Dear Loyal Fanpoppers,
I want to start by thanking you for being the passionate and committed community of users that you are. We realize that there have been a lot of big changes that have been happening here on Fanpop over the past several weeks. We appreciate your patience as we try to make the site better for everyone. Not just to the existing community of Fanpop but also to new members of the site. We know that there have been many vocal users that are unhappy with the redesign. As with any situation, most people hate change and we sympathize. People like what they are familiar and comfortable with and get angry when things are different because they have to relearn things.
Fanpop has had pretty much the same design since we launched in 2006. Since then, there have been a lot of learnings and advances in the user design/experience community. That and the site was really starting to look like it was launched in 2006, except that it was 5 years later. There were things that users just couldn’t do because our interface was so dated and wasn’t designed to handle these updates. We’ve been working really hard on the redesign for almost a year now and adding features we think will really help make the Fanpop community even more engaging and stronger.
Fanpop is our baby that we’ve been working on for over 7 years now, why would we ever want to hurt our own baby? We hope that you would believe that we are trying to things in the best interest of all of the users that visit Fanpop everyday both new and old. We found that new users to the site couldn’t fully understand what was going on so we tried to improve that. But we realize that users who have been on the site for years were used to things being a certain way. We tried our best to maintain a lot of our existing elements while at the same time making them a lot better. We’ve listened to everyone’s feedback and even though only the most vocal of opinions get heard, we also heard the suggestions from the less vocal users. Just because you’re loudest or meanest doesn’t mean you’re right. For every angry comment we've gotten, we've also gotten several supportive and positive comments, but they're usually drowned out by all the complaints.
Some of the most vocal complaints are that we are becoming too much like Facebook. One of the most amusing reasons is that we’ve apparently become all blue like Facebook. As I’ve said in one of the Polls (aka Picks) was that Fanpop was ALWAYS blue. We’ve been blue since we launched the site. We had a blue header bar and later on we had light blue modules. If you look at all the old screencaps of the site, we were never green. The only green we ever had was the Fanpop star. So we’re not sure where that one came from. Now apparently we’re becoming too much like Facebook because we allow users to ‘thumbs up’ comments on the wall. I’m pretty sure if you guys use other sites such as YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest or any other of thousands of sites, you will see that “liking” something is pretty common on the web. We’ve been doing it for years with our “Fan of It” buttons. The like button similar to our props is a way for users to positively reinforce and encourage other users. We don’t see that as a bad thing and want our community to be a place where people can build one another up. If you don’t like the thumb, then don't use it. There are plenty of new features that we’ve added or will add that you can choose not to use. But we already see plenty of people using the thumbs up on wall comments. When we first started the wall, everyone hated it, and yet it’s one of our most actively used features on the website now. Ironically or sarcastically, now plenty of users clicking on the thumbs up for wall posts and comments that hate the thumbs up. So clearly they’ve already proven their worth.
Change takes time to accept and we know it’s hard, but eventually maybe you’ll find you like it. Everyone who has hated new features has inevitably used them. See, we’re clearly thinking about the best interest of our users even if we get hate comments and push back. We hope that you would trust us. We've gotten plenty of positive and encouraging messages and comments from people about the new look and we appreciate your support. We've also gotten helpful messages and comments with constructive and useful feedback. But all of the mean-spirited polls and wall posts that are just complaints and jabs at us are cowardly and useless. I know some of you are trying to be funny or snarky with your remarks, but please know that we have feelings too and take them personally. If you actually cared about the site, you'd actually spend the time to message us and understand why we're doing what we're doing rather than just insulting everything we do. If you don't like it, there are plenty other places on the web you can go, we don't need negativity here.
We’ve spent 7 years building this site so we care about it more than anyone. When we get hurtful and hateful comments about all the blood, sweat and tears we’ve put into Fanpop, it isn’t a good feeling. We’re not asking you to love every single change we make to the site and we appreciate your feedback and we’re listening. There's a reason for everything we do. We just ask that you remember that we’re always trying to make Fanpop a better place for everyone. Please just give things a chance and be patient with us. We appreciate all of your support and feedback and we still think we have the best users on the web and for that we thank you.
Dave
I want to start by thanking you for being the passionate and committed community of users that you are. We realize that there have been a lot of big changes that have been happening here on Fanpop over the past several weeks. We appreciate your patience as we try to make the site better for everyone. Not just to the existing community of Fanpop but also to new members of the site. We know that there have been many vocal users that are unhappy with the redesign. As with any situation, most people hate change and we sympathize. People like what they are familiar and comfortable with and get angry when things are different because they have to relearn things.
Fanpop has had pretty much the same design since we launched in 2006. Since then, there have been a lot of learnings and advances in the user design/experience community. That and the site was really starting to look like it was launched in 2006, except that it was 5 years later. There were things that users just couldn’t do because our interface was so dated and wasn’t designed to handle these updates. We’ve been working really hard on the redesign for almost a year now and adding features we think will really help make the Fanpop community even more engaging and stronger.
Fanpop is our baby that we’ve been working on for over 7 years now, why would we ever want to hurt our own baby? We hope that you would believe that we are trying to things in the best interest of all of the users that visit Fanpop everyday both new and old. We found that new users to the site couldn’t fully understand what was going on so we tried to improve that. But we realize that users who have been on the site for years were used to things being a certain way. We tried our best to maintain a lot of our existing elements while at the same time making them a lot better. We’ve listened to everyone’s feedback and even though only the most vocal of opinions get heard, we also heard the suggestions from the less vocal users. Just because you’re loudest or meanest doesn’t mean you’re right. For every angry comment we've gotten, we've also gotten several supportive and positive comments, but they're usually drowned out by all the complaints.
Some of the most vocal complaints are that we are becoming too much like Facebook. One of the most amusing reasons is that we’ve apparently become all blue like Facebook. As I’ve said in one of the Polls (aka Picks) was that Fanpop was ALWAYS blue. We’ve been blue since we launched the site. We had a blue header bar and later on we had light blue modules. If you look at all the old screencaps of the site, we were never green. The only green we ever had was the Fanpop star. So we’re not sure where that one came from. Now apparently we’re becoming too much like Facebook because we allow users to ‘thumbs up’ comments on the wall. I’m pretty sure if you guys use other sites such as YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest or any other of thousands of sites, you will see that “liking” something is pretty common on the web. We’ve been doing it for years with our “Fan of It” buttons. The like button similar to our props is a way for users to positively reinforce and encourage other users. We don’t see that as a bad thing and want our community to be a place where people can build one another up. If you don’t like the thumb, then don't use it. There are plenty of new features that we’ve added or will add that you can choose not to use. But we already see plenty of people using the thumbs up on wall comments. When we first started the wall, everyone hated it, and yet it’s one of our most actively used features on the website now. Ironically or sarcastically, now plenty of users clicking on the thumbs up for wall posts and comments that hate the thumbs up. So clearly they’ve already proven their worth.
Change takes time to accept and we know it’s hard, but eventually maybe you’ll find you like it. Everyone who has hated new features has inevitably used them. See, we’re clearly thinking about the best interest of our users even if we get hate comments and push back. We hope that you would trust us. We've gotten plenty of positive and encouraging messages and comments from people about the new look and we appreciate your support. We've also gotten helpful messages and comments with constructive and useful feedback. But all of the mean-spirited polls and wall posts that are just complaints and jabs at us are cowardly and useless. I know some of you are trying to be funny or snarky with your remarks, but please know that we have feelings too and take them personally. If you actually cared about the site, you'd actually spend the time to message us and understand why we're doing what we're doing rather than just insulting everything we do. If you don't like it, there are plenty other places on the web you can go, we don't need negativity here.
We’ve spent 7 years building this site so we care about it more than anyone. When we get hurtful and hateful comments about all the blood, sweat and tears we’ve put into Fanpop, it isn’t a good feeling. We’re not asking you to love every single change we make to the site and we appreciate your feedback and we’re listening. There's a reason for everything we do. We just ask that you remember that we’re always trying to make Fanpop a better place for everyone. Please just give things a chance and be patient with us. We appreciate all of your support and feedback and we still think we have the best users on the web and for that we thank you.
Dave
Many of us have been bullied at least once. It could be at school, on the internet or out in many places in the world. Most bullying happens in schools. Its an act in which one person makes another person feel bad about them self or anything at all. If you let the bully taunt you your feeding him. Your allowing him or her to do it more. Some bullying situations are really bad. There have been many cases that people or students have taken their on lives because there were bullied. I'm trying to stop it. Why don't you join me to stop the bullying. That is my goal. You can also call the kids help phone to help you with the bullying. There for bullying must be stop please help me to stop it. It hurts me to see it or hear about it.