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FA/IMVU Discussion

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Dragoneer

Site Developer
Site Director
Administrator
We are proud to announce Fur Affinity has joined the IMVU family. Fur Affinity (formerly a part of Ferrox Art LLC) was acquired by IMVU earlier this year in January 2015. We are looking forward to the partnership allowing both FA and IMVU to grow and foster the furry community and to celebrate its unique talents, creativity and self-expression.

As you know, IMVU has previously advertised their services to our community, which led to further discussions about the obvious overlap among our members. Both IMVU and FA community members love to socialize and connect anonymously with people from around the world with diverse backgrounds, talents, and creative histories. They both express their artistic and creative skills in a variety of ways - via artwork, storytelling, fursuiting, crafts and more! Our partnership was the natural and reasonable conclusion to bring these similar and often already connected communities together officially.

Going forward, FA will continue to operate independently but with IMVU’s support and resources to upgrade our services. We can now work on improving our infrastructure, adding more storage, making performance improvements and improved coding support to reach our full potential. As a community member, the only difference you will notice is a better, smoother experience and increased functionality of the site as time goes on.

FA started with a dream and a roll of duct tape, but grew and thrived thanks to the support of our community. We became one of the top 5,000 sites globally, 1,500 sites within the United States. The future remains bright, and together we can aim to reach even higher.

We look forward to having you continue to participate in our community, be creative, be proud, and, above all else, have fun. You are unlikely to notice any changes apart from an improved experience on the site and some added advertising.

Naturally, we understand you will have lots of questions regarding this change, and we are here to answer them. Just leave your comments and concerns in the response below!

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Q: I heard/read IMVU has the right to repost my content and use it however they want?
A: "Fur Affinity is governed by the site's terms of use, not Google's, Apple's or IMVU's." - IMVU

Rest assured, IMVU is *NOT* taking FA content, redistributing it, reposting it, using it in-game, etc. It's your content. Only FA has the right to show it if you upload it to the site. No one else.

1) IMVU's policies do not govern content posted/shared/sold on FA

2) IMVU does not have any rights to or will take a cut from content posted on FA

3) IMVU has not been given any user information from FA
 
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v-deus

Dance, Magic Cat.
What is an IMVU, and how does it affect me?

Nah seriously though, primer on IMVU would probably be appreciated. Aside from a few banner ads, I know nothing about it.
 

Dragoneer

Site Developer
Site Director
Administrator
What is an IMVU, and how does it affect me?

Nah seriously though, primer on IMVU would probably be appreciated. Aside from a few banner ads, I know nothing about it.

It won't affect anyone OTHER than they will will put a few ads on the site and heavily invest into the site with new hardware and resources to help us make FA the site it's always needed to be.
 

Duality Jack

Feeling Loki with it.
Interesting. This could go one of many ways, I hope it goes well. Extra resources and tech assistance is always good. I hope it doesn't get too "sanitized" in user freedom in turn (not speaking of the pornagraphic side of the functions of FA, more meaning the rather free speech environment). Sterile interactions are boring and meaningless.

Well cheers to the income this brings to you eh?


What is an IMVU, and how does it affect
me?

Nah seriously though, primer on IMVU would probably be appreciated. Aside from a few banner ads, I know nothing about it.

http://www.imvu.com/
It's some avatar based site that seems to have teenaged girls in mind.
 
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Kalmor

Banned
Banned
What is an IMVU, and how does it affect me?

Nah seriously though, primer on IMVU would probably be appreciated. Aside from a few banner ads, I know nothing about it.
IMVU is basically sorta like second life if you're familiar with that.

edit: It's more lile a 3D avatar chat program thing.
 
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I guess I'll ask the big one:
Does this mean that the promised UI updates, etc are going to happen on a set timeline? Does IMVU want you to work on a firm schedule? If it isn't met will there be repercussions from them?
 

Dragoneer

Site Developer
Site Director
Administrator
Interesting. This could go one of many ways, I hope it goes well. Extra resources and tech assistance is always good. I hope it doesn't get too "sanitized" in user freedom in turn (not speaking of the pornagraphic side of the functions of FA, more meaning the rather free speech environment). Sterile interactions are boring and meaningless.
I have it in writing that things will not be changing EXCEPT for the better. I'm still in charge of FA, and it's my job to fix and improve the community. That's exactly what I intend on doing.
 

Dragoneer

Site Developer
Site Director
Administrator
I guess I'll ask the big one:
Does this mean that the promised UI updates, etc are going to happen on a set timeline? Does IMVU want you to work on a firm schedule? If it isn't met will there be repercussions from them?
Naturally. If I don't do my job right it has serious implications. The UI delays are frustrating, but we're fixing the way the sites handle templates so we can have both the current AND the new one until the new one's 100% ready for prime time.
 

Runefox

Kitsune of the PC Master Race
Please tell me this is an early April Fool's joke.
 

TheArchiver

Ace Documenter
100% Serious.

Even funnier than a lame April Fool's joke. Runefox, lighten up!

EDIT: I suppose this explains the special treatment they received; getting adverts on the site sooner than many others who didn't even get a reply in some cases.
 

Duality Jack

Feeling Loki with it.
I have it in writing that things will not be changing EXCEPT for the better. I'm still in charge of FA, and it's my job to fix and improve the community. That's exactly what I intend on doing.
That's good to hear, last time I witnessed an online property/community being obtained by a large company a bit too much cleaning happened.

I am still curious what "better" is going to be. (I am not intending to be sardonic, but I am honestly curious as to what direction things are going to go.)
 

Runefox

Kitsune of the PC Master Race
Well, there's the final nail in the coffin. I know I told you you needed to give up control of the company, but not like this. Jesus Christ.

Welcome to the malware-ridden cesspool of the internet, boys and girls, population: FurAffinity. I hope you'll be refunding advertising credits for those that purchased them and can no longer use them because of IMVU, and I hope you have a new privacy / copyright policy ready to rock for people who are worried about the transfer of ownership to a company whose privacy policy explicitly discloses that personal information is transmitted both in case of mergers and to third parties for advertising purposes.

Also, it'd be nice to know what "for the better" means, but, well, I guess it won't matter either way eventually when FA ceases to exist.

Have fun!
 

Dragoneer

Site Developer
Site Director
Administrator
So why IMVU of all things?
Did they just make the best offer?
This is a good question. Honestly, I got a lot of offers to buy the site. Some people offered me a LOT of cash to buy the site, and I and every staffer involved would walk away. But that's not what I wanted. I wanted somebody who wanted to invest in the site, and make improvements. Somebody who cared enough about the site that making it better, improving the community was the name of the game.

If I was after money I'd have gone after that. The agreement we made was to invest IN the comment, and make improvements to the site.
 
Well, there's the final nail in the coffin. I know I told you you needed to give up control of the company, but not like this. Jesus Christ.

Welcome to the malware-ridden cesspool of the internet, boys and girls, population: FurAffinity. I hope you'll be refunding advertising credits for those that purchased them and can no longer use them because of IMVU, and I hope you have a new privacy / copyright policy ready to rock for people who are worried about the transfer of ownership to a company whose privacy policy explicitly discloses that personal information is transmitted both in case of mergers and to third parties for advertising purposes.

Also, it'd be nice to know what "for the better" means, but, well, I guess it won't matter either way eventually when FA ceases to exist.

Have fun!

Going off of this question, because I am concerned with IMVU's policies on information privacy. Two things:

1. Does this merger have anything to do with the new trackers Ghostery has been showing?
2. Does IMVU have access to the information?
 

Rakarra

New Member
It won't affect anyone OTHER than they will will put a few ads on the site and heavily invest into the site with new hardware and resources to help us make FA the site it's always needed to be.

We saw during the various cub porn/animal porn debates that funding can sometimes come with strings attached (Hell, Paypal unofficially 'bans' and 'unbans' furry porn every once in awhile). That is, if you want to interact with certain financial institutions, you have to play by their rules. Despite the various bans of certain types of content on FA, the site is still fairly liberal about the sorts of artwork it allows to be posted. Will a financial partnership with IMVU lead to 'polite requests' or outright demands on their side to change FA Code of Conduct and/or allowable posting guidelines?
 

Dragoneer

Site Developer
Site Director
Administrator
Going off of this question, because I am concerned with IMVU's policies on information privacy. Two things:

1. Does this merger have anything to do with the new trackers Ghostery has been showing?
2. Does IMVU have access to the information?

1) The trackers are just Google Analytics and Alexa. And they're involved, but they've mostly helped us looked into how/what/where users are accessing FA from, and from what devices... and pushed us towards moving resources into making the site more mobile friendly given the numbers we've seen.
2) Nope. Nobody from IMVU has DB or admin access to the site or forums.
 

Runefox

Kitsune of the PC Master Race
1) The trackers are just Google Analytics and Alexa. And they're involved, but they've mostly helped us looked into how/what/where users are accessing FA from, and from what devices... and pushed us towards moving resources into making the site more mobile friendly given the numbers we've seen.
For now.

2) Nope. Nobody from IMVU has DB or admin access to the site or forums.
Yet. Not to say they don't already have scraper scripts provided to them or aren't just spidering the site on their own.
 

Rakarra

New Member
For now.


Yet. Not to say they don't already have scraper scripts provided to them or aren't just spidering the site on their own.

Well damn, monkeys COULD just start flying out of my butt at random times as well. Who knows what the future will bring?
 
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