I have... mixed feelings about this, actually.
Don't get me wrong, I'm GLAD they gave more space to community comics in the home page of the desktop website.
However...
...This also seems to come at the price of community comics almost completely disappearing from the app. I mean, the comics are there, but they're now only accessible from the "Community" tab and/or (if you're already subscribed) from your library.
The new home page on the app won't even show community comics in your "Continue reading" section anymore.
With the previous version of the app, the home page would show me ALL the comics I was reading, no matter if they were premium or free. Now, it only shows premium comics on the home page and pushes community comics in other, less visible areas of the app.
For comparison, this is what the home page of the app shows me in the "Continue reading" section:
...And THESE are the latest comics/novels I've actually opened. None of these are showing up on the home page:
Which means that...
-Subscribers who only use the app won't be able to easily see which community comics have been recently updated. To see recently updated community comics in the app, they'll have to manually click on the "recently read" list, their library (third tab) and/or the teeny tiny arrow on the right of "Continue reading" on the homepage. This might result in subscribers missing updates or even thinking that community comics aren't being updated anymore, since new updates won't automatically show up anymore unless readers actively search for them.
-It's going to be even harder for actual readers to find new community comics to read. It's no mystery that the desktop website is mostly used by creators, while the app is mostly used by readers. With the app heavily pushing premium/paid comics (also excluding comics in the Creator Bonus Program), actual readers may not even notice that community comics are a thing.
-Overall, I feel like this update is going to make it so that only creators (aka, a tiny minority of the whole Tapas userbase) are going to see/know about the existence of community comics. Which is the same exact problem the "tapas community" social media profiles have: they're only being followed by a majority of creators and not regular readers. This doesn't help discoverability at all, since the great majority of potential readers aren't being encouraged to check community comics UNLESS they use the desktop website, which... isn't something most of the Tapas userbase actually cares to check.
