Quote in MAL Acquistion Press Release Concerns Me

August 4, 2008 in News by Tom Langston (calaggie) | 4 comments

If you haven’t heard by now, “leading lifestyle destination for men” CraveOnline has acquired social networking website MyAnimeList. Unlike Mania’s buyout of AnimeOnDVD, I would not expect there to be drastic visual overhauls and it is comforting to know that Xinil will remain lead administrator and editor-in-chief.

From Xinil’s post on the MAL general forums:

This acquisition enables MAL to continue to grow without being burdened by rising server and bandwidth fees (which have increased a lot lately), and helps us branch out into more beneficial features (think video). CraveOnline has no plans to change our community or thwart the direction we’re headed. If anything, they’ll help us get the things we need faster and more efficiently.

Onto the slightly worrying part: in the press release, Mike Dodge, SVP/General Manager of AtomicOnline (CraveOnline’s parent company), said that “MyAnimeList continues to bolster CraveOnline’s leadership position in the highly competitive online male youth market“. As far as I know, the general anime and manga fan community is diverse between both genders and MAL shouldn’t be too different.

A quick advanced search of MAL’s user base conducted this afternoon shows that 14,107 of its 79,056 users have described themselves as female, 19,364 as male, and 45,585 have not specified a gender. So that means out of the 33,471 who picked one or the other, it’s 58% male and 42% female which seems to be a pretty good balance.

I’m not intending to make a mountain out of a molehill so I apologize if it appears that way but my minor worrying is based on a perception of AtomicOnline’s attitude toward its brands. While I know MAL won’t be totally messed with, there could be a change in the way it is marketed toward non-users and in potential shifts in on-site advertising including cross-site promotions.

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Hinano on August 4, 2008 at 5:23 pm

Well as long as there aren’t ads fulla muscly gachimuchi mans all over the place I don’t care what happens xD

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Martin on August 5, 2008 at 8:33 am

Like you, I’m a little concerned that there may be some noticeable effects on how the site is ‘marketed’ so to speak, but in all honesty I can understand why Xinil is looking for alternative ways to keep the site going. I’ve noticed slow page loads and occasional moments of downtime on MAL just lately, which I’m sure has a lot to do with its large and ever-expanding user base – it would probably have become a victim of its own success if something wasn’t done.

I doubt there will be any major problems like humongous advertisements all over the place (FF users: AdBlock Plus is your friend) or fundamental changes to the site…unlike the sad case of the travesty that Anime on DVD has become.

In other news, is this a new Wordpress theme you have here? It looks very smart and shiny. ^_^

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CalAggie on August 5, 2008 at 11:39 am

Now that I think about it, I perhaps shouldn’t have expounded as much as I did based on that line from Mr. Dodge but it felt right at the time so I guess it was fine.

Martin: Yes, I switched over to Mandigo in early June and liked the sidebars you can shove to the side (although they sometimes hang over the edge). I should really get working on a batch of rotating banners ’cause I think people might be bored with the Pumpkin Scissors buggy by now.

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Kin on August 8, 2008 at 12:06 am

Didn’t you know? Only guys like anime!

I can’t believe we’re in 2008 and that’s still the perception through many people’s eyes. I really hope they keep us chix0rz in mind when they start tweaking :/

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