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Hi everyone!
I’ve been hard at work on a whole new set of coolness for MOCpages. Everything’s
nearly ready and I wanted to give you a sneak preview of what’s coming. (Some
pictures below, and lots more to read at http://www.mocpages.com/about/2009/)
Moving past the realm of online sharing, MOCpages is dipping its toes into the
world of social networking. It’s been a long time coming, especially since for
the past year, members have been pushing the boundaries of what’s possible on
MOCpages. (Have you seen
MOCtag or the
MOC Olympics ?)
Folks have been itching to chat, collaborate, run contests, form clubs, etc.
So I’m SUPER happy to say that soon MOCpages will provide a way for you to
collaborate on projects, stay updated, skip the junk and get to the cool stuff,
track your favorite builders, join groups, create contests, ... and of course,
share your LEGO creations. I’ve also taken major steps to overhaul the
commenting and rating systems, which have been a frequent source of rudeness.
One of the other major goals of these changes is to keep MOCpages friendly for
both adults and children ... keeping childish people from bothering adults, and
keeping adults from being too standoffish to kids.
All in all, over 50 new features - big & small. And still 100% free.
Sneak preview
Sean
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Sean Kenney
Community leader
www.MOCpages.com - Share your LEGO creations
 ...
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Hello, everyone!
MOCpages turns 5 years old today! I can’t believe it...
Turn back the clock to 2003... Content sharing communities like flickr and
youtube didn’t even exist. Blogging was around, but not really mainstream
yet... Social networking was the hot new thing (remember Friendster??). When
MOCpages came on the scene, we didn’t even know what it was -- it was sort of
like blogging, sort of like “web hosting”, sort of like community...
Here’s my original announcement,
LUGNET post, “MOCpages is here”.
(OK, yes, I launched a few days early...)
Now, 53,000 LEGO creations later, MOCpages is one of the busiest LEGO
communities on the web. Almost 45,000 people visit every DAY, and that number
is always going up. I want to thank everyone out there who uses MOCpages for
making it what it is. I put the framework in place, but MOCpages would be
nothing without all the awesome creations!
It’s come a long way ... (Click to enlarge)
I can’t believe it’s been 5 years. :) (Gets me a little choked up, actually.)
:)
Feelin’ nostalgic,
Sean
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http://www.mocpages.com/home.php/1
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Hi, everybody.
With all that’s been going on, a lot of people have been asking me things like:
“what should I do?”
“Should I stay on Brickshelf or move to MOCpages?”
“How do I know if any of these services are safe?”
Let me start by saying that Kevin did an amazing job offering Brickshelf to all
of us for free, and it’s always been a valuable core to the fan communities. I
have hundreds of pictures there, myself. And I know from my own experience
running MOCpages that what he’s done has not been easy.
This is my plan, and what I intend to do for the good of all you guys.
MOCpages is, and always has been, a place to share your LEGO creations.
Pictures are a very important part of sharing a LEGO creation, but what’s even
better that just browsing files is being about to read about creations, to hear
what people think, to get ideas, and to learn and grow from each other. And
I’ve always believed very strongly in that. That’s why I started MOCpages, and
I firmly believe that’s why you guys all use it.
The changes I’ve made to MOCpages this week are here to stay. In fact, I will
continue to expand MOCpages’ services so that it can continue to grow with the
community and be a strong and solid core for fans everywhere, for years to come.
This is something that I’ve always wanted to do, but only recently has it become
obvious to me that it’s really needed.
“Who is Sean? Can I trust this guy?”
For those of you that don’t know me, I’ve been heavily involved in the community
for a long time. I’ve been collaborating on LUGNET and RTL for over 10 years. I
helped launch LEGO Factory with The LEGO Company back in 2003. I build town,
sculpture, and micro, although few know I have a huge ‘80s space collection. :)
Together with folks like Robin Sather, I helped create the LEGO Ambassadors
program. (I designed that logo!) :) I have good working professional
relationships with many, many LEGO Company employees, and speak with them daily.
And I’m one of the world’s five LEGO Certified Professionals; my full-time,
self-employed, day-job is creating LEGO sculptures and running MOCpages. Before
I became a full-time “LEGO guy” I worked for 10 years designing humane,
approachable, and purposeful solutions for web applications.
Money?
As a business owner, I know that the only way to keep any service alive is to
run it with a solid financial plan. For years now, MOCpages has been paying its
own bills, covering the cost of servers, upgrades, moderation, and maintinence.
But as the site grows, these will expenses grow, and I will be rolling out three
additional revenue streams: 1) membership, 2) sponsorship, and 3) affilliations.
The purpose of diversified income is so that there is no failure point; if one
pulls in less money for some reason, the others can cover it. I’ll have more
details on the specifics of these later, because right now I’m still putting the
business plan togther.
Because “paid memberships” have been a sticking point here in the forums lately,
I want to address it specifically. I’ve been analyzing how people use sites
like MOCpages and Brickshelf, and how they share their creations. The continued
free MOCpages service will be designed so that most of you can still use (and be
very happy with) the service not having to pay anything. Those who want to flex
their virutal muscles can sign up for a paid membership, of which there will be
two levels. (Basic and Premium, for example.) The two paid levels will get you
all sorts of really cool features in addition to just more storage or other
“basic nessecities”. I’m excited about them, frankly, and I’ll share more when
development of these cool new features is underway and price points are
available. I want to stress again that MOCpages will stay fundamentally free,
much as it is today.
AFOLs rock
But it all comes back to you guys. MOCpages is only a success because of the of
people use it. Last month, over 1.2 million people came to see your creations.
And 85% of the regulars show up every day. It fills me with joy to hear things
like DecoJim’s story, who found a club
and made friends, all because of MOCpages. (And he’s one of my favorite
builders, to boot!)
So to answer those questions, “what should I do?” ... I’d personally love to see
you guys come to MOCpages. It’s up to you, of course, but we’re going to have a
great time there and it’s only going to get better.
Sean
- - -
MOCpages admin
www.mocpages.com
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In lugnet.publish, Jason J Railton wrote:
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May I make a request about something that has put me off MOCpages so far? It
may be already there, but it’s the way some visitors use their comments that
put me right off.
I know a lot of people want them, but I’d like the ability to turn off
comments on the models I myself submit. Maybe have the option of
comments/votes only/no feedback, both per-model and a default setting for all
new models.
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You can now delete reviews that were written about your LEGO creations.
It’s a first step. Eventually, when you add your LEGO creations to MOCpages,
you’ll be able to say “Let (1)Anyone, (2) Only MOCpages members, or (3) No one,
review this LEGO creation”. But for now, at least you can delete ones you don’t
like. And as always, MOCpages automatically (and I, manually) :) delete
vuglar, attacking, and rude reviews before you ever see them. :)
Sean
- - -
MOCpages admin
www.mocpages.com
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Hi, everyone...
With the looming shut-down of Brickshelf, I would like to offer
MOCpages as a safe alternative for everyone to
continue posting their LEGO creations. In light of this, MOCpages now offers
free image hosting.
Of course, you can also always use MOCpages with flickr, photobucket, maj, or
any other popular image hosting service... it supports full HTML in your pages
(and there are some tips on the help pages if you don’t know HTML.)
Now that Brickshelf is going I would be very sad if there weren’t a place for
everyone to gather and see what’s new. MOCpages has that great
one-stop-shopping, and I’m actively working on making it even better for
everyone (kids and adults alike). My vision has always been for the site to be
a place where people can share their ideas with each other and learn from each
other.
Over the past 4 years, MOCpages has grown, a lot... it currently gets about 20%
the visitors that Brickshelf does. In anticipation of the new image hosting and
of lots of new users, MOCpages is getting a spiffy new web server tomorrow (that
kicks the pants off the old one). They’ll both run together to balance the
site’s traffic. I also am interested in recruiting some moderators to help keep
posts, uploads, and other user-generated content appropriate. Anyone
interested?
I want to assure you that MOCpages won’t suffer the same fate as Brickshelf.
MOCpages has been covering its costs for a few years now, and I plan on
implementing new revenue streams to keep the site running strong with the new
added services. I’d like to implement a (quota/capped) free hosting service,
coupled with a subscription service for greater (or unlimited) service. (a la
flickr). Right now the new image hosting service is free... but that’s just
because I wanted to get it ready for everyone as quickly as possible! :) The
subscription service will be supplemented with sponsorhip and other partnerships
to keep revenue balanced. LEGO activities are my full time job, and MOCpages is
a major chunk of my business operations. It’s not going anywhere, and neither
am I.
Sean
- - -
MOCpages admin
LEGO Certified Professional
guy on LUGNET since 1997
Friend
And lots more I’m sure...
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