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Forum - View topicViz Media Invests in Anime Recommendation/Community Platform Kitsu
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Primus
 Posts: 2775 Location: Toronto |
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Anyone remember Funimation's animeonline and Shodojo? No?
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Thorfinn
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What a waste of money. Kitsu (humming bird) has a terrible layout and MAL is vastly superior in every way. This is what Viz spends their money on, instead of bringing over series like Kingdom or 7 Seeds. Nice job!
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SkerllyF
Posts: 244 |
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You know that Kingdom has 40+ volumes released in japanese, right? At this point is difficult for them to do so. There´s a story that they released Gintama for a little bit of time before dropping it. |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3459 Location: Finland |
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If the linked site is any indication of what they've managed to put out in three years, then Viz better hope they'll see pigs flying in the sky. Because that's about the chance of the forecast they have getting their investment back...
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Josh Fabian
Posts: 5 |
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We've actually relaunched as Kitsu. It looks bare bones at the moment because it's a complete rewrite, from the ground up. For the last 3 years, we've been working a couple hours on nights and weekends to build a platform we wanted to use. Not that we're working on it full-time, we've caught up with 3 years of our previously sporadic work in the last month. We'll be moving at a pretty good pace going forward. Appreciate the criticism though, taking it on the chin is how we get better. |
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sourpatchthekid
Posts: 64 |
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Yeah they brought it up to 23 volumes before dropping it in 2011. Japan had 40 volumes ouy at that time. I'm guessing it just wasn't a big seller and they didn't see a reason to continue |
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Kimiko_0
 Posts: 1796 Location: Leiden, NL, EU |
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For anime there are already ANN, AniDB, and MAL (and Crunchyroll if you only watch their selection), and for manga there are Baka-Updates and MAL (and ANN, but it's not really specialized in manga). Even if I didn't miss any, it seems to me there's already plenty of offerings for this kind of service. I imagine Viz intends to push their own stuff, but that kinda runs counter to the user recommendations thing. So, what is the point of this?
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xMemorie
 Posts: 70 |
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Anilist is better than Hummingbird and MAL.
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-Turnip-
Posts: 4 |
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I'm surprised Viz Media would invest money into HB/Kitsu but I guess they see the overflowing potential the site has.
You might be thinking "wtf is that bright white slow facebook clone got that any other anime db hasn't" but the answer is simple... "Social Media". Kitsu/HB is the most social one out of all the ones I've visited e.g. Anidb, MAL, Anilist. (If you can name an anime site more social than kitsu, please don't hesitate to link, I'm very interested in browsing the site.) Why is it the most social? Well Hummingbird had a follower system where you follow whoever you want and you can view their updates, the only problem was that all the new people only ever had the forums to get into the community. (Just like every other anime site!) Well Kitsu (the new site viz invested in) broke down that wall and developed the "global feed" which finally has connected the people that couldn't find their way into the community. The global feed gives the ability for someone who has just joined the site a chance to talk to the community with ease. At the end of the day, the most popular social media sites, Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr all have feeds and heavily focus on social media. And Kitsu is heading straight for that direction so any man and his dog can tell there's going to be a lot of potential in that investment. |
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switchgear1131
Posts: 219 |
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Poor funimation, Kitsu went to shit when they migrated from Hummingbird. Half their site doesn't work and the half that does doesn't work that well. They even removed the ability to export your animelists to take them somewhere else and their tracking is so bad in the transition form hummingbird it just lost 3/4 of my list.
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Suena
Posts: 289 |
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I remember Hummingbird getting some buzz awhile back when MAL was having frequent crashes/downtime. People were afraid of of losing their lists if the site went kaput, so they migrated their lists to HB for backup purposes.
Since I don't really like getting my social media flooded with everything I and everyone else are watching, I'm probably going to give Kitsu a pass. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1116 Location: Puget Sound |
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So does Anime-Planet. (Here's my page there.) And unlike Kitsu, Anime-Planet has a useful front page, a useful search system, fully fleshed out and useful series pages, functional and useful user pages, etc... etc... (Kitsu is, quite frankly, one of the ugliest and least useful sites I've ever seen.)
I've been on a ton of special interest and niche feed based sites over the years, and frankly - no. Any man and his dog can tell there's not a lot of potential in such an investment because special interest and niche sites have significant limits in the size of the userbase they can attract. The sites you compare Kitsu to aren't special interest, they're platforms that everyone can use, and allow the implementation by users of special interest niches. That is why those sites have millions of users. You're trying to compare apples to the thing least like apples you can imagine. |
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luffypirate
 Posts: 3187 |
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This looks awesome. I'll try it out.
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CooperRC
Posts: 22 |
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I get really irritated by all the annoying video ads on that site though. Yeah I could install an adblocker, but I would switch fast if a less annoying possibility becomes available that is usable. |
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-Turnip-
Posts: 4 |
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After a short walk to Anime-Planet. You're right they do have a follower/following thing. Sadly, I couldn't find the global feed though and I couldn't figure out how to type out a status message. All I could do was comment on people's profile's which isn't exactly the same thing. But let's breakdown what you've said. It has a useful front page? The front page is more of an anime database front page than a social media front page, that's not Kitsu's area. Kitsu is a social media site so the front page is the social media feed. Just like facebook and twitter and tumblr and a lot of other social media platforms! A useful search engine? Well, to be honest, A-P actually has an incredibly annoying UI, you don't need a tab for every search option but that's just my opinion. But either way you're right, it's got itself a lovely search engine, it's got itself a couple extra categories, more importantly, types and airing status. So I'll give A-P the better search feature no matter how bad the UI is. First thing's first, user pages work fine idk what problem you've got but I've never had a problem using it, it's got all the useful information you need but please go further I'd love to hear issues with it. As for the anime pages... Well, they're pretty bareboned right now, I'll be honest with you I think they just wanted anime pages working before they redevelop their wiki editing ability. So I'll give A-P the better anime pages as well. But I guess A-P has been around since 2001 so that gives them a lot of time to make anime pages. I think they did a redesign though some more insight on A-P's development would be nice. Also incase you've forgotten Kitsu was developed in 2016 and not 2001. After looking at your A-P profile, you look like you focus more on listing than social media and that's okay, I can see why Kitsu is useless to you. And I'll agree Kitsu by no means is suppose to be the greatest listing site, but if you can find a way top it's social side I'd love to hear it.
Kitsu's aim is to not be just the regular "anime tracking site". The reason why Viz invested in them was bigger than that. Kitsu's aims are bigger, they want to be a social media platform to connect Eastern Asian media to Westernized places. It's not a simple as "anime", it hopes to connect anime fans, manga fans, K-pop fans, Korean live action fans, Japanese video game fans etc etc. That's why they invested in Kitsu. You're right that they limit the size of the userbase they can attract, but I can tell you Eastern Asian media is a very large userbase but I guess I'm speaking too much of the future. In Kitsu's current state it's only attracting anime and manga fans but if it's any consolation, I don't like or watch anime or manga anymore yet I frequent Kitsu the most. That's why I can understand the social platform's potential. Hummingbird has always been a social media platform rather than a tracking site and that's why it's got so much potential. Social media is today's boom and is slowly but surely taking over society. |
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