Literotica Needs a FANS tab

[peebudy]

I'm interested in what my fellow authors feel about a couple of ideas I have to improve this already fabulous site.

The first would be a FANS tab on your Profile page, next to the Favorites tab, which would list all those who have added you as a Favorite Author on their profile. I think this would be nice because I often enjoy the stories that those who have favorited (word?) me have on their profile page, and it would be an easy way to access it. Also, I sometimes notify those who have favorited me when I post a new story.

Which brings me to my second suggestion. It would be cool if Lit prompted readers to subscribe to your story feed when they added you to their favorites. Those that opted in would get an email notification with a link when you posted a new story. This would be especially helpful for fans of authors who like to write chapterized stories.

My guess is that Literotica makes its money from the web ads, so it would seem the more visitors to this site, the better. I think these suggestions would help bring more return visitors to the site.

What do you think?

-- Peebudy

 

[sr71plt]

The lists would get a little unwieldy. Some authors have been favorited more than 2,000 times.

 

[peebudy]

The lists would get a little unwieldy. Some authors have been favorited more than 2,000 times.

I'd kill to be that popular!

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm interested in what my fellow authors feel about a couple of ideas I have to improve this already fabulous site.

The first would be a FANS tab on your Profile page, next to the Favorites tab, which would list all those who have added you as a Favorite Author on their profile. I think this would be nice because I often enjoy the stories that those who have favorited (word?) me have on their profile page, and it would be an easy way to access it. Also, I sometimes notify those who have favorited me when I post a new story.

Which brings me to my second suggestion. It would be cool if Lit prompted readers to subscribe to your story feed when they added you to their favorites. Those that opted in would get an email notification with a link when you posted a new story. This would be especially helpful for fans of authors who like to write chapterized stories.

My guess is that Literotica makes its money from the web ads, so it would seem the more visitors to this site, the better. I think these suggestions would help bring more return visitors to the site.

What do you think?

-- Peebudy

Your first suggestion is a good one. The "wanting to know how many favorites we are on" link has been suggested several times and every time it is I chime in and hope others will as it is the only way that the people in charge might consider it.

As for the second part not sure how much work that would take on their part. Remember there are thousands of authors on lit-of course 75% seem to have been dormant for years. Still not a bad idea though.

 

[peebudy]

Lit already has the mechanism in place to notify you when folks use your Contact tab, so it shouldn't be that big a leap. (web functionality is a big part of my day job!)

The volume of authors and readers may be an issue, so it might have to be a daily digest, which is a little heavier a lift, but not impossible.

And again, you'd have to offer the reader the option to opt into it, in case they didn't want to get the notification messages.

But I really do think it would enhance the site. The Readers would be able to more easily keep up with their favorite Authors. The Authors would get more votes and feedback on their stories because their biggest fans would see them. And Lit would get more eyeballs to their site on a more frequent basis.

 

[lovecraft68]

The lists would get a little unwieldy. Some authors have been favorited more than 2,000 times.

Unwieldy for a complete list definitely, but I would think being able to give you a total wouldn't be too tough.

Since there are so many authors that aren't active anymore maybe a list of authors requesting the "service" would make it easier for them.

 

[sr71plt]

Your second suggestion doesn't take into account authors who write across the genre spectrum. A reader is likely to be pretty irritated if she favorited an author on the strength of an author's Romance stories and got weekly notification of incest stories.

 

[sr71plt]

Unwieldy for a complete list definitely, but I would think being able to give you a total wouldn't be too tough.

Since there are so many authors that aren't active anymore maybe a list of authors requesting the "service" would make it easier for them.

If you're in the top 250, the Web site gives you a total. Maybe they could just expand that listing.

 

[lovecraft68]

If you're in the top 250, the Web site gives you a total. If you're not, well . . .

But the majority are not, and many would like to know. Hell a fair portion of the 250 haven't been active in quite awhile.

 

[peebudy]

Your second suggestion doesn't take into account authors who write across the genre spectrum. A reader is likely to be pretty irritated if she favorited an author on the strength of an author's Romance stories and got weekly notification of incest stories.

Well, someone can just opt out of notifications from that author then. Or just delete the message.

Any feature is not without it's flaws, but if it provides value for a large percentage, then it might be worthwhile.

 

[sr71plt]

But the majority are not, and many would like to know. Hell a fair portion of the 250 haven't been active in quite awhile.

Their stories are still there; they're still being favorited. The list is moving up smartly in numbers. If you don't continue to be favorited, you fall off the list. I don't see where it matters whether the author is still producing for her/his stories to be continue to be favorites.

 

[peebudy]

There's ways of paginating pages to display large amounts of data. Hell, you already do it for your story pages. For anyone with over XXX number of Fans, you could go to an alpha index on the page, breaking the list up to the 26 letters.

I think it would be encouraging to show your authors who have favorited them, and provide a level of bragging rights, even to us mere peons who will never sniff the holy list of 250.

Look at the phenomenon with Twitter, where everyone is boasting about their followers.

I think the more you encourage communication between your readers and authors, the bigger sense of community you'll build, which will lead to more loyalty from your readers and authors alike.

This is already the premier erotic story site on the web, and a lot of that has to do with the communication tools you provide, such as rating and commenting on stories and direct communication through the Contact tab.

But I still think there's room to make it a little better.

 

[sr71plt]

PM Manu with the suggestions then. The Web administrators don't normally read the forum.

 

[mynameisben]

I'm interested in what my fellow authors feel about a couple of ideas I have to improve this already fabulous site.

The first would be a FANS tab on your Profile page, next to the Favorites tab, which would list all those who have added you as a Favorite Author on their profile. I think this would be nice because I often enjoy the stories that those who have favorited (word?) me have on their profile page, and it would be an easy way to access it.

You'd have to get the site administrator's buy-in on this idea which, if obtained, would require quite a wait for software changes to be implemented and tested. Those changes could take quite some time, because the software must also verify the fan list on each author's profile page has some sort of connection to reality. Otherwise, certain authors' (Scouries) fan lists are liable to exceed the memory limit of the host server and bring the entire web site to it's knees.

 

[peebudy]

PM Manu with the suggestions then. The Web administrators don't normally read the forum.

Thanks. Done.

 

[Darkniciad]

Email notification would have to be opt-in instead of opt-out. Too much potential for pissing people off. This is an adult site, after all, not Facebook.

I think the volume of emails might be prohibitive as well.

I haven't contemplated the likely database structure for the favorites, but my initial, gut reaction is "Yikes!" when tossing this suggestion at it.

Having a full list of who has favorited you creates the potential for abuse, too. Lit's spam prevention measures would slow such abuse ( you can only send out so many emails via contact in a certain amount of time, though that can be circumvented ) but if enough people are abusing it, the trend we've seen of favorites rising could quickly go the other way as people stop clicking the button to avoid getting spammed.

Having a simple numerical representation on our stats page would be nice, though. Only the top 250 have any clue without mining the recent activity page and keeping a database of their own.

 

[lovecraft68]

Having a simple numerical representation on our stats page would be nice, though. Only the top 250 have any clue without mining the recent activity page and keeping a database of their own.

This is pretty much what I am talking about, just a simple number. even if it only updates monthly.

 

[michchick98]

Good ideas, but as was said, what about the authors who have had thousands favorite them? Just as with the 250 favorited authors, I'd bet many of the members who've favorited authors are no longer active either.

So the potential for an author getting lots of bounce backs is there too, if the email associated with the account is inactive. This, I'd imagine, could cause server issues as well.

As far as when a member's favorited author posts a new story/chapter, the members who are active probably check the new stories page or their favorite author(s) pages for themselves to see if there are updates.

I'd hate to see Literotica turn into Facebook or (gasp!) MySpace.

 

[lovecraft68]

Good ideas, but as was said, what about the authors who have had thousands favorite them? Just as with the 250 favorited authors, I'd bet many of the members who've favorited authors are no longer active either.

So the potential for an author getting lots of bounce backs is there too, if the email associated with the account is inactive. This, I'd imagine, could cause server issues as well.

As far as when a member's favorited author posts a new story/chapter, the members who are active probably check the new stories page or their favorite author(s) pages for themselves to see if there are updates.

I'd hate to see Literotica turn into Facebook or (gasp!) MySpace.

I think the e-mail notification is way to much and you have a point about bounce back.

But a simple way of any author knowing that they are on X amount of favorite pages should not be that hard. How do they do it for the top 250?

As for number of authors (most of which are no longer active) maybe they start a thread for authors to "sign up" for it. They vould do one mass e-mail to all authors and anyone who replies to it will be eligible to get their fav's counted.

Bottom line I'm sure there is a way and many have asked for it.

 

[sethp]

I like the subscription list. I think there would be a way to send emails and if they do bounce back to have them just disappear or go to a junk folder on the server. Or even better have the subscriptions go to your PM box on Lit and same thing ...if the inbox is full, the message just disappears. No bounce back no hassle, no worries.