Brick - Celebrating 18 Years of Being Horrible

[Shifter]

DragonMistress

*Grabs Desna's booty*


At this rate people are going to forget I own red items.

You used to wear red? Whoa, when was that!? ninja

[DragonMistress]

I wore red in the Stone Age.



Also, because I gotta say it SOMEWHERE...

I think Tentacl would have taken off WAY more if it was synched to Gaia. Because I personally signed up for tentacl, looked around once, and decided I didn't want to have to start over from scratch as far as avi items went. If my inventory got 'imported' from Gaia, and stayed synched to my Gaia inventory, I think I might have gotten into tentacl.

...well that and if I could ever have figured out how to navigate the damn site, I spent like two hours and eventually said '******** this at least I have my username reserved incase this ever becomes a big thing'.

[Desna]

DragonMistress

Yes, but that would have been a huge undertaking. Most of the user base that would consider moving to tentacl would have first come from Gaia, so giving them an entire inventory for free would be insanely generous and detrimental to a company's profits. Those outfit sales appeared to be what they would make most of their money back on.

What they really should have done, among many other things, was not name it tentacl, which just pulls up hentai rape images. And then not allowed a p***s image to linger on the first page people are always directed to when the site first opened.

But... I never really expected it to survive. It was a poor attempt to merge Gaia with the adult side of tumblr. It wasn't a very well conceived idea and it didn't really have a lot to offer. The Gaians had no real reason to move since a lot of them were already invested in their accounts here. tentacl didn't have enough going for it to draw in new people, either. Especially since some of the prices of those outfits were pretty crazy when you consider the money value their diamonds or whatever were.

[DragonMistress]

Desna

Yes, but that would have been a huge undertaking. Most of the user base that would consider moving to tentacl would have first come from Gaia, so giving them an entire inventory for free would be insanely generous and detrimental to a company's profits. Those outfit sales appeared to be what they would make most of their money back on.

What they really should have done, among many other things, was not name it tentacl, which just pulls up hentai rape images. And then not allowed a p***s image to linger on the first page people are always directed to when the site first opened.

But... I never really expected it to survive. It was a poor attempt to merge Gaia with the adult side of tumblr. It wasn't a very well conceived idea and it didn't really have a lot to offer. The Gaians had no real reason to move since a lot of them were already invested in their accounts here. tentacl didn't have enough going for it to draw in new people, either. Especially since some of the prices of those outfits were pretty crazy when you consider the money value their diamonds or whatever were.

"Most of the user base that would consider moving to tentacl would have first come from Gaia, so giving them an entire inventory for free would be an insanely good way to insure they stick around long enough to form an attachment"

The trick would be, to import 'basic' items (for example, cheap gold shop items) and 'prestige' items (angelic halo and etc). That way a Gaia-user coming onto Tentacl could already make themselves SOME kind of avi, using the items they're probably the most proud of. Obviously importing an entire inventory copy-and-paste style wouldn't be feasible just on the point of holy god so much work for the artists, and as you said, with zero income as a direct result.

However, I think giving a Gaia user a starter inventory of some kind, preferably a starter inventory containing similar type of items as the ones they are used to on Gaia, would have made the average Gaia user 100% more likely to hang around on the site a bit longer.

Since the user obviously already HAS an inventory on Gaia, if they don't on tentacl, the end result is 'would I rather enjoy what I already worked for, or go back to looking like a noob'. Of course nobody wanted to fling themselves back into noobishness, and Tentacl flops because it can't pull interest away from the main site, having no established drawing power.



I can really only use myself as an example, but I think it's fair to say; nobody ever really expected Gaia and Tentacl to function in tandem with each other. The idea as I understood it was that a Gaia user would 'grow up' and move to the more adult-oriented Tentacl. (of course, the giant p***s gif as you said sends entirely the wrong message about 'adult'...) If the inventories synched, or possibly even FOLLOWED (as in, once you uploaded your Gaia inventory to Tentacl, you no longer had it on Gaia) then the Gaia-user-spending-pattern would transfer to Tentacl as well. After all, I have my full Gaia inventory here on Gaia but nobody is even SUGGESTING that allowing me to have the inventory I do, is going to make me less likely to buy new items as they come out. Samewise, upon moving to Tentacl, I would continue to expand my inventory there, no matter how huge and unwieldy it became. (1280 items here on Gaia, and counting... rofl )


I think, if more Gaia users could have been convinced to just stick around in the short-term, the site at large would have had much greater chances of long-term success and the allmighty 'revenue generation' that results. And the inventory synching/importing/uploading/seeding, would be the best way I could think of as an administrator/coder, to make that happen.





Of course, the rest of your post is absolutely spot-on-target. The name was flinch-worthy, and the p***s gif only made it worse. I could only think of it in terms of "Gaia is trying to make a new youporn or tinder/grindr, to run alongside the 'ITS FOR KIDS' site" As near as I could tell, it would be populated by 25% ***** looking for Gaia 'seepage' from the 13-18 year bracket, 70% undercover FBI operatives trying to 'sting' the *****, and 5% kids with Mommy's credit card info.

[Desna]

Yeah, but that generosity would have still eaten into potential profits. A couple items to make people join might have helped. But once you make something "oh, everyone gets it if they join" kind of makes the item less appealing, too.

There was also nothing really on Tentacl to do. They never added anything after it was put up. Anyone from Gaia already would have established threads, guilds, friends, etc here and they'd have to start all over on Tentacl. The layout wasn't very good for much, like RP and other things. Unless you were following an artist or something I didn't see a whole lot to really engage in that you couldn't get here on Gaia. Gaia looked better to me than Tentacl, and Gaia has issues of its own. Tentacl was an even more bare version of Gaia, only it allowed you to post penises and talk sex. You were better off joining Gaia unless you really felt like being pervy rather than looking for more variety and content.

Really, in the end Tentacl was a bad idea. The only thing I hope is that more resources are put back into Gaia to improve outdated features, make new features, and breathe life back into the site. Along with change/improve certain... other things, but I don't see that happening with the current guy in charge. But that horse has been beaten to death.

[DragonMistress]

Kinda exactly my point, tho. The 'guy in charge' is so afraid of anything that might 'eat into potential profits' he kills the goose not even because he wants all the eggs at once, but because he doesn't want to pay for the feed!! I mean, maybe zOMG really wasn't that popular (tbh the ring system confused the s**t out of me so I never got into it), but it seemed to me like it had a lot of tie-ins with the rest of the economy, and I'm sorry but this whole thing about 'omg security' sounds like a lot of wind in the rafters to me. Especially since they oh-so-casually in the same sentence dropped the tidbit that zomg was 'running at a loss'. How they calculated that out, I'm not entirely sure. What if they decide the marketplace runs at a loss, next? Or the hangouts?


Tentacl, even WITH the horrible name and layout, COULD have been a success. Users who stuck around would have generated the content needed to make the site interesting in the long-run, and of course never under-estimate the allure of free homemade porn and being a total degenerate pervert. But there wasn't enough short-term draw to make the users start generating that content, and thus, failure.


If the same business model is applied to Gaia, there will NEVER be updates or expansions, there will never be a 'not quite as old' inventory arranger, or a replacement for zomg. Just an unending parade of cash shop gimmicks from now until the end of time.


Which is strangely very similar to what we've been experiencing here, I can't help but notice.

[Etsu Matsuya]

*Walks in on a conversation clearly already in progress* Well adding my two cents is either going to go well or horribly, but here goes.

Tentacl looks to me like a cross between Gaia and Roliana. Something with higher quality Avatars but not much else to bring to the party. As as start up I think they might have been in it for the short run. Trying to quickly draw in a 21+ crowed off of gaia and onto there site thus creating a almost instant user/income base. Not realizing how expensive it is to keep a site like this running and how much more expensive it is to make items for a site like this. Thus not being able to make enough to keep the ship afloat or get enough interest in it to get start up money. They had to fold up shop.

Gaia started small and slowly built up not necessarily expecting it to blow up like it did. Which is why it kept growing slowly and did not focus as much on generating money or making a huge number of new items. They just wanted to build a user base which was easier back then when there was MUCH less competition. Now that it has its massive user base and has traded owners a few times. They are much more focused on bleeding the well dry and not as interested in keeping the user base they had.

Honestly I don't think anything like this would ever work again to the degree that it is now. Gaia started at just the right time with just the right angle to hook enough of a base to grow to what it is now. No other site is going to be able to do that and eat enough red ink to last long enough to get a user base that can keep it afloat and then be big enough to steal Gaia users.

As a older/long time user of gaia. I would like something more adult and civilized to keep using as we get older and want meet people our age. However rolling out something with Tentacl as its name is not what the older community wants. We want or wanted(those of us that are left) a old school version of gaia with a 18/21 and up side that could handle a more perverted and hard core flirting side. Which is what I think gaia is trying with this club verge or what have you. They are going to fail with it but still it is a interesting concept that gaia can work with because it has the base.

The reason they killed zOMG was simply because it cost them huge amounts of money and neither drew in new people nor did the old base even care to really play it. So if it is only costing you money and has no real upside of course you are going to ditch it. They are undoubtedly not going to update anything that cost them real money unless they can get money out of it. So look forward to more GC items and less gold ones. This is a slow march to the bank/grave as the older user base leaves for our real lives and gaia is too out of touch to draw a younger base in.

I just realized that was a lot of text and ranting. I forgot I had a passion for gaia. I guess that I why I am rejoining it after so many years of absence.

Regardless this is a fairly awkward way of saying hello. So yeah hello I am Etsu. It is nice to meet you all. *bow*

** Fixed the spoiler tag to work as intended. **

[DragonMistress]

Etsu Matsuya

Well written post, and probably better informed than my own, as I never followed the ins and outs and ups and downs of Zomg myself, but...

Spoiler...

Most of us in here are 03' users. blaugh Not to be a braggart or e-peen or anything, just to heads-up you that all of us (who remembered to take our ginko bilboa today anyway) remember the Ian and Sasha servers and when the ducky hat was the big new amazing thing.


...good old ducky hat...

[Etsu Matsuya]

Yeah, I clearly used the spoiler tag wrong. I wanted it to hide the text wall for those who cared. Clearly I have failed a that attempt. I shall now attempt to fix that.

Nice I am not quite a 03 user. I missed the super early years of Gaia(sadly). So since a gentleman never asks a ladies age and a dork always assume he knows more about a subject than others, while pushing his glasses up on his nose and walking into a conversation. Clearly I assumed a thing or two incorrectly. sweatdrop

That being said I would hope my analysis of the early years is right. Since I only have second hand knowledge and stories from others to base them on.

No need to be a braggart someone who knows the history should always be ready to correct us young whippersnappers who come in and assume things without wearing our big boy pants. wink

[User 4385700]

the tribunal of l0cke lanzer and VO have failed us as false gods.

hail entropy

[DragonMistress]

I never realized it was possible to fail as a false god.

[User 4385700]

I never realized my abilities as a concert pianist. c'est la vie.

[DragonMistress]

Your girlfriend told me of your 'midget pianist' a long time ago. emotion_awesome

[User 4385700]

never trust a mermaid in the cold depths of the briny bleu

[User 4385700]

world is going to total shite i tells ya

first this lame brained site and now methinks civil war is upon the U.S.

time to go protest downtown~