ozoneocean
Wowio are completely different. They're an e-book publisher for mainly comic type stuff. With DD they're just expanding their digital media business portfolio… Their strategy with DD is to take an existing, successful comic hosting community and grow it by investing in it so that it becomes a more viable media outlet as one of the Wowio family of sites.
DD offers a related service to wowio (online comics) and so could be good for more cross promotional stuff with other Wowio products in future- Maybe DD artists will be able to easily sell Wowio e-book versions of their comics (has been very profitable for authors in the past), there's the popgalaxy TV thing, etc.

DD for Wowio is more of a long term investment though: it's a strong sort of thing on its own, but it's not a viable money making or even self supporting thing. With Wowio money coming in to fix and grow the site they'll first make it self sustaining. Later on It can work more profitably with their other sites etc…

I've no access to the Wowio business plan- but I know their objectives are more along those lines than IP speculation, which is far more prickly and fraught.

Thanks for clearing up that Platinum bit, Oz.

As to Wowios's plans… I hope it doesn't end up like an Etsy sort of thing. With the e-book publications, I mean. Most creative people on Etsy make very little on that site, I understand. It's the sellers, the businesses that sell supplies to the artists, that turn a profit. It seems suppliers are always profiting from artists… the guy who buys wholesale beads and sells them at a premium to the gal making hand-made jewelery… that sort of thing. Kablam makes a lot of scratch off of folks wanting to print their comics, but the creators usually wind up in the hole. Wrong? Maybe not, but d*mn frustrating.

I can see Wowio maybe going Kablam, possibly, and putting out DD member e-books in a similar type of deal… i.e., member pays Wowio to put out e-book, perhaps at some special rate, or some such thing, then sells it on one of the sister sites (probably having to cut Wowio in for a share of the take). Might seem cool to some folks, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The only fair publishing deal I see is one in which the publisher approaches the writer/artist, pays them a fair premium, plus royalties and a percentage on any merchandising for their work, then rolls out the product and sells it, so-to-speak.

I know this is all speculation, and I'm not calling down Wowio, I just don't care for the kind of waters artists have to navigate. We always seem to be on the wrong end of the cash flow these days.

The thing with ebooks though, you don't need someone else to sell them for you. So it's kinda hard to get grumpy at someone for doing something you could just as easily have done yourself.
Webcomic hosting is that way too. It only costs you a bit of pocket change each month.
Printing is a different story though. Unless you're already rich.

The feedback tab here on this site is confusing a couple of people. It appears that the “getsatisfaction” site now has topics that are actually comic comments.

ayesinback
The feedback tab here on this site is confusing a couple of people. It appears that the “getsatisfaction” site now has topics that are actually comic comments.

Niiiice.

xD

Yeah that made me chuckle.

ayesinback
The feedback tab here on this site is confusing a couple of people. It appears that the “getsatisfaction” site now has topics that are actually comic comments.

Yeah. The feedback tap is present in every single comic page on drunk duck, which means that everyone who's not paying attention to the forum or the news is not gonna know what it's for.

The Get Satisfaction site seems to be down at the moment. Perhaps too many people are leaving feedback now, as if there is such a thing. LOL!

Ya, going sloooooow for me.

Heh! I just realised- DD is going from being all patchy, weird, a bit dodgy looking and very user customisable and breakable (WINDOWS) to streamlined, built from the ground up, all designed on a theme and being more patrician on the user customisable thing (APPLE),

*Mind blown* O_o

So DD is turning to the dark side.

I'm already wearing my black turtle-neck and jeans.
WHERE ARE YOURS??!!!

just finished a huge long interview with Kinh, Lawrence and Zach answering as many questions as we could think of. Couldn't go in too strong on the questions though because they're all lovely people and we're nice, but it was decently robust. Not Paxman (or even David Frost) by any means.

is that going to be on tuesdays QC?

ozoneocean
DD > Apple

But it doesn't come in different colors yet.


Genejoke- yes, that's what I understand. They should be putting out the 2 hours at once though and not split up on different days.

skoolmunkee

ozoneocean
DD > Apple

But it doesn't come in different colors yet.

It's the all new iduck!

I just happened upon this
http://www.wevolt.com/

It's another webcomics site that Wowio owns. They've already ‘worked their magic’ on this one. Take a look around, see what Wowio has in mind for DD… from the huge sidebar to the ‘Go Pro’ link… check it all out, especially the comic pages… if the horror of Geocities websites comes to mind, you're right… on anything lower than 1280x1024 screen size you actually hav to scroll over just to see the comic page.

Tim Wellman
I just happened upon this
http://www.wevolt.com/just to see the comic page.

That's not the big discovery you might think it is. Wevolt has been promoted as another of Wowio's sites since it was launched a year ago Tim.

But it didn't really take off because it was so complicated to use. nd because of that Drunk Duck WON'T be going in that direction ;)

We'll even address that aspect in next week's extra long Quackcast on Tuesday.


As to the ‘worked their magic’ line: Wevolt is 100% the work of two guys, Matt Jacobs and Jason Badower (think that's his name), who sold the idea of that site to Wowio. (both great people who I have met in person too)
The people working on DD are Lawrence Leach and his programming team and designers working under Zach. Nothing to do with Wevolt.

The only crossover that will happen is the taking of any good features from there to add to DD, like their huge, exhaustive stats pages.

But you could always ask Lawrence yourself directly using the feedback feature…
…and I'm probably wasting my time here because you say you don't read replies anyway.

Tim Wellman
I just happened upon this
http://www.wevolt.com/

It's another webcomics site that Wowio owns. They've already ‘worked their magic’ on this one. Take a look around, see what Wowio has in mind for DD… from the huge sidebar to the ‘Go Pro’ link… check it all out, especially the comic pages… if the horror of Geocities websites comes to mind, you're right… on anything lower than 1280x1024 screen size you actually hav to scroll over just to see the comic page.

I dunno, that pro thing sounds much better than DA's.
$4, 1 goes to another member of the site, and you get a bigger canvas to work with and no ads.

Admittedly I'd go with thin comics anyway, and also I use adblock, but still, better than “We will remove this rudimentary feature you've gotten used to, then make you pay to get it back” of DA.

Tim, you sure are vocal for a guy that said he was never appearing on Drunk Duck again.

I understood Tim's frustration at the start of the thread and mostly agreed with it.
But, I wonder if he's seen the replies Wowio are making back now. They seem to be working pretty hard to make the site better all around. At this point I think it'd be best to give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise AFTER the Duck goes officially live.

Then you'll really know if what they are saying to us is to blow smoke or if they are doing as you fear.

I'm just wondering about(AND hoping on)the following:

If I transfer over my account to ‘The Duck’ I would like to finally change my Username, but keep all that I've obtained during my time at DD.
Its like this, When I created my username it was suppose to say; Me_Emjar, but an error in printing stuck me with… meemjar.
Now I don't hate it, but I want to be known by my copyrighted Nom-de-Plume of Emjar.

Secondly, I want to transfer my artwork page by page and include ALL the comments and page hits so I keep my level in the ranks, which I've worked hard to obtain.

I think that the addition to the stats page is to know how many hits are unique and know how many people have faved your work, without needing to know WHO they are, so as to respect their privacy, but you at least get to know how liked your work is. :)

I listened to that whole Quack Cast :P
According to it all your pages, comments, forum posts, etc will transfer to the new site. And (most) of your html if applicable.

For your name changing you should post that suggestion on the get satisfaction site.
http://getsatisfaction.com/drunkduck/topics

The Wowio team wants to hear suggestions like that there.

JustNoPoint
I listened to that whole Quack Cast :P

Me, too. it was exhausting. I can only imagine how tough that might have been to record.

JustNoPoint
For your name changing you should post that suggestion on the get satisfaction site.
http://getsatisfaction.com/drunkduck/topics

The Wowio team wants to hear suggestions like that there.

That's not exactly what I heard.

I heard stuff like:

———-we don't want to come off all corporate

———-we've been here a long time and really appreciate the amazing art

———-we want to continue making the site free to creators and so we have to consider the branding from an advertiser's perspective

Then I heard about how there were many discussions that “we” were involved in, and the many name considerations.

I did not hear about how there is wiggle room about the name.

I maintain my stance that The Duck is a stupid name, but it's not the biggest issue. I didn't come to this site because I loved the name Drunk Duck, although it had a certain craziness to it that I found intriguing. And so there's nothing intriguing, charming, witty about “The Duck”. It makes advertisers comfortable — but will it intrigue new visitors?

I think the three designers are aces about listening to the complaints/concerns/suggestions regarding site functionalities and trying to resolve those issues. And they HAVE resolved a lot of them while introducing some nice improvements. Still don't know why they can't provide a “to do / we're working on it” list there on the feedback site. oh well.

But they are the designers, right? They are not the marketing people, and they are not comic creators. So I'm not sure why they are speaking to branding issues and user experience unless corporate has charged them to do so, or unless they see these as trivial perspectives.

In the long run, it doesn't mean jack shit what I think about it, I just hate being “handled”. Viewing comics is the DD user experience that it appears that the designers come armed with. That's a small fraction of what many in the community does with this site, but it represents the same user experience of the, what? 400,000 daily visits that come to DD. And those visits are initiated by the most popular comics, as the theory goes.

But from what I've seen and heard, a lot of those visits are also derived from the community members, whether it's private self-promotion among friends, or ads, inter-networking, or comic readers who stumble into the forums and get hooked. The site is founded on comics and fostered by the community, and the corporate people, who ever they are, don't seem to count the community as an asset.

Whatever — I don't expect any one at Wowio to be looking to change the name.

But there is a lot of attention and problem-solving going on about functionality. I hope everyone continues to provide that feedback.

ozoneocean

skoolmunkee

ozoneocean
DD > Apple

But it doesn't come in different colors yet.

It's the all new iduck!

Or the Dune!

…


@Ayes's comment about not attracting visitors: I think it might attract more “cultured people”, it's so savvy a name. Makes me think of drinking coffee and being French.

The only good that could come of that is no more nerdy spriters and a hell of a lot of stuck up, talented, people.

Or it might attract porn addicts but either way it works out well enough.


In fact, the name's growing on me a bit…

@ayesinback : I didn't mean to change the name of the site. I meant the ability to change your username. Or at the very least your display name. That's a feature meemjar was asking about.

I took the liberty of asking for it at the getsatisfaction site for him as well.

@JustNoPoint: Thank you. It's cool. :)

I Am The 1337 Master
Or the Dune!

Then it would be brown…

@Ayes- Actually none of the people we talked to in the Quackcast were the designers… Lawrence is the chief programmer so he was behind all the programming decisions. Kinh is the website coordinator, he's a go between for all the sites and the people working on them Wowio has running. And Zach is the creative director so he's the one with the broad vision for all the ideas behind the look of things and he also overseas what the designer comes up with.
Out of all of them, Zach would've had the most say about the name.

Originally they did tell Skool and I that they'd have to change the name and it was going to be something like “the Quack”. And they asked us if we could come up with a better one, but we had to keep that secret.
We were both extremely dubious about changing the name.
Looking back, we should've campaigned for it to be open to the community.

——-
Anyway, we had been told that there was still wiggle room about the new name when the preview site was being released… But it might be one of those things: because multiple people have different responsibilities, one person may tell us something that the person with ultimate responsibility doesn't agree with- so we get the wrong message.
——-
But it's not sooo bad. I think most people who really care (like me) will still call us DD. It's just a branding thing really.

ozoneocean
Looking back, we should've campaigned for it to be open to the community.

They didn't sound like they'd have allowed that going from what they said in the interview.

Tad annoying they seem to have so little clue about web comics other than what we're trying to tell them, but whatever.

They sounded knowledgeable - well, knowledgeable enough. They didn't sound like artists who'd been posting comics themselves, but I have to disagree with the "they just don't know Drunk Duck personally" argument.

All three of them mentioned being readers (at the very least) for some length of time. And I can't buy the argument that they are clueless. They've come up with some awesome new improvements (like nesting comments and pq's) all on their own. That shows at least some familiarity with the site.

The more I'm frequenting the preview, the more I'm actually looking forward to the rollover to the new site. I really feel as long as there is an ability to sufficiently customize a comic, then we might actually be gaining more than we are losing!

What, why are you looking at me like that? Yes, I like the new site. No- don't hate me! Aaah!-
*dodges rotten fruit*

Oh I'm sure they know the ins and outs of DD, and they mentioned having built other community sites at some point, so they know the kind of stuff that goes well with that. They just come off to me as detached from web comics. They admitted to staying away from the forums, and they took a long while to get what Ozone was on about when he was trying to explain the use of Project Wonderful.
Ah, whatever, I'm being too critical…