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Mar 19: Applying Science to IMVU (The State of FA)
11 years ago
General
|██████████|BODY
|██████████|MIND
|██████████|SOUL
Status: Lingering cough, bah!
|██████████|Will To Art
█ (EDIT Science Continues) Since every year there seems to be something, anything to cause people to say "I'm leaving FA forever" I figured this time around I'd do a stamp of FA today (at around noon my time):
14141 Users online — 3241 guests and 10900 registered
Server Local Time: March 19th, 2015 02:33 PM
13763 Users online — 2838 guests and 10925 registered
Server Local Time: March 20th, 2015 03:55 PM
13943 Users online — 3360 guests and 10583 registered
Server Local Time: March 21st, 2015 02:50 PM
15747 Users online — 3525 guests and 12222 registered
Server Local Time: March 22nd, 2015 06:26 PM
12791 Users online — 2641 guests and 10150 registered
Server Local Time: March 23rd, 2015 02:21 PM
14493 Users online — 2908 guests and 11585 registered
Server Local Time: March 25th, 2015 08:56 PM
Now if in like... I dunno, a week these numbers plummet to nothing, then we'll know everyone left!
█ In all seriousness, to me it's a miracle that FA continues to exist considering its non-existent revenue stream. The site as far as I could tell wasn't sponsored by anyone expect by the owner (who was steadily acquiring more and more personal debt), and no one really competed to place advertising on the site despite it being on of the larger sites on the internet (FA artists buying ad spots for pretty much pennies never was going to cut it). Certainly there was no subscription model in place either. Methods for users being able to donate money to the site have been systematically eliminated as well.
I'm not an expert (yes I bold it, and yes I'm even commenting on that), but I think it's an anomaly for a site as big as FA is to be loosing money. Certainly there appears to be smaller sites out there that run a profit, or at least break even. Yet those sites can function. Why? Because they don't have a user base that actively seeks out to destroy it.
Perhaps you might wonder why I think this, but it's not hard to create a scenario that would turn into a shit-storm. Imagine if you will if FA started up a patreon account to help support the site. If your following thought was "That would get shut down so fast" then congratulations, that's the reason why FA is in the state it is. You have so many people who will immediately say "It's a scam!" or "Don't throw away your money" or "More proof FA is going downhill! I'm leaving!" or "Yet another shady scheme to steal money and get nothing from it!" there is literally no way to win.
People certainly demand a lot of transparency on site operations, but how many other websites have those same demands? How many other websites provide that level of transparency? Of what websites I visit every day, FA is the only one where I see this demand (or as I see it jackassery). Well okay, I guess I see it on YouTube, but YT has money; a lot of it. FA? Not so much. (Unless you believe the conspiracy theorists that all the money is being stolen, leaving FA with nothing until it simply dies).
That all said, there doesn't seem to be much in the way IMVU can make money off acquiring FA. Unless I suppose their intent is to copy Deviantart's model of having it as a free site, but having improved functionality behind a subscription wall. Which I wouldn't be surprised if that did happen. It's all speculation. The big question of course ends up becoming "What happens if IMVU can't make money off FA?" People might say that's when FA dies, but I suspect IMVU will look to sell FA off to someone else. You don't just flush down a site with the traffic FA has for nothing, and I suspect there's probably some members of the FA community with deep enough pockets to buy the site from IMVU if that particular scenario came to pass.
█ UPDATE http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/...../#cid:44894969
"IMVU reserves the right to redistribute content that has been uploaded to FurAffinity as agreed upon in page 9 of the terms of sale"
"Basically, for ad purposes (used in screenshots, etc). Sort of like the "re-broadcast rights" if they take a screenshot and post it and it has somebody's icon or image in it."
Since this was recently put out there, this is probably the thing that can cause issues. Deviantart actually had their TOS altered to something similar years back, but it was more up front that they could basically profit from artist's work without their permission. Needless to say that was one of the contributing factors to why I left DA, and I believe DA basically reversed that particular decision in a hurry. (I didn't stick around for the fallout, so I don't know for certain)
This is roughly the same issue. No one likes it when a site basically says "We can do whatever we like with the content you've produced without your permission." No one likes it when a random person does it, no one is going to like it if the site does it. Basically I think FA and IMVU has a very short window to defuse this particular bomb. The potential for serious damage is high, because very few artists tolerate that kind of wording. Certainly has bumped my feelings of "Eh, more drama" to "Okay, that's not okay at all."
█ SECOND UPDATE
Q: I heard/read IMVU has the right to repost my content and use it however they want?
A: "Fur Affinity is governed by the site's terms of use, not Google's, Apple's or IMVU's." - IMVU
Rest assured, IMVU is *NOT* taking FA content, redistributing it, reposting it, using it in-game, etc. It's your content. Only FA has the right to show it if you upload it to the site. No one else.
Good that an answer was produced quickly, though I will remain as always skeptical. Really people should be skeptical about everything, but a lot of people like to skip skepticism and go straight into paranoia.
|██████████|MIND
|██████████|SOUL
Status: Lingering cough, bah!
|██████████|Will To Art
█ (EDIT Science Continues) Since every year there seems to be something, anything to cause people to say "I'm leaving FA forever" I figured this time around I'd do a stamp of FA today (at around noon my time):
14141 Users online — 3241 guests and 10900 registered
Server Local Time: March 19th, 2015 02:33 PM
13763 Users online — 2838 guests and 10925 registered
Server Local Time: March 20th, 2015 03:55 PM
13943 Users online — 3360 guests and 10583 registered
Server Local Time: March 21st, 2015 02:50 PM
15747 Users online — 3525 guests and 12222 registered
Server Local Time: March 22nd, 2015 06:26 PM
12791 Users online — 2641 guests and 10150 registered
Server Local Time: March 23rd, 2015 02:21 PM
14493 Users online — 2908 guests and 11585 registered
Server Local Time: March 25th, 2015 08:56 PM
Now if in like... I dunno, a week these numbers plummet to nothing, then we'll know everyone left!
█ In all seriousness, to me it's a miracle that FA continues to exist considering its non-existent revenue stream. The site as far as I could tell wasn't sponsored by anyone expect by the owner (who was steadily acquiring more and more personal debt), and no one really competed to place advertising on the site despite it being on of the larger sites on the internet (FA artists buying ad spots for pretty much pennies never was going to cut it). Certainly there was no subscription model in place either. Methods for users being able to donate money to the site have been systematically eliminated as well.
I'm not an expert (yes I bold it, and yes I'm even commenting on that), but I think it's an anomaly for a site as big as FA is to be loosing money. Certainly there appears to be smaller sites out there that run a profit, or at least break even. Yet those sites can function. Why? Because they don't have a user base that actively seeks out to destroy it.
Perhaps you might wonder why I think this, but it's not hard to create a scenario that would turn into a shit-storm. Imagine if you will if FA started up a patreon account to help support the site. If your following thought was "That would get shut down so fast" then congratulations, that's the reason why FA is in the state it is. You have so many people who will immediately say "It's a scam!" or "Don't throw away your money" or "More proof FA is going downhill! I'm leaving!" or "Yet another shady scheme to steal money and get nothing from it!" there is literally no way to win.
People certainly demand a lot of transparency on site operations, but how many other websites have those same demands? How many other websites provide that level of transparency? Of what websites I visit every day, FA is the only one where I see this demand (or as I see it jackassery). Well okay, I guess I see it on YouTube, but YT has money; a lot of it. FA? Not so much. (Unless you believe the conspiracy theorists that all the money is being stolen, leaving FA with nothing until it simply dies).
That all said, there doesn't seem to be much in the way IMVU can make money off acquiring FA. Unless I suppose their intent is to copy Deviantart's model of having it as a free site, but having improved functionality behind a subscription wall. Which I wouldn't be surprised if that did happen. It's all speculation. The big question of course ends up becoming "What happens if IMVU can't make money off FA?" People might say that's when FA dies, but I suspect IMVU will look to sell FA off to someone else. You don't just flush down a site with the traffic FA has for nothing, and I suspect there's probably some members of the FA community with deep enough pockets to buy the site from IMVU if that particular scenario came to pass.
█ UPDATE http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/...../#cid:44894969
"IMVU reserves the right to redistribute content that has been uploaded to FurAffinity as agreed upon in page 9 of the terms of sale"
"Basically, for ad purposes (used in screenshots, etc). Sort of like the "re-broadcast rights" if they take a screenshot and post it and it has somebody's icon or image in it."
Since this was recently put out there, this is probably the thing that can cause issues. Deviantart actually had their TOS altered to something similar years back, but it was more up front that they could basically profit from artist's work without their permission. Needless to say that was one of the contributing factors to why I left DA, and I believe DA basically reversed that particular decision in a hurry. (I didn't stick around for the fallout, so I don't know for certain)
This is roughly the same issue. No one likes it when a site basically says "We can do whatever we like with the content you've produced without your permission." No one likes it when a random person does it, no one is going to like it if the site does it. Basically I think FA and IMVU has a very short window to defuse this particular bomb. The potential for serious damage is high, because very few artists tolerate that kind of wording. Certainly has bumped my feelings of "Eh, more drama" to "Okay, that's not okay at all."
█ SECOND UPDATE
Q: I heard/read IMVU has the right to repost my content and use it however they want?
A: "Fur Affinity is governed by the site's terms of use, not Google's, Apple's or IMVU's." - IMVU
Rest assured, IMVU is *NOT* taking FA content, redistributing it, reposting it, using it in-game, etc. It's your content. Only FA has the right to show it if you upload it to the site. No one else.
Good that an answer was produced quickly, though I will remain as always skeptical. Really people should be skeptical about everything, but a lot of people like to skip skepticism and go straight into paranoia.
Guess we'll see.
The IMVU Mature Content Policy.
Note how the items listed under "Unsuitable for IMVU" contain "Drug Use and Reference", "Nudity: aroused genitals", and "Strong sexual content".
And, in case you're not convinced IMVU is bad for FA yet, let's look at the items for which an adult Access Pass has to be bought before you can view it: "Alcohol Use and Reference", "Mature Humor", "Nudity", "Profanity", "Sexual Themes", and "Tobacco Use and Reference".
IMVU could at any point in time decide to enforce this Mature Content Policy on FA.
They have ownership. Dictionary.com definition of the word acquire in case you are still confused.
"They wanted to help fund the site and support it in order to help grow their large furry community base. That was it. Their goal was solely to grow the community. They get more users, we get more users. Everything works out."
I will not continue this discussion in comments to Endium's journal.
- IMVU VP (and my boss)
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6588795/
Stealing is a method of acquiring, too.
If they can get money that way, more power to them, I suppose. But making money off other people's stuff is kinda creepy.
But yeah, the engine they use is dated, and the way they collect assets for the rendering engine is legacy bad, and the client has serious design faults but could easily be fixed.
However, their development hasn't been on the client side for awhile now, and they're working on their next-gen stuff.
http://www.lindenlab.com/releases/l.....-virtual-world
There's still a skeleton crew trying to keep the big bugs from killing the world, but some of the default assumptions limit what they can do. Even so, the client/server is far more solid than it was ten years ago ^-^
That aside, for it's age the SL code itself isn't particularly poor quality. Sure, lot of cruft there, some poor decision making on the part of expediency like a few 32 bit only closed source libraries from Havoc (physics), Vivox (voice comms), and at one time fmod for Linux sound. You can pretty much say the same for most long lived software projects. Cruft, bloat, what have you, accumulates over time even in well run fully open source projects. There was a humorous study a while back showing the number of expletive laden comments in the linux kernel increased steadily over time while the number of individual lines with expletives decreased.
http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/
The reason SL has rendering performance problems isn't because of a poor code base. It's two fold. First SL is dependent upon the OpenGL api for it's 3D acceleration. That may not mean a lot to some, but in practical terms it's what allows SL to work cross platform. It runs on Windows, OS-X, and Linux officially. However, it's also run natively on FreeBSD and Solaris when someone took the time to strip out the Linux-isms and ported the client over. Now, this has a performance impact that may not be obvious. OS-X is already known to often perform more poorly on 3D rendering than Windows to begin with. The same is largely true of Linux. However, even in Windows OpenGL is actually a translation API to DirectX. So you have double the abstraction layers which always lends to some performance loss. Second, and this one is the big issue, SL is nearly entirely user generated content. The reason games run so well as far as rendering performance is concerned is because it's a closed loop environment. The content is developed for the engine by professional rendering artists who understand the limitations of the engine while the developers tweak what can be tweaked to any corner cases the artists discover. The key is closed loop, everyone knows what they are doing and the kinds, types, numbers, and resolution of the objects, lights, and textures are all known. SL doesn't have this benefit. The engine has to accommodate a huge number of objects of all different types in as generic a way as possible while only optimizing to the point that would be broadly acceptable to all new and legacy content techniques. In fact, the Linden devs (and us inworld) have to deal with artists and people that don't understand programming techniques creating content with sub optimal and sometimes catastrophic results.
Example: I once visited a place in world that had "prim" walls covered with high resolution porn. Each panel had a different texture on it. People wondered why the area lagged so badly and continually blamed the dreaded "lag monster" which is usually a server side or transport problem. Well, they are wrong. High numbers of unique high resolution textures naturally places more strain on the video card hardware to store and render all of that information. Long explanation short, it impairs rendering (frame rate) performance.
Also, have you played any actual modern games using DirectX 11?? It's dog slow and Microsoft knows it, hence DirectX 12 in Windows 10 jettisoning a lot of high level API cruft and dropping it back down to something 'closer to the hardware'. Kronos Group is doing something similar with OpenGL Next because current OpenGL has the same problem. AMD's Mantle was meant to handle the same issues, but with DirectX 12 and OpenGL Next coming out "soon", AMD has "changed focus" on Mantle.
For those curious about it, DirectX 12 is not going to be back ported to 8.x or 7.
I don't really see SL as being overly problematic from a client performance standpoint. It has plenty of inworld problems mostly with asset management these days but that's largely server side.
SL's main source of "turbulence" is more social than technological. Dramatic outrage is never lacking both inworld and out.
Linden Labs is working on a second version of SL. Only time will tell how much cruft they will be able to jettison and whether they will make the transition to OpenGL Next. Much depends on Nvidia and AMD and how fast and well they produce drivers supporting OpenGL Next, unless Lindens make a conscious decision to go Windows only.
That said, Second Life is great. It's an open world where you can meet people, do silly things, and have a good time overall.
SL... mm... It has ups and downs... It's ended up just being a glorified text chat system to me ;)
I would really have no problem just reverting back to IRC if I could take my friends back with me. A static picture is enough for my mind usually.
I'm just an old fart that sometimes thinks "Oh, shiny... but erm... how is this really different from (insert 1990s or earlier program) besides using 2 GB of RAM (SL) instead of < 512kB (IRCii client)?"
I do RP some but because of my avatar's size and such it nearly always ends up being almost all text only anyway. You can take a look at the avatar I used on SL till just very recently on my FA page. I updated it a couple of weeks ago or so to the newer mesh version of that original First Act in those pictures.
And person shit happen to everyone, only different is that he got caught.
"Going forward, FA will continue to operate independently but with IMVU’s support and resources to upgrade our services. We can now work on improving our infrastructure, adding more storage, making performance improvements and improved coding support to reach our full potential. As a community member, the only difference you will notice is a better, smoother experience and increased functionality of the site as time goes on."
Also, if they acquired FA back in January, don't you think they also would have blocked out the pronz by now? Obviously FA was waiting until now to announce the buy so that people wouldn't jump to conclusions like they are now. So much for that plan. IMVU ads have been going on since Jan at least. So this whole thing about "They will block out porn and spam us with ads" is bullshit. The ad is on the bottom of the page whenever I see it. Nothing is going to change (since obviously, many furs in that comment section are afraid of change). At least nothing too drastic unless it is positive change. After all, with the resources and support from IMVU, we may just get that update.
This isn't aimed at you Endium but more just my own thoughts on the situation.
A: "Fur Affinity is governed by the site's terms of use, not Google's, Apple's or IMVU's." - IMVU
Rest assured, IMVU is *NOT* taking FA content, redistributing it, reposting it, using it in-game, etc. It's your content. Only FA has the right to show it if you upload it to the site. No one else.
^ The update to the site update.
Where did that #9 quote come from? It's the most suspicious part, but also the one thing I haven't tracked down to a source yet.
I remember DA explaining that the TOS was phrased that broadly since they had ads on each page and if someone clicks your gallery they're showing your art AND making money off your art - just by allowing the public to see it. That made sense, but needs to be VERY specific or else it might be "we're using your pictures in advertisements [like Facebook did that one time] without explicit permission. Also, we can basically sell prints without paying you [which I never believe is true, since that level of IP/royalty transference needs to be explicitly agreed to where I come from]"
Apparently completely false.
FA was acquired with some creative control, however; the deal and contract are most likely considered confidential by law. Being open in this manner is not an option.
Dragoneer has likely had a big cut in stress from this move for now.
in the short term they can use it as a simple recruiting tool (Ive seen that IMVU advert down the bottom), but if that's all they wanted they could just have gone for a cheaper sponsorship arrangement.
Anyway, it's not *that* important. IMVU aren't going to just change everything overnight, and in the event they do anything too evil, there are other sites that can take up the displaced users.