Subeta to be the next biggest pet site?
Subeta: the next big pet site?
Subeta is older than Marapets.com - about a few months older and Marapets is a lot bigger, however; there’s still hope for Subeta if they continue to add new unique features that no other pet site has. Apparently Subeta was the first pet site to implement an ajax-based trading system and is growing at a rapid pace of over 300 new users a day and currently has a total users count of 149,145 users. Can Subeta compete with the big pet sites such as, Neopets, Powerpets or Marapets or will Subeta always maintain its unique atmosphere of emos, and homos? Its owner is gay and Subeta attracts all the emos, bi-sexuals, and gay people.
You may think this is an understatement, but shouldn’t a pet site’s owner keep his/her sexuality away from the members? If you’re gay, who cares, focus on your game and try to make it large. Isn’t that what the point is - to become bigger than Neopets and have a better site? At Subeta’s current rate, they don’t stand a chance at becoming the next big virtual pet site - unless they step up and change their ways.
Users have reported being banned for dissing the owner - as well as not receiving their accounts back after the Longcat issue. What gives? Where is Subeta’s support? Can Subeta continue to grow with the lack of support? Maybe Subeta is trying to be like Neopets - and run a pet site without support, or maybe, Keith doesn’t care about his users. What do you guys think? Can Subeta surpass the top dogs (Neopets, Marapets, Powerpets and Zetapets) as the biggest virtual pet sites or will Subeta eventually die out?
I think the problem here is that you are equating bigger with better. Also, you are assuming that the goal/purpose/point is the same for every pet site: to be the largest petsite that exists and have the most members.
In my personal experience, a lot of the time, having everything in bulk means that the quality goes down.
As for the sexuality, who cares? That’s they way the owner envisioned his site. Obviously, the point, at least for that owner, is to have a site that LGBT and emo people can dominate on.
Your blog seems to only have one point of view, I think you need to consider thinking about other motives in petsites, their owners, and their communities than simply “Getting Big”and “Gaining Power”
It’s just not that important to some people…
Comment by atlas_arc — October 17, 2007 @ 10:54 am
Well, Subeta has always kept their quality level up there regardless of growth. Why do you think we have one point of view? We’ve had successful with “getting big” and “Gaining power”, and we’ll try to succeed with the other motives in petsites, but we’re not sure what the other owners’ views are.
Comment by admin — October 17, 2007 @ 11:20 am
I’m thinking of motives such as:
Social Networking
Many times a site’s best feature is a community that brings together people of similar interests. When you have too many people you end up losing the whole community to cliques, which also creates tension between factions. (Result: flamewars) Sites like this also become harder to interact on when they become too large; people post responses so quickly that you cannot possibly have a coherent conversation. This also works the other way, though, if your site has only ten people on it, you might as well just start a IM chat.
Challenging Gameplay
This one actually can be kept just as valid with large communities as with small ones. But that doesn’t mean that the site is all about gaining more people, it is focused purely on having a game that people truly enjoy playing because of its features (I’m not targeting any one pet site here, I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t played Subeta, or many other petsites, though I have looked at them.) Games like this can ALSO focus on the Big/Power goals, but don’t necessarily do so. Generally in this type the owner just wants to have an outlet for creativity and a playground for themselves, and if other people enjoy it as well, great!
Economic Model
These ones have owners who like to have the challenge of balancing a game themselves. They enjoy tweaking the economy to make it perfect, or make it difficult for richer players to get everything or poor players to beg. These games are actually very close to the “Power” types, but the owner does not feel the need to keep the users under his or her thumb. In fact, I think the best owner is the one that you rarely see, but often updates.
I’m sure that there are others that I haven’t thought of, but from what I can read, you seem to assume that every owner wants the exact same results from their site.
Comment by atlas_arc — October 17, 2007 @ 11:43 am
We’ve covered most of that in our creating a virtual pet site and succeeding post. We didn’t cover it as much as you though. Would you like to be a guest poster? contact us
Comment by admin — October 17, 2007 @ 11:54 am
Thanks again Atlas. You nailed exactly what was vaguely bothering me. I am of the impression that most sites start as an “outlet for creativity and a playground for themselves, and if other people enjoy it as well, great!” Not as corporations out to get users and earn bucks on the traffic.
“We’ve had successful with “getting big” and “Gaining power””
Erm. What? I don’t think I understand what you mean…
“Subeta has always kept their quality level up there regardless of growth.”
I don’t know what level of quality Zeta has, but I hope that it can do the same.
Comment by ManzanitaGrove — October 17, 2007 @ 5:04 pm
Oh, I meant that we’ve had success with getting pet sites that were once small to become a larger one. One prime example is Rescreatu which has gained 1,000 new users since we’ve started working on it.
Comment by admin — October 17, 2007 @ 5:29 pm