The Fanpop Blog

And jolly we are as Fanpop keeps burning up the charts! This month we’re on track to hit over 3 million unique users and have just crossed into the top 2000 Alexa sites and just cross the top 1300 sites on Quantcast. But the stat that means much more to us is how addicted you guys are to the site! 30 million pageviews is not to shabby and shows us that the features that we’ve worked so hard to build have really paid off. You like us, you really like us! Special thanks to all the Twilight fanatics out there who came in droves to the Twilight Series Fan Club when the movie came out in theaters.

Don’t worry Fanpoppers, we won’t rest on our laurels, because we know that our work is far from done. We have a lot of new features in the hopper to make your experience even better. We listen to you guys and know that to keep these numbers up we have to make sure you’re happy campers.

Another year has flown by and Fanpop turns two years old on August 1, 2008! We launched the public beta site two years ago today and it’s been a wild ride. The site looks so different now than it did when we launched it. This year we spent a lot of time refining and optimizing the site so it could handle the millions of users that hit it every month. Tons of new faces started POPping up across the site as well as POPular new fan clubs like Twilight which came out of nowhere to become one of our most active fandoms.

We launched some really hot new features this past year like Fanpop Chat and the Pop Quiz which has become a huge hit with the users! Not to mention those really cool virtual prizes you guys seem to be collecting more of all the time! We also rolled out the new and improved My Updates which has given Fanpoppers a really powerful way to manage their experience and the fire hose of new content coming from all their spots each day.

We saw the community really come together like never before to pull of some amazing events like the Fanpoppies (congrats to all the winners!) and Fanpop’s Got Talent (Don’t worry papa has not kidnapped me…yet. The team has been overwhelmed by the community of Fanpoppers support over the past two years even during the tough times (images anyone?). But without all of you, we don’t know where this site would be. We wouldn’t have hundreds of mind-blowing movie quiz questions from chel1395 and we wouldn’t be laughing ourselves off our seats from watching amazondebs and cinders video outtakes either. You guys make us smile all the time with your funny comments and encouraging messages to us.

So join the Fanpop Four (as we’ve been dubbed so appropriately) in eating our virtual birthday cake and here’s to another fantastic year of Fanpoppery!

Dave pointed out a very funny posting to a project-posting website called ScripLance the other day. The site allows individuals and companies to post job/projects to solicit bids from third-parties. Imagine our surprise then, when we found out that someone named “wiklos” had posted a request to build him a Fanpop clone.

Amusingly, the lowest bidder has offered to build the Fanpop Clone for $500 in 10 days.

Hello from New York. I’m out here for business travel trying to wheel and deal for Fanpop. Yesterday was a big day for Fanpop. Since we launched back in August 2006, we’ve been steadily climbing like the Little Engine that Could up the ranks of biggest sites on the web. One of the sites we watch to see how well we’re doing relative to other sites is Alexa. It’s definitely not the most accurate site, but a lot of people use it as an indicator. We finally crossed a threshold for the first time into the top 4,000! On Quantcast we’ve also broken into the top 4,000 with over 1.4 million monthly visitors to Fanpop worldwide. We get really excited about each milestone we hit because it means that we’re moving in the right direction. Top 3,000 here we come!

Today marks of our 1-year anniversary of launching Fanpop! That’s right folks, it was one year ago today that we pressed the button and unleashed Fanpop to the world wide web. And since then, we’ve had millions and millions of people come to the site. It’s been great because we’ve gotten to know so many of you through the community. Whether it be in a fun forum game like A-Z in Heroes or a heat Picks debate about vanilla vs. chocolate, we’ve really bonded with our users over the past year.

We’ve really been encouraged by all of your messages and comments to the team. One of the biggest reasons we keep chugging along and working so hard on making Fanpop a great community site is because of your kind words. But what really bowled the team over was amyfitz‘ soapbox article titled You Know You’re Crazily Addicted to Fanpop When…. Not only was it hilarious, but it made us believe that we must be doing something right when cool folks like Amy and other users comment about how much they love the site. I sometimes go back just to read the article and comments again to remind myself that you all are why we get excited about doing what we do each day (and then I grab my box of tissues because I get so choked up!). The community keeps growing and growing each month and if we keep getting users as awesome as the ones we have now (adding images, writing soapbox articles, uploading videos, giving props, starting forum games, etc.), then we’re in for another really great year of Fanpopping! Thank you to all of you users who make the site so darn good.

During the week, Papa and I often work from a cafe here in San Francisco while Michael and Cliff work from home down in the South Bay. We tried out a bunch of places with free wireless a la Hotspotr. We started off at the place where all of the new startups in San Francisco seemed to be going called Ritual Roasters in the Mission. That got too crowded and there were also stories in the news about people getting mugged in cafes at knifepoint for their laptops (especially shiny ones with glowing Apple logos like Papa and I use!). I tried a few others like The Grove Cafe in the Marina and Axis Cafe in Potrero Hill. But we finally decided that the best place for us was Canvas Cafe in the Inner Sunset next to Golden Gate Park near Papa’s house (and where I lived back in the day).

The key to a good working cafe are:

1. Character and charm – You don’t want to be sitting at a cookie-cutter cold Starbucks or a place that doesn’t have a local feel to it. The best places are those that have cool furniture, colorful walls and decor, and fun staff.

2. Good music – If you’re going to be sitting at a place for hours and hours, the last thing you want to have to endure is crappy music or music that’s too loud and distracting.

3. Mixed crowd – It’s nice to have a diversity of people wherever you work because when you start daydreaming (not that I ever do), you can people watch. San Francisco is such a diverse city that it’s always fun to see all the eclectic types that make this city so wonderful to live in.

4. Tasty food and drinks – A cafe isn’t a cafe unless they have quality munchies and can make a mean latte.

We finally found our home at Canvas Cafe, which had all of these qualities only to find out that it was closing forever on April 29th (I have mixed feelings because it’s turning into a Pacific Catch, one of my favorite seafood joints in the Marina). The great part about Canvas was that it was a very neighborhood joint where local artists and musicians could display their talent. There were all kinds of people there from students to families to startup guys like us. But alas, all good things must come to an end. We will miss you Canvas.

Now Papa and I are nomads once again and looking for a new home. Any suggestions?

Doh. Another month has flown by and my mom reminded me that I haven’t updated our corporate blog. It’s been a great month with tons of new users joining Fanpop like potterdraconius, bealoser, and petronius. We’re continuing to get the new and improved Fanpop ready for you all. Thank you so much for your continued feedback and support everyone! Hmmm what else happened in February. The new sixth season of American Idol started. NBC premiered the new show The Black Donnellys in the Monday night slot once held by Studio 60. The 79th Academy Awards were held and Will Ferrell performed a hilarious song while Jennifer Hudson won for Best Supporting Actress for Dreamgirls. Britney Spears lost her mind along with her hair. Can’t wait for March Madness to begin!

Alrighty then! It looks like I’ve managed to stick with tradition and failed at keeping my new year’s resolution to post more often to this blog. Sigh. Things have been pretty busy around the “office” while we chug away for the sake of our users. Lots of great new users are joining us all the time like bSd and Archie. We aim to please, so we hope you like what we’re working on. Tonight is another hot new episode of Heroes. There are a bunch of sneak previews and a behind-the-scenes clips in the spot. The Office (US) Spot continues to grow as our top spot with almost 500 fans. Tons of new deleted footage added by sfdude and bSd that are hilarious. I’d highly recommend checking those out for some good laughs especially if you’re a fan of the show. This past weekend in sports it looks like Tiger Woods won his 7th consecutive PGA Tour title while Roger Federer won his 10th Grand Slam at the Australian Open. We are fortunate enough to be seeing two of the possibly greatest athletes in their respective sports of all time. And finally, this Sunday, a battle of midwestern titans as the Indianapolis Colts battle the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl down in Miami. Should be a fun game with lots of new legendary ads.

Happy 2007 Fanpoppers! 2006 was a big year for Fanpop! We created a company, built a team, and launched a website all in 2006. If you told me in 2005 that I would be running a company that was building a really fun and cool website that would be used by millions of people all over the world by the end of 2006, I would have probably either laughed at you or asked if you were feeling well. I still can’t believe it myself sometimes. You like us, you really really like us! We’ve gotten so much encouragement and positive feedback from our users that we can’t wait to see what 2007 has in store for us. What I do know is that one of my New Year’s resolutions is to actually update the Fanpop company blog more regularly! For those of you who still read this, we appreciate it. The goal of this blog was to communicate and build relationships with our users. We’ve already connected with many of you through personal messages, comments and in forums across the site. Our favorite new users are chunkyrice13, pirateroro and loner614. You guys rock!

Lots of new spots being added lately with the new year arriving and new products and shows on the horizon.

Courteney Cox’s new show on FX, Dirt, is going to be a winner I think. It’s about the seedy underworld of Hollywood and the paparazzi. I watched the first episode and thought it was pretty unique and edgy. Very Nip/Tuck, which I’m a big fan of. Another new show is Grease: You’re the One that I Want, on NBC which should be a lot of fun for all you Grease fans out there. A few other shows will be returning to the television lineup as well like the long awaited Season 6 of 24 and the new season of American Idol and the Apprentice. The big news this week was the Apple announcement of the iPhone and David Beckham signing to play soccer in the US for the Los Angeles Galaxy. Pretty exciting week!

Hopefully I’ll be able to stick with this resolution, unlike so many other failed resolutions in past years. If 2007 is anything as insanely fun and crazy as 2006 was, then I’m in for a wild ride. Stay tuned for some exciting developments on Fanpop!

Yikes, it’s almost Christmas! For anyone who is still reading our blog, we totally owe you an apology for being so lame about posting. We’ve been busy at work on the site trying to get some more features out by the end of the year. You’ll be the first to hear once we get them up and running. Thanks again to everyone for their encouraging words and helpful feedback.

Christmas time is definitely one of my favorite times of the year. It’s not quite the same out here in California though. Growing up in the northeast I was accustomed to having white Christmases and houses all lit up. Here in San Francisco, it’s just raining a lot and I haven’t seen very many lights. I don’t even have a Christmas tree up in my apartment. Papa tells me I need to spruce the place up with some Christmas spirit. I definitely miss Christmas-time in New York City. There’s just something about breathing in the crisp winter air, hearing the bell of the Salvation Army ringing, the endless strands of lights up and down the streets and holiday shoppers frantically running in and out of stores that are blasting out the classic Christmas tunes. I always get a little homesick this time of year, but then I realize I’m not freezing my buns off either!

In the spirit of Christmas, you should go and check out the Christmas Spot. There’s a really sweet collection of classic Christmas songs and television specials there. Here’s a few of my favorites:

Mickey’s Christmas Carol

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

It’s a Wonderful Life

Frosty the Snowman

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Little Drummer Boy (David Bowie and Bing Crosby)

Last Christmas (Wham)

Christmas Lights Gone Wild