Imzy

Website
Name:	Imzy
Owner/Maintainer:
Dates:	2015 – June 23 2017
Type:	Social Networking Site
Fandom:	Multifandom
URL:	https://www.imzy.com/
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Imzy was a social networking site where registered users can submit content such as text posts, links, images, or polls. Content was organised into communities, which are user-created and moderated sites with specific rules or guidelines for content.

It was founded by former Reddit employees Dan McComas, Jessica Moreno, and Kaela Worthen Gardner.

As of September 2016, Imzy remained in closed beta and was expected to move to open beta later in 2016. On May 24, 2017, it was announced that Imzy would shut down.

Imzy and Fandom

Imzy staff members actively courted fandom in mid-late 2016, including re-working their porn and erotic art policy to be more fandom-friendly and adding a number of features requested by fans . They also encouraged community leaders to advertise fandom communities on the main Imzy community.

In August 2016, fans rushed to sign up for Imzy accounts, though the view expressed on other platforms was that fan activity on the site hadn't taken off and wasn't going to. sophia helix commented that "Fandom migrates when a new platform offers something new in an organizational/communication sense, and also when it generates good content.... It's very hard for a completely new platform to become a fandom hub."

Closure

On May 24, 2017, it was announced that Imzy would close.

The message sent to users by Dan at Imzy:

We are sorry to say that after nearly two years of building Imzy, it is time for us to shut down the site.

Some of you have been here since our launch into beta and some are brand new. We’ve loved getting to know all of you and seeing you build communities and make new friends. Unfortunately, we were not able to find our place in the market. We still feel that the internet deserves better and hope that we see more teams take on this challenge in the future.

Our final day of operation will be June 23rd. We want to give you time to gather any content you’ve made and exchange contact information with friends. If you have a new home for your community, I recommend creating a pinned post directing members there.

You might be wondering what’s going to happen to your data now. Well, nothing. We have always valued your privacy and we will continue to do so. You can request your data [here]. .

The /Imzy community will open to allow everyone to post. This seems like a good place for us to gather, share memories, and say our goodbyes.

Thanks for spending your time with us. We’re really going to miss this place. -Dan

Important dates to remember:

Data export requests must be received by June 16th. We will do our best to accommodate last minute and late requests but it is not guaranteed.

The site will go read only on the 16th.

You will have access to your data until June 21st.

The site will go dark on June 23rd.

This has also been posted on the site, if you wish to comment.

Fan Response to the Closure

I feel like, "Oh no, this isn't what I want at all!" but I find it hard to articulate what I do want. I want people to stop being petty, bullying little pricks, really. I'm not sure what platform shape can do that. I found Imzy promising with how it handled anons and how anti-bullying was so important to its foundation--and working with Reddit as a base, which is even more notorious for its toxicity than tumblr.

I think tumblr's still got a year or two left, depending on how fast things move. LJ still had some good life in it for a while after tumblr started getting popular. It was a really subtle thing--many of us believed for a while that they were so different one wouldn't replace the other, that we were just going to have both. But then people just weren't spending time on LJ anymore. For what it's worth, I don't think AO3 is going anywhere. That's something we'll likely have alongside whatever other platform we use. But tumblr may not be that long for this world, whether fandom prefers it or not--it's been known for a while that it's hemorrhaging money for Yahoo. Especially since they tried to make it a competitor for Vimeo, of all things. And Instagram has been annihilating it on the non-fandom side of things. I think the writing's been on the wall for tumblr for a while, whether we migrate first or not.

I feel like every time we migrate, most users are eager to leave behind the bullying and toxicity of the last platform. When I moved from LJ to tumblr, it was like a breath of fresh air to be in this nice casual space without all the backstabbing and drama. But we brought it all with us, didn't we? I've wondered for a while if something like the OTW (if not the actual OTW, another fandom nonprofit) could make a truly fandom-oriented blogging/social site for the long haul. If there would be a way to try to make it worth staying on and address the drama instead of burning our city down every few years and building a new one from scratch.