02 May 2008 mellow_bunny

New Ideas?

I’ve been thinking about new projects and sites that could benefit the anime/manga blogging community and could help to grow it. These are sites which add value so to speak to the user experience as well as boost the ways in which contributors can share.

A good example of a ‘value-adding’ site would be MyAnimeList. MAL as it’s known to many, is an anime and manga community that introduces you to people, anime, manga, and helps you organize your collections. Features of the site include an extensive anime and manga database, recommendations and reviews and being able to connect with other members around you. MAL is often referenced to and many anime/manga bloggers use it frequently.

Currently underway is the Anime Blog Awards which is another site aimed at increasing exposure for bloggers in particular and giving them something extra to do and have fun with. The exciting thing about the Anime Blog Awards for me has been finding new blogs which i’ve never even heard of. As of today there are 190 bloggers listed. This can help us to see the size of the community as a whole rather then in seperate blog groups.

Interlude Image
Shugo Chara is 4 the oarsomes?

I have a project coming up which I have asked a few (Lupus-sol, mike(Michael), Nagato and RyanA) to take a look at it and suggest any changes. It’s great to have good sounding boards to work with. The plan involves an e-zine format site, featuring fresh articles by different authors each month. Voting on articles will be available and the winner for each month will win a prize or prizes from that month’s sponsor. In the final month of the year (the 12th month of the e-zine) a grand prize voting round will begin and all the posts from the year will be up for voting again. Multiple winners will be chosen from among the writers as well as perhaps voters.

This site is something that I hope will help boost awareness of the community. There is also the encouragement to write something different then your normal style or topic. Each month will feature a broad topic which you can write under and it would be awesome to see authors stretching themselves. There will also be an editing team who will work with the authors to ensure that the quality (in terms of spelling, grammar and logic) of the article is up to standard.

This is just one idea that I have and hope to implement very soon. But it would be great to see more ideas starting to form out there and get made. The one scary thing can be if you have a great idea but can’t implement it. As much as you may want to hold the idea to yourself it seriously works out best if you share with those that can help. Talk to your web savvy friends, talk to those who have started these projects to help you think through your plans.

So many people have cursed at themselves in anger when they find that their “great idea” has been “pinched” because they haven’t done anything about it. DO NOT DELAY PEOPLE! Get creating! It’s fun, rewarding and can lead to greater things.

If you know of any projects out there which aim to add value to the anime/manga community then please post them in a comment!

Posted by mellow_bunny » Anime, Community, Japan

9 Comments on “New Ideas?”

  • Nagato

    Hey, I volunteered for Kyouki too! Why am I not mentioned? q_q
    But yes, it seems like a great idea, we all support you! :D

    05-02-08 » 11:10 am »

  • Deranged

    This e-zine sounds like an awesome idea… and I would happily support this… even try to write or something with my meager skillz lol. I’ll be willing to help every step of the way, cause the end result sounds like it could be absolute win…

    05-02-08 » 11:19 am »

  • Caitlin

    The ezine is a good idea, IMO. I’d love to help out.

    05-02-08 » 11:33 am »

  • Ryan A

    This will be awesome and stimulating! It is bringing the anime blog one step closer to super serious business ^^ Very much like creating a competitive “freelance” journalist network… but open.

    Must act on ideas! My idea requires UNSIGNED BIGINT columns in MySQL, ^^ I was updating the reflection engine today, for scalability and such (heres a shot)

    05-02-08 » 4:56 pm »

  • nckl

    I third or fourth or fifth the suggestion of the e-zine. I quite liked the days when AnimeFringe was alive and well, so it’d be great to see something like that exist again!

    I’d also like to see a very comprehensive news blog or site dedicated to anime / manga news and only news (with maybe some special educational features, but no reviews or editorials or that kind of stuff). I’m talking about something like animenewsservice.com when it was working. (ANN is okay, but for some reason I’m just not satisfied with their news coverage lately.) It’d be nice to go to just one reliable site to get all the latest news and trends, instead of having to visit multiple sites and especially blogs and sort through everything that has already been reported and re-reported and reports that report on re-reports. But that’s just me.

    05-02-08 » 7:19 pm »

  • Michael

    I’ll repeat. I still think it’s a great idea. I just hope we can pull it off. :)

    05-03-08 » 6:15 am »

  • mellow_bunny

    Thanks for the support guys :D! I’ll be making a proper announcement on it soon :D! There are quite a few things to sort out in the planning department :P.

    As Nagato mentioned it’s gonna be called Kyouki and here is a screen or two on how it will look (still drafts):

    http://share.bncscanlations.com/readfile.php?file=mellowbunny/kyouki.png

    http://share.bncscanlations.com/readfile.php?file=mellowbunny/kyouki-feature.png

    @nckl That would be good to see… i’d love to do something like that but I don’t think I have the contacts yet :V

    Also lol at “sort through everything that has already been reported and re-reported and reports that report on re-reports.” So true.

    05-03-08 » 4:39 pm »

  • Guncannon

    Pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew!

    05-04-08 » 6:45 am »

  • blissmo

    I shall be right behind you! This really sounds like fun :D

    05-06-08 » 1:11 am »

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