Sunday, April 9, 2006

In Response
Here's a PM I received:

I don't mean to be rude, but I believe that there is something wrong with the contest: You (heart) theotaku.com.

Firstly, although you have to be at least 13 yrs. of age to be a member, what if a child wants to take a picture of themselves, against their parents' wishes? Many otaku members are in middle school or in high school. Many kids own a digital camera. For a child to simply disobey their parents' wishes to not participate in the contest is simple. As you have stated "14 seconds" is all it takes to simply take a picture. Not only that, but the kids are intrigued with this anime dvd as the prize, that they do not really consider that their identity may be at risk. I'm not stating that theotaku.com is irresponsible in protecting the identity of their users. I am stating that the choice the members make may reflect in joining future contests such as these in other websites, thus increasing their chances of having they're identity brought into the internet world.

Secondly, having kids participate in this contest gives away how they look: their nationality, age, and gender. Why must theotaku.com want a digital photo of this? Is there really no other contest topic that can be safer to protect the identity of the members? You can have the most creative myotaku.com homepage. Another idea is to create theotaku.com banners to post up at the top of the theotaku.com page. These ideas are still related to myotaku.com/theotaku.com and it does not involve the exploitation of the member's identity. One of the strategies in the business world is to figure out what age group, nationality, and gender uses their products or services. I have a feeling that theotaku.com will base most of this information from their contest entries to figure out what kind of people use their site and take this information to target more people with the same features to come to their site. If that is such the case, I do not believe that you should exploit member's identities to further improve your advertising campaign.

Thirdly, it seems a bit odd to choose the winners: one based on creativity and the other randomly. It strikes readers as odd as to why the second winner should be random, which further persuades me to think that there is something that theotaku wants to hide from their members behind this contest. Why shouldn't it be the second most creative? The way you written your contest sounds as though you thought of it last night and just threw all this falty information together in one minute.

It seems very strange to have the second winner as random. It is strange for theotaku.com to want a digital photo of the member. I propose that theotaku.com stop this contest, and hold another contest in its place. I would recommend the banner contest, where the top winners can have their banners at the top of theotaku.com page instead of the other picture you have currently. The winners could have their banners alternate randomly. Some of the guidelines could be to make sure that the website name is on the banner, and it should be creative and anime related. This is just a suggestion.

I hope you reconsider your current contest and either not hold one at all, or switch to another contest.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thanks for your PM, it was long and I'm sure you spent a lot of time on it. However, none of your points are really valid:

1. There are 10,000 places online you can freely upload your photo. Sending us a photo with the disclaimer that we'll post the best is no different than just uploading a photo yourself on flickr or yahoo photos or any social networking site.

We even have our cosplay site, which already hosts 1,000+ photos. When we post pictures we won't even link them to the person's username.

2. The contest is supposed to be fun, that's all. To say that we gain any audience insights through looking at a few photos is laughable. That's what surveys are for (and we've done them before).

3. We want to encourage quality and quantity. If someone doesn't want to spend a long time with it, then they should still have a chance to win. That's why one is based on creativity and another on randomness.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Saturday, April 8, 2006

Multi Server Setups are HARD
Been doing and am continuing to do work on some backend stuff. This site's gotten so big that I have to constantly re-evaluate how we structured things earlier. We're talking about millions of rows of data that are accessed zillions of times a day. (we store 2.5 million comments in our database alone!).

So if you saw errors today, that's why. It's just me working in the background.

Anyway, we had some amazing content today. A contest, a new Otaku Attraction, a new screener DVD review, and an awesome new feature by Sarah. Check them all out.

I think Google likes us. We're now ranked #5 for "anime." Yahoo likes us even more though, we're #2 for that search.

Objectively, I think we should be #1 or #2 on Google as well. There's no reason that animewallpapers or anipike should be above us. ANN and AnimeNation are great, but AnimeNation is a store--I can't imagine it's what most searchers are looking for. Sorry Google, Yahoo's right on this one.

(Also, Japanese is getting harder and harder. I think I underestimated it. Gah)
Comments (2) | Permalink

Friday, April 7, 2006

   Ack.
In addition to launching the comment manager (hopefully it won't kill the server!), I also made a change on the main page of the site.

Now, instead of using our news teams' otaku names, we use their first names on posts.

Why? Simply put, it's more professional and easier for new visitors to understand: "What the heck's a dagger?"

I'm going to practice on the piano now. Hopefully I'll get to sleep before 2 AM...have work tomorrow after all.
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Thursday, April 6, 2006

   Rocking
I read an article that said people who used dual monitor setups were 10-15% more productive. So...

I am now typing this on my new dual monitor setup :). If I can get 10% more time to practice piano or Japanese, it's worth the few extra dollars. For those of you with laptops, adding a second monitor is an absolute breeze. And it's really, really cool.

I have my email, IMs, and browser in one monitor and my web software in another.

Anyway, I added a LOT of polish to the comment manager. I could launch it today if I wanted. What do you think?

Comment Manager

The code was very tedious to write. It's actually very long and (right now) very ugly. One thing that worries me is that to display as much information as we do requires a LOT of queries.

The comment manager is one item that will be greatly enhanced if we created a premium program. It's too intensive a process to show as much detail as we'd like to everyone for free.

Anyway, I have about 15 emails to respond to. I have a special folder in Gmail called 'respond' and during the day, I file all important emails in that folder. That way I can knock them all out at night.

(Another productivity tip.)
Comments (10) | Permalink

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

Comment Manager (Alpha)
It's still rough. Nothing's linked, there's no indication of when the comment was posted, etc.

BUT...it's up and running in alpha form! To get a sneak peak of how it looks, visit:

http://www.myotaku.com/account/comment_manager

Reply to this post with any combination of:

(1) What you like
(2) What you don't like
(3) What you want to see

I'll use the comment manager to keep track of them ;-).
Comments (7) | Permalink

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Fire, Fire, Hot, Hot!!
First--wow.

Our news team BINGO'd today with 10 updates. That's a new record. I knew increasing the count from 8 to 10 would come in handy.

Great job all around, everyone chipped in beautifully.

And we have a lot more feature articles forthcoming.

Of course, not one to fall behind, I had an ultra-productive day myself. I focused again on comments, even consulting with Justin on some advanced structural things.

First: Comment speed. Comments are one of the slowest loading parts of the site. We know why and we know how to solve it. It's a two step (well, two leap) process. I completed the first leap today. You should already notice comments loading faster. When we make the second leap, they will blaze.

Second: This took a lot of thought and a lot of code, but I made all the structural changes we need to get a comment manager running! All that's left is work on creating an elegant interface for the data.

* Audience screams in delight *

The upside: From one page, you'll be able to see comments posted on EVERYTHING you've submitted, including blog posts.

Even if someone posts a comment on a work that's 2 years old, you'll still see it.

The downside: You won't be able to see old comments posted before today. But this shouldn't matter. Going forward we'll get everything.
Comments (6) | Permalink

Monday, April 3, 2006

April Improvement #1
10 comments are listed per page rather than 5. Saves you a few clicks.

Was thinking about how a "Comment Manager" would look. Showing a list of all your fan works with the # of comments next to each would kill the server, methinks. Instead of that, we could show you the last, say 15 comments people posted on your stuff. What do you think about that?
Comments (2) | Permalink

April Fools Day Plan B
I had two plans for April Fools. The first was the new logo, the second was making the following news post...

-----

theOtaku.com Acquired By Japanese Government

Fellow Otaku. I have wonderful news for you today.

I am pleased to announce the acquisition of our network by the Japanese Tourism Board. After nearly three weeks of turbulent negotiation, the paperwork is complete.

As you'll remember from a previous news post, the Japanese government has long been interested in using anime to promote Japanese culture abroad. And what better way to levarage anime than to own
theOtaku.com? Exactly.

Don't worry otakuites, I have not "sold you out." The changes forthcoming will be subtle. The Japanese Tourism Board is hands-off. And I'm a darn good negotiator.

Here's a couple small bullet points:

* We will add a new hub for Jpop

* "Owned and operated by the Japanese Tourism Board" will appear at the bottom of each page

* theOtaku.com will be moved to theotaku.japanesetourismboard.co.jp

* All blog entries you create will automatically be linked to the Japanese Tourism Board's website

* All your blogs will now auto-play Utada Hikaru's "Passion" - there is no option to change the music or turn this off.

* TheOtaku's main page will become Japanese language only

* All fan art, wallpapers, ecards, articles, reviews, and cosplay will be deleted and replaced with
randomly generated pictures of the Japanese flag.

* If you'd like to purchase Art of Otaku, you must pay in "otaku dollars." If you don't have "otaku dollars", you can purchase
them at the airport in Tokyo. The Japanese Tourism Board will be happy to quote you airfare.

And there are a few more things, but I don't want to overwhelm you with fine print.

Cheers! Don't forget to visit Japan!

^^^ We have to put that at the end of every news post from now on.

Adam
Comments (3) | Permalink

Sunday, April 2, 2006

A Big Reason Behind the Keynote
I am going to send a newsletter to 200,000 otakuites tomorrow linking them to my plushie-rich keynote. Many haven't been to the site in months.

Hopefully, this will convince them to give us another chance.
Comments (1) | Permalink

Saturday, April 1, 2006

The Obwaku?
It's an old, inside joke from OB. Wonder if anyone else noticed?

Four years ago, I met an OB member and posted about the experience. The post was completely fake and ridiculous, but created a few catch phrases. One was using "Obwaku" as an ill-informed substitute to "otaku."

Anyway, I can't find the original thread (search as I tried), but here are two others that reference the story, also using the term "obwaku." The first is especially excellent, by James.

OB Thread #1

OB Thread #2

Good times.
Comments (4) | Permalink