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Hiding IMVU? Why I personally think its good.
11 years ago
General
So nothings changed in 2 months since this has happened. If I were to make the choice I'd have done the same just to show that nothings happened, plus the weeding out bits and bobs between two entities it's not an overnight job. Things happen and companies either sell, merge or are just acquired. You may be using a free site to make money or to browse artwork - if you're not paying for advertisements I don't think its fair to complain. Money has to be exchanged to host the mass that is FA, so we're pretty darn lucky and I feel better knowing a larger entity is behind FA now to help it along.
With IMVU I'm not fussed. I'm seeing more people saying through journals "I'm not leaving BUT here's my information..." than I am people actually vacating the premises.
To each their own, I salute you for leaving and respect your choice.|
I'm not leaving, nor will I be taking any of my gallery down. I'm not going to let choices of others hinder my life and my work.
So, if your taking your pieces out of your gallery, and you've commissioned other people to do it and your piece is STILL up on FA elsewhere, whats the point? If its exclusively yours that you hand made yourself, fair play, but I'm seeing people who aren't artists clearing their galleries of their personal characters drawn by other people who are still ON FA and still have the work loaded. I don't get it. I'm not worried.
I'm happy with having IMVU as the parent company and I can't wait to see what comes from it in the future. Bigger and brighter things, I chose to be optimistic about it.
Parent companies aren't a bad thing. I've worked with companies who had mega corporations for parent companies and they over see things. It's a backer, a safety net.
EDIT:
I do want to say I very much appreciate all of the comments that have come from this! None of them have been hateful to anyone and on both sides some good feedback has been given for pro and for cons.
It's nice to have an outlet to read what people have to say when they hold themselves in a respectable manner. It makes me happy as an artist and as a person to get to read these sorts of messages. :D
With IMVU I'm not fussed. I'm seeing more people saying through journals "I'm not leaving BUT here's my information..." than I am people actually vacating the premises.
To each their own, I salute you for leaving and respect your choice.|
I'm not leaving, nor will I be taking any of my gallery down. I'm not going to let choices of others hinder my life and my work.
So, if your taking your pieces out of your gallery, and you've commissioned other people to do it and your piece is STILL up on FA elsewhere, whats the point? If its exclusively yours that you hand made yourself, fair play, but I'm seeing people who aren't artists clearing their galleries of their personal characters drawn by other people who are still ON FA and still have the work loaded. I don't get it. I'm not worried.
I'm happy with having IMVU as the parent company and I can't wait to see what comes from it in the future. Bigger and brighter things, I chose to be optimistic about it.
Parent companies aren't a bad thing. I've worked with companies who had mega corporations for parent companies and they over see things. It's a backer, a safety net.
EDIT:
I do want to say I very much appreciate all of the comments that have come from this! None of them have been hateful to anyone and on both sides some good feedback has been given for pro and for cons.
It's nice to have an outlet to read what people have to say when they hold themselves in a respectable manner. It makes me happy as an artist and as a person to get to read these sorts of messages. :D
So... why is everyone getting their panties in a twist about this?
-has (and will) anything actually change for the users at all thus far in or going to in the near future?
Right now it's mostly the fact that this happened in Jauary or so and we're just hearing about it now. Which honestly, I see no problem with because this sort of thing happens all the time. Non-disclosure agreements until everything is ironed out and such.
People's panties are in a twist because of the history of things happened in FA over the years. The new UI thing. The Zaush thing. There was another thing not too long ago too with a rogue programmer Neer put on staff. The last donation drive after the weeklong downtime and where the funds are going. People have a very odd perception of how they feel things should be run here. They expect everything to fall into place, even though there's not a stead source of money to help get things done. It's weird.
So far, nothing is changing. IMVU ads have been all over the site for a while now. I guess people are worried that eventually. IMVU may try to implement a 'no adult imagery' policy or use people's images in IMVU.
..but getting upset about it -before- that happens is kinda silly :S (Think a lot of user forget its a FREE SERVICE) XS
but we'll see what's to come~ :S there hasn't been any changes thus far, and change isn't always bad~ :P we'll see I guess!
Edited images would still be postable for attention grabbing. just not openly adult stuff here. *Shrug*
Fur Affinity is © 2015 IMVUhttp://www.furaffinity.net/journal/...../#cid:44892881
Granted I used IMVU a long time ago like many people here, it seems, and I know some unsavory things happened, but that is anywhere you go online. When you open your browser, or even just connect your computer to a web connection at all, you are opening your world up to let anything into it. You can't stop everything, especially theft, if your stuff is online -anywhere-, I can guarantee someone else has downloaded, saved, used, and possibly uploaded it elsewhere. It happens. The best way to avoid this is to commission an artist and have it private - meaning they don't upload it anywhere, and you don't either - print it out, have them mail it to you, etc. Same goes for personal pieces. I mean, it's the internet. It's all connected via satellites in the atmosphere.
Just my random early-morning-no-coffee-yet-two-cents lol
Have a great day dear :)
Totally agree with you about everythings online. My arts all over the place including pintrest. I'm flattered more than upset. XD;;
Yes ^w^ Coffee is my friend lol mornings are miserable without it.
Before change - "We want change!"
After Change - "WTF!? Why are you changing FA!?"
Might wanna be less judgemental ass in the future.
2) You were being rude to him.
2] In what way were I being rude to him, when I were saying nothing wrong to him, unlike you doing name-calling to me?
2) Calling someone out, saying their opinion is false is rude. Neither did I "name-call" you, I stated you were being an judgemental ass, which you were. Quite simple.
2] Rude: Offensively impolite or bad-mannered.
2) That's the definition of what you did to begin with.
2] I were neither offensive, impolite or bad-mannered. I were correcting, which isn't rude, bad or ill-mannered.
3]This is going around in circles, so we're done here. Particularly because you come and are rude from the start with me.
2) You were rude, I wouldn't have commented if you were not rude.
3) We were done when I commented the first time. You dragged it out to try defend yourself, when you simply don't have a single point to make.
IMVU has been with the site since January, an since then we have had improvements people have been asking for:
- Note have been improved to make them easier to read
- Comments are now editable
- General site speed has increased
That Porcupine is obviously going to be delicious.
The change has had a positive effect and no negative effects (so far), yet "WTF! Why are you changing FA?" or "I'm leaving FA foreva!" sums up the reaction of a minority of the site.
A lot of people are complaining based on a poor knowledge of how copyright works (which is more or less normal for any site with user submissions), rather more are puzzled as to what the hell is supposed to be in this for IMVU or worried about what the sale will mean in the long term. I don't think anyone ever said "you know what I'd like? More uncertainty, I don't think there's enough of that on FA."
I'm not seeing many people complaining about anything to do with copyright, I'm seeing people complaining because they can, with no real reasoning. An Anecdotal Fallacy.
At the end of the day there are legitimate things to be worried about / asking questions about here (for example, precisely what IMVU's actual interest in FA is). And let's not forget one of the changes people asked for was greater transparency, which "secretly selling the site and telling everyone two months later" is sort of the opposite of.
I doubt there's anything to worry about. Just over-hyped, made-up facts the same as last time.
But the many reactions come from people who knows about it and have had bad experiences, and don't forget either that Neer himself promised they would be more transparent about everything going on with FA. So that he's been hiding this behind all our backs, will as it have, cause people to be angry.
Also who's to say that there haven't been dealings going on or other stuff, there's actually prevented them from doing much since the acquisition?
Don't judge just because nothing have happened visibly yet, judge for what's been happening behind our backs.
But be critical about everything. Ask questions, hard hitting questions.
Just because things haven't happened, don't say its not because they won't, when things could have prevented. That goes for saying things will happen, because they may not.
Just be prepared for the worst but hope for the best.
I'm pretty sure that's what happened here. You see it all the time in dealings constantly between mergers and such. It's usually a leak from someone inside when you get a whiff of it sooner than when it's complete.
Looks like Dragoneer and IMVU may have opened themselves to a lawsuit over this, if Panderp's claim to be a co-owner of the site is legitimate since he wasn't in on this deal. There couldn't be a change on fA without a huge scandal being revealed. Btw this is the same guy who created the yiffy leaks website with all the leaked notes. A confrontation between this guy and Dragoneer will probably get really really ugly.
Seriously guys, it says right in the announcement post that being able to change the site is not part of the agreement. And before you say "but they own it now so they can do whatever they want" I'm gonna tell you that they can get straight up sued for breaking that agreement.
It is refreshing, after some other journals I read
Well, some improvements have been made; such as nested notes and the new ability to edit comments. Not sure if the coding revision could be credited to IMVU though. Any severe Terms of Service changes involving privacy and services that cost money legally MUST be pushed through a site announcement so people can become aware and compliant. A site announcement similar to what we received yesterday. (Source: http://help.furaffinity.net/article.....vice-TOS.html)
"if you're not paying for advertisements I don't think its fair to complain."
You don't need to be paying for something to have a metaphorical stake in the ground. For instance, Facebook users as a majority don't pay for services. People who agreed to Facebook's Terms of Service however, can rightfully expect the contract they agreed to (no matter how one sided it may seem) to be upheld. Facebook uses the users as content; Fur Affinity uses the community in a similar way. My contributions to Fur Affinity have been buying from advertising artists and offering online company to my friends, who also buy from advertising artists.
"Parent companies aren't a bad thing."
Parent companies aren't always a good thing either. Users can absolutely be concerned over potential changes they may not want. Some have had bad experiences with IMVU directly, some may not like their business model, and some may not like their quality of work. Ultimately, as a parent company, they do have the final say and that worries a lot of people here. Intentions mean nothing, fine print is the only thing that stays when certain management leaves.
TL;DR: Fear of the uncertain is a natural response, and trying to condition people out of it or punish them for it is wasted effort. Especially when the cause was brought about by withheld information.
Also very true with the metaphorical stake in the ground with facebook. I use facebook to host my artwork on a like page - I don't pay for it. If something happened to Facebook and the site went down it was a free service for me that I chose to use. If I was paying for it and the service went down, I feel like Id have more of a right to complain about what I've purchased than what I haven't. Contributions I feel in the artistic community is helping others find other artists, writers or musicians. Money may be exchanged but as money isn't exchanged through FA like paypal I just feel its very different.
I do like what you've said here though, they're all very valid points.
# Too much thought-provoking journal, not enough sexytiemz arts. Priorities: you're doing it wrong.
If it is the end of the world, then I feel fine *cues REM*
Fa has been bought by a multi million dollar corporation that is know for spamming it's users, changing policy on a whim, having strict AP regulations that blocks all adult content (so they can keep on good terms with there Walmart contract, a contract that will be up for question if Walmart ever catches wind that IMVU is supporting a porn site), stealing user content, all in the name of making profit.
Fa is a sink hole that has a lot of back debt... Dragoneer (who only owns 50% of the site yet) sold the entire site to IMVU, meaning he is now an employee. The site isn't profitable and IMVU heads are not going to support a charity case... They are going to see a red number on there pretty charts and want it green. And are known by there own user base to get that profit by any means necessary. They are a large corporation! What do they care about us?
Many of us are justified to be worried, because this could all go very very wrong.
IMVU has the power to change our 'Terms of service' and 'User Submission agreement' and just let us know they did it. We may not be under there current rules yet but if we are seen as a liability to there other assets (such as share holders and other contracts like the pre paid cerdit cards with Walmart) the backlash could affect Furaffinity..
IMVU is a corperation out for profits, it's scary to think what they will, can, and have done to make money.
I don't doubt the site will change but I cannot believe it will be for the benefit of furries. At least not until more cards are played.
So first I'll point out that if the number of registered FA users (> 1 million) is reduced to 100k, I don't think it makes sense to count IMVU's 130 million at face value either.
Also it seems to me that the very fact IMVU made this purchase means they see some value from owning the site. Part of the problem with looking at only current revenues is that IMVU must plan to make some changes to FA that increase revenue. Sure, there's no guarantee that FA will start to turn a profit, but all investments involve risk.
I think that actually converting FA to a for-profit site means we should expect this change to make good changes MORE likely and bad changes less likely. I explain examples in my journal here. Of course like you said we don't know for sure, but just because we're uncertain doesn't mean it's a bad thing.
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6592524/
But I cannot accept that this will be good for us when IMVU own users talk about the sites poor set up and concerns of costumer Support/Service. There business model isn't exactly for the people.
The fact that IMVU has agreed to grant the site some degree of autonomy and to keep things the way things are right now seems to me like evidence that their managers understand FA has its own business model, and they should only change things with diligence and respect for that.
I don't totally trust the whole "there will be no changes" claim, for a number of reasons:
>The sale was only just now announced. An optimistic view would be that if FA was sold ~2 months ago and nothing has changed yet, maybe it proves that there won't be changes. On the other hand, it seems like the type of thing where they might not start making changes until it's been announced. Not totally sure what the reason is for the delay in announcing the sale, but if they were waiting to announce it until all the paperwork/etc had been finalized or something, then they probably wouldn't be able to start making changes yet, either. Plus, it seems like the sort of thing where it might just be slow and steady change for the worse - at one point, I didn't hate Facebook, either, but at this point I only use it because it's the only way I have to talk to some older friends who've moved away and I hate every minute of it.
>Logically, it doesn't make a ton of sense to me for a company to buy FA if they didn't intend to somehow change it to be more profitable. As far as I can tell, FA's only real sources of income are ads and donations, and while I don't have access to their actual profit numbers, I feel like the "We need money for vague server upgrades" donation drives that they seem to run every few months would indicate that either the site is losing money, or the old ownership was spending any profits on personal expenses, then expecting the community to pay for things that the site's profits probably should've been used for. Companies aren't going to buy something just to spend money on it and not get anything in return, and they're probably not going to buy something with the intent to hope to cover expenses through crowdfunding.
This is just personal bias, but I really don't trust Dragoneer at all. A previous job put me in fairly close proximity to a bunch of scam artists and other really shady, unsavory types of people, and over the years, I've noticed some disturbingly similar behavior and red flags in the way some things are run on FA. I'm not making any accusations, nor do I have any proof of anything, but at the same time, it's not exactly comforting when you start to recognize the same sort of things you saw from some of the scummiest people you've ever met. I really, personally, have a tough time believing that he didn't just see a chance to keep power but cash in on an easy payday and do so without a second thought about how it might affect anybody else. Again, this is just my personal opinion.
Honestly, it seems like the change in ownership doesn't actually address the changes that those who have been wanting them actually want. It seems like the biggest issues that have been raised (that I've seen, at least) have been:
>Lack of transparency with money
>Admin/moderator staff/behavior
>Long wait times in responding to trouble tickets
>Occasional drama over people hired to the staff? Only heard about this one sort of tangentially.
>Downtime/other weird problems with the site (problems with submissions not showing up, etc)
And, since it sounds like the staff will basically be the same, the only thing the change in ownership affects is possibly the downtime - I guess there are claims of IMVU putting up money to help with maintenance/stability issues, but that's sort of vague.
It seems too early to really say whether it's even really helped much, anyway. It's not like FA was going down weekly or daily or anything before, so a 2-month span isn't really enough to measure stability - if there'd been a bunch of DDoS attacks during that span purely by coincidence, it could look bad even if IMVU was helping a lot, or if things are running fine because things normally do, then it could look like they're helping when really things will go to shit as soon as an issue actually does come up. That being said, there have been times since January when FA has gone down or just been really slow, and I haven't really personally noticed it running significantly smoother.
A year from now, if there haven't been any more "We need server upgrades, please crowdfund us $25,000+ that you won't get to see how it gets spent, or if the crowdfunding thing goes down, just paypal money to me without even being able to see how much total I end up with" drives or major outages, I'll be more willing to say that IMVU's money has been helping, but right now it's too early to really make a judgement.
Im just afraid of when changes do happen (the beta changes that theyve been working on) hopefully wont be mistaken for IMVU taking over. I can't remember what the sites working name is. ;^; But that one with the stuff. And it looked swish.
PS: Come save me from your twin puppy.
Honestly, I actually really agree with you there. Adminning is a really tough and often thankless job, and as far as I know, it's done on a volunteer basis. I have no doubt that a lot, most likely the majority, of the mods/admins (I think there's a difference, but I have no actual idea) work hard, do a good job, are professional about things, and do honestly care about keeping this as a better place and community. A certain number of issues are basically inevitable, either because an admin makes a bad call or because someone just wants to bitch a lot, sort of like how nobody was ever doing anything wrong when they got arrested, and the cop just pulled them over for doing 110 through a school zone because they were a racist.
The thing the concerns me is that it seems like there's a lot of consistency in people complaining about admins being sort of quick to silence/ban people who really publicly speak out against FA/Dragoneer/etc, question things, or basically complain about abuse or that type of thing. I have no idea whether that's just coming from one smaller group who just jump on any sort of incident to try and make it seem like some widespread issue, or if it actually is a bunch of different people who are all getting banned in unrelated incidents.
I think I know what you're talking about with a new site? I heard something about, like, Phoenix or something, I think. Or that might be a totally different thing that I heard about, I don't know. I honestly am usually super out of the loop when, like, anything is going on.
I don't think you want that. You'd still have to deal with Bailey, but you'd also have to deal with Drunk Cleo. And I feel like, combined, we would somehow manage to become even more of a handful than either one of us would be individually. :P
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6592524/
For instance: Having people pay to put up their own ads to get word out there creates money, and its not a bad thing as long the ads aren't everywhere blocking things, taking up to much space or are any kind of bad malware etc.
But: Blocking something like the sexual adult content there's free on this site, as it has always been when making a free account, and putting that behind a paywall, no matter the type or cost. Is a bad thing.
Middle ground: Would be like DeviantArt and offering premium things against something like a monthly pay. The site remains free, but people can support the site and get some extra small goodies of some kind out of it if they so choose. Its good because it doesn't lock the majority of things out for anyone and it helps the site get money to stay up and such. But of course its bad because some content are locked behind a paywall.
And its their site now, they do it on their own place, they could very well do it here to make sure this is making a bit more money so its not taking as much money to keep it running as it does. Not saying they will but we will never know what they will do. IMVU have a bad record like Neer according to the sites current and previous users, so everything needs to be taken with a big grain of salt.
Thus far, I haven't seen anything about IMVU intending to make any of those improvements that you list here (the only questionable one is the uptime/server speeds, which I guess might fall under the vague promise of investing money for server upgrades/maintenance). The Q&A post basically says that the current staff will remain in place, and FA will be allowed to operate how it has been, so I wouldn't anticipate any changes to mods/ticket response. The only way to really change that would be to hire a staff of paid, full-time mods, which they haven't said anything about doing. As far as drama goes, I honestly don't believe that's something that can even possibly be fixed. It's furries on the internet. There's always going to be drama.
Even if they did make those improvements, I think the costs would far outweigh the increased profits. The only current profit streams, as far as I'm aware of, come from advertising and donations (the latter of which is not something that anybody should base a business model around ever).
I don't know their exact structure for selling adspace, but from what I've seen, it seems like a lot of places that sell adspace sell it based on either the number of hits it gets, or just by a set time period (day/week/month/etc). I'd assume there's some sort of a cap on how much they'll sell, just because if they sold an unlimited amount and just randomly put two of them at the top of the page whenever anyone loads it, advertisers would be unhappy because their ad wouldn't be getting seen enough due to the sheer volume of other ads that are getting shown. As far as I can tell, there's no real shortage of people buying ad space, and it seems like improving the mods/trouble ticket response time/etc would only tangentially change that anyway.
Most of the ads that I've seen have come from artists or other furry-related things. Without making too many assumptions, I feel safe saying that those people choose to advertise on FA because:
>it will reach their target audience, furries
>FA is probably the biggest furry site, so it'll reach the most possible furries
That isn't something that will change too much based on things like mods. As long as furries continue to mainly use FA, it will continue to be probably the best place to advertise. The only thing that would change that would be if there was a mass migration to Weasyl or some other site, at which point, artists would probably start to buy adspace there instead. Whatever issues exist currently haven't been enough to cause that to happen, the site still gets plenty of traffic. I don't really picture many people deciding whether or not to buy adspace on the site based on server speeds or trouble ticket response time.
The other type of advertiser would be from companies for cars and shit, which I've never really seen on here to begin with. As far as I understand it, those companies base their decisions on things like:
>whether a sites demographic matches their target demographic (ads for dicks sporting goods on sports websites, etc)
>how much traffic a site gets (which might be slightly affected by improved mods, etc, but probably not enough to be majorly significant. FA gets a lot of traffic as it is; an advertiser will either buy space on here or they won't, but the difference that those improvements would make probably wouldn't tip the balance)
>datamining type shit for more personalized ads
So, yeah. I don't really see the site making more money because of that, but the only way to accomplish those improvements would involve spending more money than it would likely bring in.
Regarding your journal:
Deviantart I think charges for premium memberships. I have no clue how that works because I don't really use it at all, but I wouldn't really be super excited if FA started doing the same thing. From what I've heard a lot of people I know really dislike DA, but that's mostly just hearsay. I've never found it to be a particularly pleasant site to visit, though.
Tumblr is a hellhole. I would rather go to downtown Mogadishu wearing a suit literally made of $100 bills taped together than go to Tumblr. They've found a way to turn a profit, but I don't know or care to learn what it is.
Facebook has become an extremely unpleasant site to visit, and if FA became like that, I would immediately switch to another site. The last thing I need is to be spammed with 3 notifications that someone wants me to play Farmville or wants me to give them an extra life in Candy Crush or some shit for every 1 that's an artist/friend posting a journal I'm actually interested in reading. Also, I feel like they're probably somehow making some money off of all that app/game spam. I wouldn't want to see FA start doing that, and even if FA did, I'm not sure how many developers would even bother, since FA may be the #1 furry site, but it's still nowhere near the amount of traffic that Facebook gets.
I wouldn't group ebay in with the rest of those sites, because they turn a profit by charging a fee for every successful auction. I think they also somehow have some sort of agreement in place with Paypal that they make money from, which FA doesn't have, and probably wouldn't be able to establish since Paypal I think has issues with porn artists using it (Not sure exactly what the issue is, but it doesn't seem uncommon to see artists getting their PP accounts frozen?).
I'm not totally sold on the idea of the furry community being a really great group to market to. There are a lot of single furries with disposable income, but there are also a lot of really broke ones, plus it seems like one of the main things a lot of people on FA spend money on is furry art (which isn't really going to benefit anyone other than the artists already on the site). Plus, it's not entirely comforting to think of someone looking at me and saying "There's someone we should definitely target with a bunch of ads to try to get to buy our shit."
Looking at it from a cost/benefit standpoint, I could wouldn't entirely agree with the idea of a parent company seeing it as that bad to drive some users away. Let's say, hypothetically, that they started charging a $2 monthly membership fee and the community reacted by, say, 50% leaving for Weasyl, Inkbunny, e621, SoFurry, etc. It's hard to tell exactly what the effect would be on advertising profit, but it's probably safe to say it would dip but not disappear entirely. It would also, most likely, be a net profit for the parent company - $2 multiplied by half the current user base per month would probably be more than enough to make up for the lost advertising revenue, but at the cost of splintering the community.
I would also say that I wouldn't totally agree that it's better for everyone when the most important thing is profit. My belief has always been that human beings are, by nature, greedy as fuck. Historically, this has led to countless atrocities and cases of relatively helpless people being fucked over by a major company/corporation for profit.
I know this is probably coming off as aggressive and argumentative, and I'm not trying to say all this to start an argument, or to be an asshole. I'm just a little bit worried about where things are headed, and the idea that FA now exists primarily as a way for a company to turn a profit is somewhat unsettling to me. They definitely didn't buy FA just to invest a bunch of money into upgrading the servers and (possibly) re-coding the site to be better, then leave us alone and let us keep running the site in a way that'll cost more than it brings in like it has been until now.
paywalls? premium paid membership? new features behind paywalls? who knows... only time will tell
Love the post hun. One of the few I've actually read through because ugh.... my watchlist is full of complaint journals.
I haven't seen anything bad happen really. Site slowing? They were on it within 24 hrs. Something broke? They fixed it immediately.
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6591814/
This IMVU thing could land anywhere on the spectrum from EA games/Comcast to The Gates Foundation. I'm willing to bet it'll be somewhere in the middle and not be that bad.
But, it is weird looking down and seeing:
Fur Affinity is © 2015 IMVU
I am moving over to Weasyl slowly, though I have been doing that for over a year now XD
For a long time this site has been controlled badly. money doesn't go anywhere it should. work on the site appears minimal and the original owner hasn't been the most helpfull guy around with sometimes sketchy decisions. Having a parent company that is now signing his paycheck which probably has expectations with some luck we can indeed see some actuall improvements.
Only thing that may slightly affect users are the "unobtrusive" advertisements IMVU will controll in order to get revenue to justify their investment (rather then be controlled by the site and sold to artists).