Posts Tagged “acquistions”

If you haven’t heard by now, “leading lifestyle destination for men” CraveOnline has acquired social networking website MyAnimeList. Unlike Mania’s buyout of AnimeOnDVD, I would not expect there to be drastic visual overhauls and it is comforting to know that Xinil will remain lead administrator and editor-in-chief.

From Xinil’s post on the MAL general forums:

This acquisition enables MAL to continue to grow without being burdened by rising server and bandwidth fees (which have increased a lot lately), and helps us branch out into more beneficial features (think video). CraveOnline has no plans to change our community or thwart the direction we’re headed. If anything, they’ll help us get the things we need faster and more efficiently.

Onto the slightly worrying part: in the press release, Mike Dodge, SVP/General Manager of AtomicOnline (CraveOnline’s parent company), said that “MyAnimeList continues to bolster CraveOnline’s leadership position in the highly competitive online male youth market“. As far as I know, the general anime and manga fan community is diverse between both genders and MAL shouldn’t be too different.

A quick advanced search of MAL’s user base conducted this afternoon shows that 14,107 of its 79,056 users have described themselves as female, 19,364 as male, and 45,585 have not specified a gender. So that means out of the 33,471 who picked one or the other, it’s 58% male and 42% female which seems to be a pretty good balance.

I’m not intending to make a mountain out of a molehill so I apologize if it appears that way but my minor worrying is based on a perception of AtomicOnline’s attitude toward its brands. While I know MAL won’t be totally messed with, there could be a change in the way it is marketed toward non-users and in potential shifts in on-site advertising including cross-site promotions.