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Dissection of the FA/IMVU deal
10 years ago
Well, hell broke loose in FA because of that, and I totally agree with this behaviour, up to a certain level. But the drama thing will be reserved for another journal. And while I could post this in FA's forum, the topic in specific, I'd rather do here, so people can better read, share and quote me.
Let's make a quick summary of what really happened.
- IMVU bought FA. What is IMVU? http://www.imvu.com/about/index.php
Although there're some theories of when this really happened, it's safe to presume it happened between December/14 and January/15. (http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6588324 ) Dragoneer already calls IMVU as "boss". (http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6588795/ )
- Presumably, FA will work independently from IMVU. (http://www.imvu.com/catalog/modules.....amp;p=11283354 )
- This purchase doesn't seem it was sufficiently well analyzed by Dragoneer himself. (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAfCwzKU8AAGb3W.png ) (http://i.gyazo.com/908e9ac93bcd4243.....7355b5b652.png ) (Note that the whole "page 9" thing was a joke made from Danza's twitter, put out of context. Dragoneer couldn't notice, somehow.)
The concerns about this is how this will impact FA's future. In special, if this will mean FA will be severly manipulated, censured, enslaved, tossed around or even closed altogether. While there're no clarifications of details of the contract, as it's an NDA (https://forums.furaffinity.net/thre.....=1#post5109842 ), the basics of any contract agreement is that both parties want to benefit from this deal. Dragoneer might be an idiot but he can't screw this up, unless, I dunno, he was held hostage and was forced to do this deal, which is absurd. Occam's razor, ok?
One thing that was pointed in the FA forums, but I'll detail further, is who actually is IMVU and if it has some sort of boss or anything. Someone claimed that IMVU is publicly traded, but I couldn't find any information on that, so I guess it's not. No shares on stock markets, public or private, existance... nothing. IMVU is, however, backed up by investors. (http://www.imvu.com/about/faq.php ) These investidors may or may not have their own shares and/or participation of IMVU, but I can't be sure.
Best Buy Capital I suppose it's uhhh Best Buy. Very large and little concerns to nitpicking. But while it would be an extreme stretching, now you can say that technicly Best Buy endorses FA, and all the stuff in this website. I don't really think they would be happy with that, but Best Buy looks too much "no fucks given" to worry. Yes, you can buy stuff in BB with Paypal, and paypal doesn't like pornography at all, but like I said, extreme stretching.
Menlo Ventures seems to be the tipical venture capital firm. Investing for equity and selling to whoever pays the best. So it has no attachment to anything, as evidenced by what it has done already.
Allegis Capital looks pretty flexible, but a careful read of the company's website points out it possibly holds 20% of IMVU.
And Bridgescale... I don't know. I barely could find much info about it, even on their's website.
So while IMVU claims it's not willing to interfere with FA, it might have to do so if they inverstors pressure them if they need them very bad. This doesn't mean IMVU can behave like Activision was to Sierra and fuck up FA really, REALLY bad. It just sounds very unlikely.
What leaves here is expeculating what are the possible reasons for the purchase.
From Dragoneer's side, it seems pretty obvious. However are the reasons, FA seems to lack technological progress and this may relate to financial problems. Upgrading hardwares costs money, and even if Dragoneer had some servers sitting around being unused, up-to-date technology is usually much superior. And expensive. Not that FA seriously needs hardware improvements as far as it can be seen; it already does fairly well in time response and reliability, even better than Amazon AWS in certain aspects. FA is no Angelfire (kudos for those who get the joke XD). The way Dragoneer talks about this deal is that MAYBE IMVU will get for FA some technology in the sense of software, maybe 3rd party or other solutions implemented by IMVU already or partners/investors, or even workforce. How you make your boss work for you I don't know, plus I wonder what to say about CURRENT FA's workforce, but I'm considering what he might had in mind.
Another possibility is just plain money for a "won't do a thing tho" contract. Analyzing Dragoneer's side only, he could've just sold the website for a ridiculous ammout of money, for the sake of the money. Unlikely, I confess, but not impossible.
From IMVU's side, things start to get more shady... The more likely reason is "buying marketing". The furry fandom easly shows large interest in itself (it is a fandom of itself), has a lot of self zeal and due to it's transparency it has a fairly higher ammout of trust between furries in comparison to people outside the fandom. While "to what degree this is true" would be another discussion, the idea is that IMVU is trying to attract more customers for it's service. Not only that, but attracting GOOD customers, those who become fans of the company and/or services and/or products and will be willing to do free low level marketing campaigns, in the sense of review and trust. In other words, mouth-to-mouth publicity of just saying "Hey, I like it! It's good" to whoever asks about what's IMVU and if it's good or not. Although this doesn't look valuable, and some companies actually ignore it, by marketing aspects this is extremly valuable for a company/brand/service/product. This is what makes the product reach the status of "famous" and "popular". No matter how convicing is a marketing campaign, an opinion of someone unrelated to the thing being sold is always more convincing, cuz we would believe it's an honest opinion given the person has nothing to profit to say such things, thenfore, it would be unlikely to be false.
This kind of marketing "power" is probably what IMVU was looking for in buying FA. It's trying to buy fans.
But the problem is... This is a bad idea.
The proper way of having fame and recognition is thru a meritocratic process. In other words: it NEEDS to be GOOD so people will like it. The horde of sheeple might be ignorant, but only for a while. If the product/service/brand is really bad, people will learn that, and the "fame" will only make it "infamous".
And it's fairly likely IMVU would have such a bad idea. For example, IMVU does not allow adult content in it. Why a company like that would buy FA, with not only a large quantity of readily available porn, but even with those eye-scarring, nausea-inducing, nightmare-fueling stuff?
The other possible reason for buying FA from IMVU's perspective is for selling personal information as a big data. Guys, open your eyes, there's a "black"market of such things. The "black" is in quote because it's not technicly illegal, but it's often downright evil. And sometimes it IS illegal. A LOT of companies out there keep an extremly meticulous track of what every single thing every user does. And then that information is sold, sometimes with some processing involved (graphs generated, demographic study, etc.).
While IMVU doesn't sell Personal Identifiable Information (PII) (http://www.imvu.com/catalog/web_inf.....;topic=privacy ), it does in "aggregate" form. Although IMVU's "aggregate form" is very "personal". It's basicly Personal Information, it's just not Identifiable (they won't share your name/e-mail address, it'll probably look pseudo-anonymous, like a number ID and that's it).
Depending on the contract that Dragoneer signed, this might include doing the same to FA, not only IMVU. (I'm SPECULATING, remember) Yes, this is very, VERY bad for all FA users, although a good share might do worse thru Facebook's or Google's ToS and PP. Yet FA is no place to such kind of things.
And despite of all I've said as this second possible reason, I still find it unlikely. As a big data of FA wouldn't be that much of use for IMVU or others interested in buying.
This does matches a good reason for the second possibility for Dragoneers. IMVU might just've said "Give me FA's PI/PII and I'll give you X ammount of money.". But like I said above, unlikely, but not impossible.
My main pet peeve with all this deal however IMVU per se.
OMG IT'S AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWFUL. I've seen some furries comparing it with Second Life (SL). No, it's far far inferior, even more than Furcadia. Infact, the only thing better than Furcadia are the graphics, and barely; Instead of being early 90's, it's late 90's. To better describe it, it's like a 3D chat. You have your avatar, you do some gestures when you speak, and you can interact with some objects in the chatroom. Yes, the chatroom is a room, and you can't even walk. Yes, I'll have to say it again: you can't even WALK. You just click on things and "poof" you're there.
The "economy" of IMVU is unecessarly complex and looks fairly exploitable (ponzi-ish, pegged and without stock market possibilities, for those who knows economics), not to mention that it looks slight biased towards IMVU itself. It's like you're geeently being squeezed money out of your pockets. It isn't much uncomfortable, but you ARE being squeezed. It actually reminds me of those korean-like or wannabes MMORPG games or Facebook games that have a heavy pay2win system. Except there's nothing to win in IMVU... It is not a scam, but it sure smells like a scam. It really smells.
It claims it has surpassed SL in number of accounts created, but given how the economy system can be exploited with new accounts, I'm not surprised on how it could have so many accounts. Although it's surprising how it has so many people online, or so it claims. At least that is comparable SL, around 60k. SL is usually slightly above that number, IMVU seems to be slighty under.
OMG, Dragoneer. How did you DARE to sell FA to that PIECE OF SHIT. If at least it was to Linden Labs I couldn't be mad, despite of all SL's frequent hiccups as a service. You didn't HAVE to sell it after all, and there were other good options as some people claimed. Maybe worse, but you could've just said no to all of them.
My greatest worry is in case IMVU is bought by an evil company and shit spills to FA. OR, IMVU bankrupts and drag FA together. Maybe this is the begining of the end of FA, and people will finally have a GOOD reason to move to Weasyl, although being a meritocratic relativity then. And I really hope Weasyl improves, otherwise, I will start a furry artwork gallery of my own!! I'm dead serious!
PS: I really don't like providing tl;dr to stuff I write, but... This one was massive even for my standards, so I will.
tl;dr: Dragoneer sold FA to IMVU, an SL wannabe, which is backed up by investors like Best Buy. Who knows what they might do to IMVU and if it'll affect FA. In theory, IMVU won't bother FA. IMVU says they won't.
IMO, the possible reasons Dragoneer sold FA, in order of likelyhood:
a) "Hey, IMVU? Gimme money and support for my site, pretty pwease?"
b) "BIG CASH! TROLOLOLO! Now I'll paint my walls with Bad-Dragon's cum lube! And my new boss won't touch my FA!"
IMO, the possible reasons IMVU bought FA, in order of likelyhood:
a) "You furrys now tell people IMVU 'iz gud', k? Now play the damn thing already and empty your pockets."
b) "All Your Data Shall Belong To Us! And we'll sell it to the "black"market! MOO HA HA HA."
IMO, IMVU sucks and people should stay or go to SL if so interested. And I hate how Dragoneer sold FA to such a crap of thing.
If shits get real I'll move to Weasyl, or start my own furry artwork gallery.
Let's make a quick summary of what really happened.
- IMVU bought FA. What is IMVU? http://www.imvu.com/about/index.php
Although there're some theories of when this really happened, it's safe to presume it happened between December/14 and January/15. (http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6588324 ) Dragoneer already calls IMVU as "boss". (http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6588795/ )
- Presumably, FA will work independently from IMVU. (http://www.imvu.com/catalog/modules.....amp;p=11283354 )
- This purchase doesn't seem it was sufficiently well analyzed by Dragoneer himself. (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAfCwzKU8AAGb3W.png ) (http://i.gyazo.com/908e9ac93bcd4243.....7355b5b652.png ) (Note that the whole "page 9" thing was a joke made from Danza's twitter, put out of context. Dragoneer couldn't notice, somehow.)
The concerns about this is how this will impact FA's future. In special, if this will mean FA will be severly manipulated, censured, enslaved, tossed around or even closed altogether. While there're no clarifications of details of the contract, as it's an NDA (https://forums.furaffinity.net/thre.....=1#post5109842 ), the basics of any contract agreement is that both parties want to benefit from this deal. Dragoneer might be an idiot but he can't screw this up, unless, I dunno, he was held hostage and was forced to do this deal, which is absurd. Occam's razor, ok?
One thing that was pointed in the FA forums, but I'll detail further, is who actually is IMVU and if it has some sort of boss or anything. Someone claimed that IMVU is publicly traded, but I couldn't find any information on that, so I guess it's not. No shares on stock markets, public or private, existance... nothing. IMVU is, however, backed up by investors. (http://www.imvu.com/about/faq.php ) These investidors may or may not have their own shares and/or participation of IMVU, but I can't be sure.
Best Buy Capital I suppose it's uhhh Best Buy. Very large and little concerns to nitpicking. But while it would be an extreme stretching, now you can say that technicly Best Buy endorses FA, and all the stuff in this website. I don't really think they would be happy with that, but Best Buy looks too much "no fucks given" to worry. Yes, you can buy stuff in BB with Paypal, and paypal doesn't like pornography at all, but like I said, extreme stretching.
Menlo Ventures seems to be the tipical venture capital firm. Investing for equity and selling to whoever pays the best. So it has no attachment to anything, as evidenced by what it has done already.
Allegis Capital looks pretty flexible, but a careful read of the company's website points out it possibly holds 20% of IMVU.
And Bridgescale... I don't know. I barely could find much info about it, even on their's website.
So while IMVU claims it's not willing to interfere with FA, it might have to do so if they inverstors pressure them if they need them very bad. This doesn't mean IMVU can behave like Activision was to Sierra and fuck up FA really, REALLY bad. It just sounds very unlikely.
What leaves here is expeculating what are the possible reasons for the purchase.
From Dragoneer's side, it seems pretty obvious. However are the reasons, FA seems to lack technological progress and this may relate to financial problems. Upgrading hardwares costs money, and even if Dragoneer had some servers sitting around being unused, up-to-date technology is usually much superior. And expensive. Not that FA seriously needs hardware improvements as far as it can be seen; it already does fairly well in time response and reliability, even better than Amazon AWS in certain aspects. FA is no Angelfire (kudos for those who get the joke XD). The way Dragoneer talks about this deal is that MAYBE IMVU will get for FA some technology in the sense of software, maybe 3rd party or other solutions implemented by IMVU already or partners/investors, or even workforce. How you make your boss work for you I don't know, plus I wonder what to say about CURRENT FA's workforce, but I'm considering what he might had in mind.
Another possibility is just plain money for a "won't do a thing tho" contract. Analyzing Dragoneer's side only, he could've just sold the website for a ridiculous ammout of money, for the sake of the money. Unlikely, I confess, but not impossible.
From IMVU's side, things start to get more shady... The more likely reason is "buying marketing". The furry fandom easly shows large interest in itself (it is a fandom of itself), has a lot of self zeal and due to it's transparency it has a fairly higher ammout of trust between furries in comparison to people outside the fandom. While "to what degree this is true" would be another discussion, the idea is that IMVU is trying to attract more customers for it's service. Not only that, but attracting GOOD customers, those who become fans of the company and/or services and/or products and will be willing to do free low level marketing campaigns, in the sense of review and trust. In other words, mouth-to-mouth publicity of just saying "Hey, I like it! It's good" to whoever asks about what's IMVU and if it's good or not. Although this doesn't look valuable, and some companies actually ignore it, by marketing aspects this is extremly valuable for a company/brand/service/product. This is what makes the product reach the status of "famous" and "popular". No matter how convicing is a marketing campaign, an opinion of someone unrelated to the thing being sold is always more convincing, cuz we would believe it's an honest opinion given the person has nothing to profit to say such things, thenfore, it would be unlikely to be false.
This kind of marketing "power" is probably what IMVU was looking for in buying FA. It's trying to buy fans.
But the problem is... This is a bad idea.
The proper way of having fame and recognition is thru a meritocratic process. In other words: it NEEDS to be GOOD so people will like it. The horde of sheeple might be ignorant, but only for a while. If the product/service/brand is really bad, people will learn that, and the "fame" will only make it "infamous".
And it's fairly likely IMVU would have such a bad idea. For example, IMVU does not allow adult content in it. Why a company like that would buy FA, with not only a large quantity of readily available porn, but even with those eye-scarring, nausea-inducing, nightmare-fueling stuff?
The other possible reason for buying FA from IMVU's perspective is for selling personal information as a big data. Guys, open your eyes, there's a "black"market of such things. The "black" is in quote because it's not technicly illegal, but it's often downright evil. And sometimes it IS illegal. A LOT of companies out there keep an extremly meticulous track of what every single thing every user does. And then that information is sold, sometimes with some processing involved (graphs generated, demographic study, etc.).
While IMVU doesn't sell Personal Identifiable Information (PII) (http://www.imvu.com/catalog/web_inf.....;topic=privacy ), it does in "aggregate" form. Although IMVU's "aggregate form" is very "personal". It's basicly Personal Information, it's just not Identifiable (they won't share your name/e-mail address, it'll probably look pseudo-anonymous, like a number ID and that's it).
Depending on the contract that Dragoneer signed, this might include doing the same to FA, not only IMVU. (I'm SPECULATING, remember) Yes, this is very, VERY bad for all FA users, although a good share might do worse thru Facebook's or Google's ToS and PP. Yet FA is no place to such kind of things.
And despite of all I've said as this second possible reason, I still find it unlikely. As a big data of FA wouldn't be that much of use for IMVU or others interested in buying.
This does matches a good reason for the second possibility for Dragoneers. IMVU might just've said "Give me FA's PI/PII and I'll give you X ammount of money.". But like I said above, unlikely, but not impossible.
My main pet peeve with all this deal however IMVU per se.
OMG IT'S AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWFUL. I've seen some furries comparing it with Second Life (SL). No, it's far far inferior, even more than Furcadia. Infact, the only thing better than Furcadia are the graphics, and barely; Instead of being early 90's, it's late 90's. To better describe it, it's like a 3D chat. You have your avatar, you do some gestures when you speak, and you can interact with some objects in the chatroom. Yes, the chatroom is a room, and you can't even walk. Yes, I'll have to say it again: you can't even WALK. You just click on things and "poof" you're there.
The "economy" of IMVU is unecessarly complex and looks fairly exploitable (ponzi-ish, pegged and without stock market possibilities, for those who knows economics), not to mention that it looks slight biased towards IMVU itself. It's like you're geeently being squeezed money out of your pockets. It isn't much uncomfortable, but you ARE being squeezed. It actually reminds me of those korean-like or wannabes MMORPG games or Facebook games that have a heavy pay2win system. Except there's nothing to win in IMVU... It is not a scam, but it sure smells like a scam. It really smells.
It claims it has surpassed SL in number of accounts created, but given how the economy system can be exploited with new accounts, I'm not surprised on how it could have so many accounts. Although it's surprising how it has so many people online, or so it claims. At least that is comparable SL, around 60k. SL is usually slightly above that number, IMVU seems to be slighty under.
OMG, Dragoneer. How did you DARE to sell FA to that PIECE OF SHIT. If at least it was to Linden Labs I couldn't be mad, despite of all SL's frequent hiccups as a service. You didn't HAVE to sell it after all, and there were other good options as some people claimed. Maybe worse, but you could've just said no to all of them.
My greatest worry is in case IMVU is bought by an evil company and shit spills to FA. OR, IMVU bankrupts and drag FA together. Maybe this is the begining of the end of FA, and people will finally have a GOOD reason to move to Weasyl, although being a meritocratic relativity then. And I really hope Weasyl improves, otherwise, I will start a furry artwork gallery of my own!! I'm dead serious!
PS: I really don't like providing tl;dr to stuff I write, but... This one was massive even for my standards, so I will.
tl;dr: Dragoneer sold FA to IMVU, an SL wannabe, which is backed up by investors like Best Buy. Who knows what they might do to IMVU and if it'll affect FA. In theory, IMVU won't bother FA. IMVU says they won't.
IMO, the possible reasons Dragoneer sold FA, in order of likelyhood:
a) "Hey, IMVU? Gimme money and support for my site, pretty pwease?"
b) "BIG CASH! TROLOLOLO! Now I'll paint my walls with Bad-Dragon's cum lube! And my new boss won't touch my FA!"
IMO, the possible reasons IMVU bought FA, in order of likelyhood:
a) "You furrys now tell people IMVU 'iz gud', k? Now play the damn thing already and empty your pockets."
b) "All Your Data Shall Belong To Us! And we'll sell it to the "black"market! MOO HA HA HA."
IMO, IMVU sucks and people should stay or go to SL if so interested. And I hate how Dragoneer sold FA to such a crap of thing.
If shits get real I'll move to Weasyl, or start my own furry artwork gallery.
