FAIL

I dig it. The lolcats meme is long dead, ‘grats for realising the natural progression to faildogs. I’ll be passing this link on to my friends.

Wow. This is utterly ridiculous. I can only describe this website in one word. FAIL.

Look dude, what do I care if you get it or not? It appeals to a certain demographic, maybe you’re not it. Regardless, Fail Dogs is huge.

I must not be aware of this vast demographic, because in all honesty I don’t see how this material can sustain a following. It just doesn’t seem to have that great of a hook considering other similar sites. I consider myself a decent judge of good content and I don’t know about this site’s ability to draw people back.

In all honesty, I’m not jealous here. I really do wish you the best of luck any in venture you take. I might be wrong and I’m positive you know more about the internet community than me, but I’m not sure that even with the best blogging techniques you can promote a site that lacks a certain “newness”.

I don’t believe that being a dog owner is going to be the factor on what hooks people to your site. It wasn’t the hook for the “lolcats meme” site. The hook was in the original way the pictures were presented.

Changing species without changing the style of presentation (hook) isn’t going to work, even if the owner of the species is larger. The content isn’t original enough to sustain a following. That was more my point last post, not an inquiry into who the demographic could be.

I understand your concerns, and of course I considered them before we pulled the trigger.

The problem is that you’re empirically incorrect. FailDogs traffic is obscenely high. It is one of the most popular blogs on the entire Tumblr engine. It has about as many RSS readers as Tucker and has literally thousands of user submissions.

What are basing your assertion on? Have you looked at any data whatsoever? Do you even have the slightest inkling as to what the play is? My guess is that you can’t answer those questions to any sort of standard.

This is really important because I react emotionally grab opinions on stuff all the time. But then, I stop myself, look at the data and reevaluate. If you can’t do that, it’s better not to commit to anything at all.

What do you get when someone is just smart enough to anatomize something, but dumb enough to hilariously fail at it?

You get Ted.

And speaking of hilariously failing, I’m not sure which is better: faildogs.com, or the fact that a website about funny dog pictures could so inflame someone with wrath.

faildogs.com just does not appeal to the type of person who reads ryan’s blog; that doesn’t mean no one likes it. I hate American Idol with a passion because I think the content is dumb and supremely average, that doesn’t mean the show is lame. If fact people love it.

Its like the long tail says, find a niche market and cater specifically to them.

I cannot believe anyone actually took this post seriously.

No, although it’s still a decent property at that price, it went for something different.

What’s the central theme of most of my posts? That people – and that I – should always try to work on projects that are important to them. If you’d stopped to think about it for a second you’d realize that I am obsessed with dogs. Look at my delicious account. Perhaps, and I’m guessing here, I personally love this site and that is why I picked it up.

And on top of that, this whole argument is ridiculous. Fail Dogs is objectively an enormously popular site. It will do well over a million pageviews this month because, like me, people LOVE IT.

For the love of God, how do you get to the point where you don’t understand that there is a lighter side of life

What I don’t understand is how you can not put a question mark on your last sentence. That is a sentence, right? Just kidding.

You obviously take yourself too seriously, for I see your reply riddled with frustration and that you see your point of view as “the lighter side of life” and my objective criticism as “the dark side”. What is the point of having a comment section if you can’t handle objective criticism? At least mine was positive criticism, for I wished you success with FailDogs. Hey, I am obsessed with dogs too and also own a Dachshund. Although, I am not going to buy a website to prove my obsession.

I guess I am just confused because I don’t see how this website is funny. We both must have a different sense of humor. It just seems like a spin-off of lolcats, which wasn’t funny either. The pictures are kind of funny, except for the caption which makes it not funny. But hey, its your hobby. Have fun with it; and I hope you earn a return on your investment.

If you look at the Alexa rankings, there’s this huge initial jump and then a slow, steady decline (and what looks to be an uptick in the last week or so).

Why did that decline take so long?

Congrats for picking up a successful site. However, that doesn’t change the fact that I think your new website is enormously stupid. I LOVE lolcats, and I have seen quite a few funny pictures involving dogs. That aside, the majority (over 90%) of your pictures are not even remotely funny. Not in the least.

The really awesome part about these comments is that down to the last man, they all applied to be my intern and they were all rejected 1) Because they sent rambling, incoherent emails 2) Had huge entitlement problems 3) No idea what they were talking about.

I know, Daniel! How does he handle having people respond to his writing in occasionally less than intelligent ways on the *internet*?

I honestly don’t understand paid bloggers who have an aversion to commenters. Implying that the readers who frequent your site aren’t intelligent enough to reply to it seems pretty smug to me.

Ryan: You seem to have a healthy respect for innovation, especially as it relates to using the internet to deliver content. This site’s greatest downside is its utter lack of innovation. It’s a difficult thing to reconcile, especially since many of your readers hold you in some sort of esteem.