Yesterday we launched our newest and one of my personal favorite features, Pop Quiz. We noticed in our forums and picks that users were creatively asking trivia questions and thought it would be really fun to have fans challenge other fans to see just how hard core they really were. Little did I know how much I would be schooled by our fans! There are so many facts that I’m learning each time I play that my head feels like it’s going to explode with knowledge (much of it useless!). Of course our resident know-it-alls chel1395 and maybeastarbucks have totally stumped me with all their questions. We had a lot of fun coming up with this feature. One of the coolest things about it is the prizes you can earn by answering more questions. It’s not meant to be a competition (even though we do have a leaderboard for each spot and against your friends as well as one for the whole site if you do feel like comparing). We want users to enjoy themselves and not to be afraid of answering as many questions as possible. You never get penalized for trying, it’s all about trying to get that next prize. We even have custom prizes for some of our most popular spots like Lost and The Office. So you the more questions you answer, the more likely you are to win a Schrute Buck or Vincent the dog. We’ve already seen a ton of really cool questions so far and the Fanpop users seem to really love it. That’s all we can ask for in any feature that we launch!

Dave pointed out a very funny posting to a project-posting website called ScripLance the other day. The site allows individuals and companies to post job/projects to solicit bids from third-parties. Imagine our surprise then, when we found out that someone named “wiklos” had posted a request to build him a Fanpop clone.

Amusingly, the lowest bidder has offered to build the Fanpop Clone for $500 in 10 days.

Hello from New York. I’m out here for business travel trying to wheel and deal for Fanpop. Yesterday was a big day for Fanpop. Since we launched back in August 2006, we’ve been steadily climbing like the Little Engine that Could up the ranks of biggest sites on the web. One of the sites we watch to see how well we’re doing relative to other sites is Alexa. It’s definitely not the most accurate site, but a lot of people use it as an indicator. We finally crossed a threshold for the first time into the top 4,000! On Quantcast we’ve also broken into the top 4,000 with over 1.4 million monthly visitors to Fanpop worldwide. We get really excited about each milestone we hit because it means that we’re moving in the right direction. Top 3,000 here we come!

Fanpop got a nice write up as part of a larger feature about startups done on the cheap. Here’s the story at InformationWeek. (Fanpop is discussed on page 6)

There’s even a nice photograph of the team (albeit from 2 years ago). The only downside to the article is that the author messed up some of the Fanpop history (Dave and I founded Fanpop together back in late 2005/early 2006). Either way though it’s nice to see the mainstream press picking up on Fanpop and discussing us alongside other web success stories like Plenty of Fish. Markus is the real big fish. Fanpop, well, we’re just small fish hoping to get as big as guys like him.

Today marks a big milestone for Fanpop from an advertising perspective. We are running a one-day frontpage “skin” on the Fanpop homepage. The Dancing with the Stars Fan Club is also getting the same treatment for the next couple of weeks.

Here’s the skin in all of its glory:

Pretty subtle eh?

Today marks of our 1-year anniversary of launching Fanpop! That’s right folks, it was one year ago today that we pressed the button and unleashed Fanpop to the world wide web. And since then, we’ve had millions and millions of people come to the site. It’s been great because we’ve gotten to know so many of you through the community. Whether it be in a fun forum game like A-Z in Heroes or a heat Picks debate about vanilla vs. chocolate, we’ve really bonded with our users over the past year.

We’ve really been encouraged by all of your messages and comments to the team. One of the biggest reasons we keep chugging along and working so hard on making Fanpop a great community site is because of your kind words. But what really bowled the team over was amyfitz‘ soapbox article titled You Know You’re Crazily Addicted to Fanpop When…. Not only was it hilarious, but it made us believe that we must be doing something right when cool folks like Amy and other users comment about how much they love the site. I sometimes go back just to read the article and comments again to remind myself that you all are why we get excited about doing what we do each day (and then I grab my box of tissues because I get so choked up!). The community keeps growing and growing each month and if we keep getting users as awesome as the ones we have now (adding images, writing soapbox articles, uploading videos, giving props, starting forum games, etc.), then we’re in for another really great year of Fanpopping! Thank you to all of you users who make the site so darn good.

If you appreciate someone or want to thank them for the videos they posted to the Office spot, the articles they write for the Lost spot, or the images they’ve added for the Natalie Portman spot, now you can! Show a little love to your fellow fans by giving them fan props (get it? “Fanpop” ~ “fan props”). It always feels good when you get a pat on the back for the contributions you make to the Fanpop community, so we wanted to give users a way to show their gratitude. Go ahead and start giving people some props for all they’ve done!

Oh and as a long overdue announcement (I’ve been delinquent!) in case you hadn’t noticed, two of our biggest and most popular features were launched in the past couple months. Fan picks have blown up! You guys really love asking and answering questions! I love seeing all the creative Picks you guys have made and always have fun giving my two cents. The best part is that now you can really tell what kind of fan a person is by looking at their profile and their answers for a certain topic. Now I can tell how PkmnTrainerJ really feels about the Lost characters or what cressida’s favorite classic movies are.

The other big release we had was the launch of Image Galleries. We found it such a hassle to try to find good images for a topic. Everytime I went to go find a wallpaper, I got some sketchy website with popups and ads all over it. We wanted to create a place that was safe for you to come get quality images for anything and everything you’re a fan of. Now you can share your creations in the icons, wallpaper and fan art sections. And if you have a picture you’ve taken that you want to show off to other fans, you can add that to the photos area. We knew you guys would love this feature and it looks like we were right! I’m so amazed by the number of images that have been added already!

Thanks to all of you for inspiring us to work hard and make Fanpop the best site for fans on the web!

Now you can embed your favorite Pick question on your blog or profile!

During the week, Papa and I often work from a cafe here in San Francisco while Michael and Cliff work from home down in the South Bay. We tried out a bunch of places with free wireless a la Hotspotr. We started off at the place where all of the new startups in San Francisco seemed to be going called Ritual Roasters in the Mission. That got too crowded and there were also stories in the news about people getting mugged in cafes at knifepoint for their laptops (especially shiny ones with glowing Apple logos like Papa and I use!). I tried a few others like The Grove Cafe in the Marina and Axis Cafe in Potrero Hill. But we finally decided that the best place for us was Canvas Cafe in the Inner Sunset next to Golden Gate Park near Papa’s house (and where I lived back in the day).

The key to a good working cafe are:

1. Character and charm - You don’t want to be sitting at a cookie-cutter cold Starbucks or a place that doesn’t have a local feel to it. The best places are those that have cool furniture, colorful walls and decor, and fun staff.

2. Good music - If you’re going to be sitting at a place for hours and hours, the last thing you want to have to endure is crappy music or music that’s too loud and distracting.

3. Mixed crowd - It’s nice to have a diversity of people wherever you work because when you start daydreaming (not that I ever do), you can people watch. San Francisco is such a diverse city that it’s always fun to see all the eclectic types that make this city so wonderful to live in.

4. Tasty food and drinks - A cafe isn’t a cafe unless they have quality munchies and can make a mean latte.

We finally found our home at Canvas Cafe, which had all of these qualities only to find out that it was closing forever on April 29th (I have mixed feelings because it’s turning into a Pacific Catch, one of my favorite seafood joints in the Marina). The great part about Canvas was that it was a very neighborhood joint where local artists and musicians could display their talent. There were all kinds of people there from students to families to startup guys like us. But alas, all good things must come to an end. We will miss you Canvas.

Now Papa and I are nomads once again and looking for a new home. Any suggestions?

You might notice when you login and go to your profile page today that you will see a new module called “My Updates”.  We rolled this out last night with our newly redesigned recent activity pages.  We’ve had a recent activity page in the past but it only showed recent comments made to your links or replies to your forum topics.  In the past several months of using the site and gathering feedback, we realized that it was tough to keep up with all the things going on all over Fanpop.  We also knew that our features to help you keep track of all that action was a bit all over the place.  We had new links from your spots under My Spots and we had new comments under Recent Activity.  We’ve decided the best way to be kept up to date on the latest and greatest on the stuff you care about was to do a feed of updates.  Now when you log in, you can go to “My Updates” and see a list of recent activity on forum topics you’ve posted or content you’ve added as well as recently added links and videos to spots you’re a fan of.  On the “My Updates” full page you can filter out each of these to see only comments recently made to your contributions or just view the newest videos in your spots.

This new feature probably makes it 10x easier to waste even MORE time on Fanpop because now all this new stuff you might not have noticed before is right in front of you.  We apologize for decreasing your productivity at work or in your studies even more than we already have…but hey at least you’re having some fun!  Now go and check out what’s shaking in your spots with “My Updates”.