#hoodiedog

[lolsnapsblog]

LolSnaps Photoshop Battle, Edition VI

Amber Mari cleaned house last week when she posted this gem in the LolSnaps Photoshop Battle, Edition VI. As of this blog post, she has garnered 146 upvotes and won the contest pretty handily. Amber's vote count eclipsed the previous high of 129 votes Chris Seamon received 3 months ago.

Amber's masterwork was her first entry in the Photoshop Battle and she nailed it on two counts: effective use of the base picture (a woman protestor in Turkey hurling stones at police with a slingshot) coupled with a direct aim at the crotch of Justin Bieber as he lept on stage. It just seemed so right. So karma-like. And Amber even included an "after-the-nutshot" link. 

Congrats, Amber...and thanks to everyone that participated through picture submission, comments, and votes.

[lolsnapsblog]

Why Disqus?

Several months ago, we introduced the Disqus comment system to LolSnaps.com. With the exception of a few mentions here and there, we've never had a forum to tell users why we made that move. 

There are 3 main reasons:

Facebook comments suck. Yeah, I know...they're almost as ubiquitous as the social media network itself. It seems almost every site uses them. But the Facebook comment plug-in has some deep feature gaps and the notification system is buggy at best.

We wanted a comment system that provided a deeper, richer experience than the one offered by Facebook. We wanted things such as the ability to both upvote and downvote comments, an anonymous sign-in system, a feature allowing users to attach and show comment response files, and the capability to share the comment to a wider audience than just Facebook. Finally, we needed the ability to monitor the comments section so we didn't end up with a bunch of mindless haters and stupid users. 

It needed to be free. Building our own comment system was out of the question as was paying cold hard cash for one. The Facebook comments system is free. So is Disqus.

As many of you know, the robustness of Disqus is awesome. It is not a rookie comment system, either. They host billions of comments per month and have continued to innovate and develop new features. 

Disqus has had a few technical screw ups that have been mildly irritating to down right fucked up (waking up every morning to 60 new notifications from 1 person that actually happened 5 months ago). Plus, we've had a few users get locked out and required to set up a new account.

Despite these challenges, Disqus is here to stay and we remain very encouraged by their performance. They recently announced improved hovercards and user following, support of 36 languages, and you can now hover your mouse over the upvote indicator to reveal who has upvoted specific comments (can't do it with downvotes, however).  

We're interested in your feedback about the Disqus comment system. Click on the clock icon below to leave your thoughts...using the Disqus comment system, of course.

[lolsnapsblog]

Photoshop Battles

One feature we started several weeks ago and now run about every other week is the LolSnaps Photoshop Battle. We choose a picture we think lends itself to this little contest and invite community members to use Photoshop or any other photo manipulation software in order to change the picture into something completely new, original, and funny. Users upload their work to the Disqus comments and viewers then cast their vote in the comments. It has become one of my favorite distractions. This week, user 'bonkers' posted this gem:

The LolSnaps community seemed to appreciate the fine Photoshop skills, level of attention to detail, and the transformation of the base picture to create something totally unique and fun. Congrats to BONKERS!

Comments? Click on the clock icon in the lower left-hand corner.

[lolsnapsblog]

Welcome to the DogBlog.

I wondered if I should have added an exclamation point to the title of this blog entry. It's just a boring blog, HoodieDog. No exclamation point needed. Besides, the goal of this blog is to update the LolSnaps community on interesting stuff about the website, stats, development plans, and other musings. That's pretty mundane stuff to most and not at all worthy of an exclamation point. 

This blog is intended to be interactive. It's hosted on Tumblr and uses the Disqus comment system. If you leave a comment here, any responses will follow you over to LolSnaps.com or wherever else you use Disqus. To access the Disqus comment system, you will need to click on the "clock" icon at the bottom of each post.

We don't have a set schedule for blog posts...it will depend on our development plans and my ability to write anything I think might add value to the community. 

Speaking of community...thanks to all of you for your contributions. We are coming up on our third year and the funny pictures business has changed so dramatically during that time. With picture after picture being passed from website to website, the only thing that makes a site unique is the community of people that come together in the comments section. I laugh every single day...sometimes because I see a picture that is truly funny and captivating. But most of the time it's because of a comment made by one of you or a series of comments made by many. Thank you. 

[lolsnapsblog]

SURVEY RESULTS ARE IN!

Three weeks ago we conducted a simple survey to the LolSnaps community inquiring about their interest in a potential change to the site. The question was simple and straightforward:

Would you prefer to continue to see one funny picture per page along with the user comments for that picture...OR...would you like to see 5-10 funny pictures per page (the user would scroll down) where you would have to click on a button to see the comments? Choose one:

5-10 funny pictures per page with clickable button to view comments

1 funny picture per page with viewable comments

  Several humor websites have converted to showing 5, 10, or more pictures per page while LolSnaps continues to show one picture per page along with the user comments. We wondered aloud if the LolSnaps community wanted us to join the tide. The results provided a clear indication of how we should move forward: Leave things alone!

We tallied over 1,000 surveys from people located worldwide. The results provide a level of statistical significance which indicates the overall response would not materially change if it were administered to the entire LolSnaps community. 

True to form, some of the 'free-form' responses were interesting and others were funny. Here is a sampling of comments from those who prefer one picture per page:

"That's so 9gag. Don't copy 9gag."

"Are you trying to copy 9gag and Memebase or something?"

"FUCK YOU LOLSNAPS"

"No, then I could just go to 9gag. Don't do that!"

"One does not simply look at a post without reading (some of) the comments."

"The comments are the best part of this site. It is a community!"

"Damn. That's the one thing that makes me prefer LolSnaps over all other funny sites. Don't change that."

"Don't copy the other sites like that, stay different please ;)"

"WTF hoodie dog? Why you wanna change such a good thing?"

"I hate change..."

"I like the current setup for viewing. I'm scared of change. Like that time my mother left us when I was just a kid. I didn't know what was happening. Suddenly, there were dolphins and I magically became an adult."

"it aint broke dont fix it yo"

Here's a few comments from those who wanted more pictures per page:

"This would work but only if it keeps it on the same page and doesn't re-direct you to another page..."

"Maybe only 6 pics per page with the top 2 comments for each displayed under each pic."

"I would normally say 1 funny picture. However, the ads slow down the site therefore it is better to have more images per webpage so the webpage would be loaded faster." 

"Sometimes I just avoid the site when I'm running low on time because it takes forever to get through all the updates. And I have to see every single post. Have to."

"CLICKING IS ANNOYING"

Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey. It was extraordinarily helpful to us and provided significant insight about your community-based preferences.