Furbid.ws for sale?
When people are bored, they may begin to dig through old bookmarks, go through old emails, and rustle through things with a slight sense of nostalgia. This is what brought about the discovery that the domain Furbid.ws was for sale.
Older furries may have used furry auction sites such as this site from years ago. Furries used auction sites almost exclusively for many years before many found that announcing commissions on FurAffinity got noticed more than an auction. FurBid was founded in 1999 when it was owned and run by Aatheus.
No information on why it is being sold is available, though WikiFur suggests it stopped its run December 5 of last year.
I loved that site. It gives me nostalgia to think of it. It makes me sad to see it probably finally fade in to obscurity or turn in to a redirect for something else.
Another sad thing that makes me wonder where have all the furries gone is the recent lack of furries in Second Life. I remember there were a lot of furry themed places and clubs, and now they appear to be gone as well.
Do you use auction sites? Do you play Second Life?
There are just so many places and sites that are gone now. It is the end of an era and possibly the dawn of a new one. Time can only tell.
Comments
I just recently started on Second Life about 3 weeks ago. I can't say I use it extensively but I found some furry places, mostly adult but I wasn't really looking for others.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
Last I heard Furbid was owned by Kacey Maltzman's spouse, but some years ago all the furry online auction action switched over to Furbuy (probably because FurBuy wasn't charging for site use.) and Furbid basically died in place. Furbuy still gets a fair amount of use, although more and more furry artists seem to be reaching buyers directly by running auctions through FA and similar sites.
We actually had a piece on the transfer back in 2004. The site had technical problems; but it was not alone in that for furry auction sites - as you say, furries have become used to using other venues, because that is where the audience is.
I use Second Life still, but even over the last four years attendance in furry things has died down.. to be honest I'm not entirely sure why, but I believe it probably is due to the general waning of interest in SL among non furs too. It's now just a self amplifying cycle: lack of furs results in a lack of profits for the furry places resulting in them closing down.. meaning there's less cool places for furs to hang out in, so they stop logging on.
Eh, the main reason of Furbid demise was that that "Bolivar cannot carry double". Or taking geological/physical analogy, a lake can have many rivers coming to it, but only one starting from it (if there has happen to be more, then normally smaller ones dry up and only the biggest one remains).
Economically, furry merchandise market is small enough and can not/could not support two sites with essentially the same services, user base just gradually drift over to only one.
Additional, less significant factor was that Ayukawa occasionally had a ways of handling things so charming, that Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion in comparison was an innocent 4 of July firecracker.
Old stuff all that now.
From my perspective FurBid got outcompeted both technology-wise and in promotion. I'm not saying FurBuy was or is a technological miracle - far from it - but it seemed like it was trying more and was more reliable; and when The Dealer's Den came along, FurBid fell into a distinct third place.
As a furry content creator, even I've begun to notice a decline of furry activity in Second Life. I've looked into matters, but I just can't find a suitable reason for it. The platform is very old and its age does show, but I can't really think about any other location where you can make most characters exactly how you want them. I do know that FA advertisements for Second Life related services have died down, but I'm unsure if that's due to a lack of interest in Second Life or lack of a desire to advertise.
If there is less SL advertisements on FurAffinity it is more because IMVU took it over and SecondLife is considered a direct competitor to IMVU. So IMVU probably told SL to "go pound salt, the furries are mine".
Or SL said "We're not going to advertise on FA anymore cause that means our money is going to our competitor."
Or some combination of the two.
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