Updating the Fresh Category--Change it for Comics Under 2000 Subs

[malverav]

I'd love to be able to get personalized recommendations by genre, myself. Or, a more in depth tagging system would be fantastic, so that you can hunt through really specific tags to get what you want.

An "undiscovered" section would be amazing. If you could submit your work for a weekly "new/unknown artist" feature and be featured for a week or so that could be useful.

Looks like tapas mostly wants to plug their premium comics most of the time though, which personally aren't really my cup of tea (I actually hate most of it don't get me started -) but it seems enough people like them for it to be good business. It doesn't make them any money to plug new artists, they seem to make their coin on selling episodes of the premium stuff, which is disappointing as a new creator.

Now that tumblr's a wasteland, there's not many places for people to post their comics (I guess there's webtoons?). Tapas' UI has the advantage of being slick, there's loads of people on here, and I love their forums, so here I am!

[skicoak]

What about the one individually curated and shared in social media?

I mean the closest thing to that is we can go to various creators pages and see who they subscribe to on Tapas. Individually, that's more useful than a random staff member (who may or may not be allowed to pick their own list, free of economic concerns).

We're only considering this as a plus because it comes with exposure to Tapas-centric readers.

[malverav]

As another thought I'd have the 'fresh' section actually be, like, in your face on the front page. Maybe where the premium comics are have a selection of what's new. The Duck might be direct from the year 2005, but I'd format it similar to that.

[JRHoch]

Webtoon might be even less inclined to promoting new stuff--and the rating system has people giving other comics 1-star ratings to knock down the competition.

[malverav]

Sounds just like reddit. That's really disappointing!

[JRHoch]

It is just like reddit.

[skicoak]

I've noticed some people who started out on Tapas and then blew up exclusively on Webtoon.

I can't speak on each example but I'm willing to bet that most of that is due to Webtoons pushing/exposing those creators to new readers at some point.

That's the inherent problem of being a creator on a site... if they're not invested in pushing you, you're pretty much out of options on growth. No disrespect to some of the wonderful creators on these forums but when the key advice to folks trying to pick up new readers is to "get active on the forums" it should come with a warning label.

[JRHoch]

Agree. I think you had mentioned that advertising on Top Webcomics doesn't translate to Tapas because people will read but not sign up on Tapas and then sub and comment.

[skicoak]

...doesn't translate to Tapas because people will read but not sign up on Tapas and then sub and comment.

I say this more in regards to hyping a project on social media. It's simply a recruiting drive for Tapas... people who read off the Tapas app don't count in Tapas internal algorithms so... we need access to people who are ALREADY on Tapas to build numbers.

[JRHoch]

And can you tell me why Shen is high up on the trending tab when he has left Tapas and hasn't posted since January (and that was a goodbye note).

[skicoak]

And can you tell me why Shen is high up on the trending tab when he has left Tapas and hasn't posted since January (and that was a goodbye note).

Because, and Tapas has made this clear repeatedly, all of these categories are curated. There's algorithms but they're secondary to the curated part. Hypothetically, you could trend on social media...drive a million unique viewers to Afterlifer and they could keep you off the front page by curation...hypothetically.

[JRHoch]

Shouldn't a curator remove him? He left a goodbye note!

[skicoak]

He left a goodbye note!

He did say he hoped it was temporary ....Tapas just "Keeping hope alive!"

[michaelson]

Hm, I'm not really a fan of removing series with X+ subscribers since it actively punishes those creators or punishes "good behaviors". Typically for design purposes we try and create incentive structures for creators to want to pursue - for example, the trending and popular algorithm both reward fan engagement more so than view count (there are however series that have so much view count that it bypasses this).

As for how does Tapas surface newer creators more frequently? That's quite difficult - the fresh section is the only objective tool that everyone appears in and making tweaks based on the aforementioned design philosophy is quite tricky.

We are currently testing out metatagging for series and episodes to help with automated recommendations (i.e. if you enjoy certain series containing specific tropes, we'll start to recommend those as well), this will dive deeper than a genre-based recommendation. This won't be ready any time soon but it currently being worked on. Hopefully I'll be able to share more information on this later.

[Likri]

An undiscovered category could help out, but I don't think that "only comics under X subs" is a good way to go about it because, truth is, a lot of comics, well, they aren't good enough to gain thousands of readers - the authors might be inexperienced, the art not good, ect. And saying that "this comics got enough exposure since it reached 1k readers!" - enough compared to that that has 120? But compare it to a comic wit 5-12-89k readers - aaaand that's really just the start of a long journey. I think that time on the site and the amount of episodes should be considered too - because sure most comics wont get a lot of readers when they start out, or post infrequently/ It might be good to promote those who have been here for a while (6 months?) and have a steady content flow, but just didn't get the numbers. Also, I dunno if it's only my issue, but I can't go farther than page 5 in the fresh category - if that's a feature, then maybe let people dig deeper.

[JRHoch]

I don't go past page two of Fresh--nor do most people. That's the problem. There are too many titles, many that are promoted on other parts of Tapas, that don't need to be in Fresh or a new Discover tab or whatever we want to call it.

[JRHoch]

How about a new discover tab? One that focuses on comics that are less than a year or two old and have under 2,000 subs?

[Likri]

Well I do browse deeper to see what catches my attention - and I wouldn't say "most" people won't did deeper if they are actively looking for a fresh read. maybe just add an option to reverse the results in genre filter it the "all comics" tab - so people could check from the less popular series to the more, and visa versa.

[michaelson]

How about a new discover tab? One that focuses on comics that are less than a year or two old and have under 2,000 subs?

Hm, maybe? I don't know, I feel like there's still a lot of overlap with this and the general fresh section; like in order to really justify making this there would need to be a significant difference between the two for a reader experience. If there's too much overlap in experience, then it would just confuse readers.

[Croik]

Why is 2,000 the cutoff? A comic with 3,000 isn't going to break Popular either. There isn't a magic threshold between "making it" and not, seems unfair to just draw a line.

Definitely in favor of stronger metatagging and recommendations though. Rather than trying to increase chances of readers stumbling randomly onto comics, it makes much more sense to put the focus on connecting readers to the genres and tropes they're interested in.