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NEWS: Navarre's animeOnline Shuts Down, Promises Re-Launch


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Disembodied Voice



Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 6:22 pm Reply with quote
That was quick. Shocked

I was skeptical of a MySpace/webzine hybrid, but I thought it would've lasted longer than this. Yeah, I know it's a beta test and supposedly they will re-launch, but it just seemed like too much thrown into one pot in an attempt to be the Gamespot / IGN of anime sites w/ the MySpace elements --not to mention it was a pain to navigate. Hopefully, they can retool to a more user-friendly portal.
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Nebs



Joined: 19 Jul 2003
Posts: 384
Location: University of Illinois
PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 6:35 pm Reply with quote
A shame, really. I wasn't into the whole social network part of the site & a lot of the other things it offered, but I loved their news section & enjoyed the weekly articles they would post as well (& this was before my blog got cited by them). I'll miss it a lot, but the best reporter of the bunch, gia, seems to have started her own anime blog to continue where aO left off.
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LilacShadow



Joined: 27 Sep 2005
Posts: 165
Location: Kentucky
PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 6:56 pm Reply with quote
Well, that kinda sucks... I had an account on the site, but I wasn't getting on there very much lately anyway. I'd rather just go on the forums here at ANN. Maybe I'll visit a little more whenever they re-launch the site though.
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larinon



Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Posts: 992
Location: Midland, TX
PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 9:02 pm Reply with quote
I wanted to give the site a shot myself, and I even created an account there. However, every time I connected it seemed like it took forever for things to load, and some pages never loaded. I never once was able to view Rob's profile, no matter how many times I clicked on it. Maybe it's code or server issues (maybe it didn't like Firefox?) - who knows, but I think it's a concept that could work if they could get it working properly and spread the word.
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Kagamin



Joined: 09 Jul 2007
Posts: 4
Location: Lucky ☆ Star Fangirl
PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 1:25 am Reply with quote
It's disappointing that they shut down the site. I actually enjoyed aO despite the fact that it was pretty slow some times. Hopefully, the site will work a lot better when it is re-launched.
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AnimeFanChris



Joined: 28 Mar 2006
Posts: 7
PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 1:59 am Reply with quote
I really am disappointed as well I liked the site and I contacted the decent amount of friends I had on there only through it since many I found by joining thats site. Oh well Anime cry I hope they relaunch soon with a better interface and loading times. The news sections really was great though I think they could tweak some things like the avatar size and the videos I didn't like since they were in wmp format.
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CanSomebodySayMedic



Joined: 16 Sep 2005
Posts: 108
PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 8:11 am Reply with quote
that means, back to the ANN boards...
Who Knew?
Anyways, i hope Rob re-opens the site by the fall, because they had the best news than any other website combined...
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Chibi Alchemist



Joined: 13 Mar 2007
Posts: 15
Location: Southern California
PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 9:23 am Reply with quote
How disappointing. Sad It seems like I just got an account there and now it's gone.
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tlatlatla



Joined: 04 Apr 2007
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 3:40 pm Reply with quote
Did anyone see Rob's final farewell post yesterday afternoon that was yanked just before the site was taken offline?

He said they had all just been fired.

I don't think it's coming back.
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor


Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 7578
Location: Wales
PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 6:09 pm Reply with quote
I could never get in anyway, as I don't live in North America.
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Mozilla
SPAMMER


Joined: 10 Nov 2005
Posts: 93
PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 9:01 pm Reply with quote
I'm so proud of myself right now, THANK YOU GOOGLE CACHE SYSTEM!

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:rECzpmIN2pIJ:www.animeonline.com/index.php%3Fpage%3Dnews_details%26action%3Ddetails%26id%3D102753+•+It%27s+The+End+Of+The+World+(Sayonara,+Guys)&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=ca&client=firefox-a

------------------------------

t's The End Of The World (Sayonara, Guys)
07/20/2007
It Sorry, guys. animeOnline is no more. Navarre and FUNimation have made the choice to pull the plug on our little anime news site and community while they re-evaluate their internet strategy. The Fist of the North Star has punched us, and our head will explode at 6 p.m. EST today, metaphorically speaking.

I’d like to thank all you guys for checking us out and supporting us for the last five months. We appreciated all of it. I’d also like to thank the animeOnline team, great guys and gals all, who did amazing work and overcame some pretty incredible obstacles to get and keep aO running. MisoPretty, Nukunuku, and Torrant deserve a round of applause, so I sent them an mp3 of people clapping on behalf of all of us. As for the editors, I have to say it was an honor to work with them and correct their basic grammar mistakes. But they aren’t gone forever:

• Gia, unable to let go, will continue to report anime news at her blog at giapet.net. I would like to recognize her as the only insane squealing anime fan who also somehow manages to be utterly professional. She’s truly one of a kind (industry folks, you should run – not walk – to georgiamanry.com and hire her).

• You can check out Dale both at Destructoid.com and at Japanator.com, the latter of which I highly recommend to all anime fans. They’re good guys, funny, and I have no doubt they will continue to carry the animeOnline torch of covering anime news entertainingly.

• Bryan will continue to drink heavily and be surrounded by adoring Japanese women in Tokyo. You can pledge your undying love to him at [email protected], ladies.

And I…I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do. But when I figure it out, I promise I’ll let these guys know, so you’ll know. ‘Til then, you all take it easy, and, uh…be cool, stay in school. Or something like that.

Xoxo,
-Rob Bricken
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poehitman



Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Posts: 93
PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:01 am Reply with quote
I'm thinking they will relaunch, because parts of the site are still online as of 3:47 am ET on 7/22. I know the user profile section is still up, as are the forums and the clubs main page. However, unless you have them directly bookmarked, you can't get to them, as trying to go to any other page will automatically redirect you to the message that they are done with the beta testing and will relaunch at a future date. I tend to believe that they will be relaunching since those certain parts of the site are still online. Particularly the user profile section (to save the user ID's of the charter members) and the forums (which were overhauled less than a month ago). I hope it does come back as I really liked that site.

The one thing that does piss me off is how they handled the series-wiki contest this final week. When last week's ended and this week's contest began, no mention of any shutdowns were made. They aren't going to convince me that Navarre called them up at noon on Friday and told them all to be gone by 6pm because they were shutting down the site. They HAD to have more notice than that. I put in a good 18-24 hours of updating, which was usually good enough to win at least 1, usually 2 DVD's out of the 7 per week up for grabs. They waited till that week's contest ended, and then closed down the site. However, they never announced the winners. That means all the people who did updating to their series-wiki did it for nothing. They could have at least awarded the final weeks DVD's before they closed down, as a thank you to their loyal members.
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Anime World Order



Joined: 05 May 2006
Posts: 389
Location: Florida
PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 10:20 am Reply with quote
While it's certainly tragic to see an entire website be shut down, let's not lose sight of the REAL tragedy:

Quote:
The Fist of the North Star has punched us, and our head will explode at 6 p.m. EST today, metaphorically speaking.


That's right, the REAL tragedy is the perpetuation of the Streamline dub's vicious lies! For you see, there is no title conferred upon anyone as being the "Fist of the North Star"! There is only "the successor to Hokuto Shinken"! Buncha amateurs! No wonder the site shut down!

All kidding aside, it sucks that the plug got pulled on that after what, four or five months? It usually takes longer than that for most websites to establish themselves as a name. If the site does relaunch--which seems kind of tricky to pull off when the staff's been let go--with any luck they'll fix the layout. And wasn't it only open to people in North America, too?
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poehitman



Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Posts: 93
PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 1:37 pm Reply with quote
I think it was only open to people in North America, which may be something they are going to change. Personally I liked it that way, but they'd post news on games coming out in Japan that had ZERO chance of coming to the US, which I saw pointless. I'd personally like it if they kept the site only open to North American members (US & Canada) and restricted it to offer an American point of view on the anime market. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the news stories they posted on different happenings in Japan.

As far as I know, only 2 people from the staff were laid off. Rob and Gia, who were, as far as I've been told, the only two full-time employees the site had. The rest were supposedly part time and may be back when the site re-launches. Personally I hope all of them are brought back, including Rob and Gia.
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aOadmin2007



Joined: 10 Jul 2007
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 1:52 pm Reply with quote
Actually, there were many full time employees and we were all let go when the site went down. As for the contest, we were not given the resources to give out any more prizes. Honestly, it is quite hurtful to lose 10 months of very hard work (not to mention to the jobs of 11 people) and have people complain about how they didn't get their Peach Girl DVD this week. I guess some people enjoyed the site for what it was, a helpful anime resource for fans, and some people enjoyed it for the free stuff we gave out. Well, to each his own.
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