing. But doing that sounds counter to the purpose of IMVU; a static art and story and ??? archive doesn't bring a great deal to a dynamic, real-time chat environment. And the FA chat features certainly don't hold a candle to what the IMVU uses already have.

Now, this wuffy, like you, does really miss the concept of a rich, fully developed and evolving furry persona. But, sadly, it seems those days are long gone, regardless of any corporate ownership, or lack there of.

The thing that bothers me, they are investing money, so overtime they will require concessions to the contract. I caant believe they just found it in their heart to give money away to help a random website. I think this was done with good faith, hope Neer knows what he is getting himself into. IMVU will not remain a silent partner with a currently non profit site.

They see financial gain potential somehow. things will change, drastically. not immediately but they will.

You're absolutely right. No business entity, outside of a charity, gives money away for nothing. If they are funding improvements to FA, they certainly expect something in return.

In looking at and participating in the IMVU site, this wuff suspects the profit potential is pretty much 99% on that side of the teeter-totter. EVERYTHING there is geared to separating users from their coins! Wuff thought those "free to play" games funded by micro payments were bad, but that place makes those look like a soup kitchen handing out free meals in comparison!

While they might lust after turning FA into another similar income site, such a total and drastic change to FA's business structure would, for all intents and purposes, shut it down overnight. There might be "VIP accounts" or similar changes in store, but hopefully it won't be too onerous.

However, what this wuff DOES see, is several hundred thousand furries laboring under one of the worst chat/note systems still active on the net. And a company who's whole (prior) business model was chat/communication. If they can tap even a portion of the FA userbase, and get them to come over to IMVU for the chat, roleplay, yiffy conversations, etc., they will have garnered a major boost to income without altering FA's primary structure. And they could do it while leaving all of the existing art/text archive and streaming/commission structure in place. Heck, if they're smart, they'll find a way to facilitate streaming through an avatar-based service on IMVU, link it easily (within the stream-announcing journals) on FA, do it as a "loss leader" in hopes of luring folks to continue avatar chat when the stream ends, and suck up a bunch of revenue from Livestream and others! Vrghr might actually enjoy such a thing!

Maybe not - but a wuffy can dream, can't he?

I'm just sitting here spending more and more time on Twitter & Facebook and less on FurAffinity and wondering why I still come here.
It's basically just a digital storage for furry art - Nothing else really feels like it integrates into the current web or social networks.

I just don't like the idea of some random for-profit company (that looks like its stuck in the AIM-age of chatting) "owning" this website. Gives off bad vibes.

Hoping for the best, but I'd feel more relaxed about all this if I could actually SEE the agreements of the sale, instead of being fed a bunch of vague "It's gonna be great, they don't plan on doing anything [now], this is totally worth it, don't worry" lines.

*sigh* Trying to stay positive.

People are just panicking, FA should be fine, no ones art is gonna get stolen or used out of context. The whole panic and run thing is probably a Weasyl conspiracy.

I hear ya on the concept of a character with a rich amount of background and design, toast. that was one of my biggest concerns when i really started getting into the fandom, not copying from others designs. started out the most generic black dragon, and now, since 2010, i've worked on improving and growing what has become the thing most important to me online, cause i've put so much work into the persona. certainly gonna be interesting....and potentially cringeworthy seeing so many people come on with out that level of respect for what people put into their work.

it's a little like the concept of people who make buttloads of money without doing an actual job, they don't tend to realize how much work some things take. example being youtubers who blew up and made a huge audience of millions of watchers. sure it's a fame inducing job, but it puts you in a false sense of scale for the world..........so yeah....this is gonna be.....fun......and i say that with the deepest intensity of sarcasm XP

For some reason, I feel that I am one of the last of my generation to actually put work into building my fursona and his background. Yeah, sure, it started with a pokemon just for the sake of fitting in on a pokemon site, but once I made a character based on my own self, I really began to give him an origin and a story. From that point on, I actually began to notice how there's so many flurries that just have their character just so they can have a subject for their commissions or RPs. It's sad when you realize your generation has little to no imagination and want everything handed down to them...

As for the IMVU Sale, it makes me nervous. I'm gonna start looking at this site like I looked at the mobile phone game industry with their free-to-play games. The moment they start charging, my account is going offline. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Yet another teapot-sized tempest. It's gonna be fine.

Needs to be a "Guide to Building a Furry Character". And maybe something meaningful to use them in aside from RP. I mean second life is fine, but not real demanding on a character's stats/story.

actually, you just inspired me to host a panel.

Sweet! Keep me posted. I don't mind throwing my two cents in as well ^^