Smack Jeeves has been sold out from under its community to a Korean mobile content provider company NHN. The same company approached us last year but the deal didn't go through because we were too strict on retaining control of the site and protecting our community, SJ apparently didn't have those same concerns for the people that made the site so special and that is a huge shame. What's happened now is that NHN is streamlining the site, minimising the creative members who host their comics there and turning it into a content delivery site for its hand-picked pro work, turning it into another souless clone corporate of Webtoons or Tapas.
This is a travesty. It's the creative people who host comics on our sites that MAKE the sites what they are. Hosts like us put in a lot of time and money to build these webcomic hosts, but cumulatively the creators that host with us put in a hell of a lot more and it's only down to them that any of us have the profile we do. It's THAT which NHN wanted to by out: the internet traffic and site presence that has been built up over a decade by those site members and they've all been betrayed.
Now there are precious few independent egalitarian webcomic hosts left… just us and Comic Fury I think? It's a shame because in its day Smack Jeeves was awesome with many amazing features that were ahead of their time.
We go into this much deeper as well as our own experience with corporate take overs in the Quackcast. Give it a listen. It's a bit ranty but there's some interesting stuff there.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to “Banes’ theme” - Welcome to the rockin’ church of Gunwallace! Come on it and say your prayers with all due reverence and an attitude beatific joy for your lord has risen and his name is BANES! (based on Bane's musical intro for last week's Quackcast).
Topics and shownotes
Links
My Newspost (much more detail) - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/dec/08/sad-day-for-smack-jeeves/
Corporate Smack Jeeves :( - https://www.smackjeeves.com/
Religion in Fiction cast from last week - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/nov/30/quackcast-455-religion-in-fiction/
Featured comic:
Barkham Horror - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2019/dec/03/featured-comic-barkham-horror/
Featured music:
Banes' Theme - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/, by Gunwallace, rated X
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
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