Fanpop's Challenges With Organization

If any of you in our Writing for New Media Class were inspired to check out Fanpop after reading my previous post you might have noticed that the Social Networking site has some problems with organization. When I say problems with organization I'm not referring to the layout of the fan club pages or profiles dedicated to music artists, movies and TV shows nicely divided into sections instead I am referring to how the site encourages you to become a fan of your pop culture favorites. Based on this observation I figured the best way to discuss Fanpop's organization problems with all of you, the members of our Writing for New Media Class is by talking about the site's problems and then analyzing how they can be made better.

Fanpop's Problems with Organization
Fanpop's biggest problem with organization is that it does not encourage you to show personal fandom for your pop culture favorites by joining the fan club sites dedicated to music artists, movies, TV shows and more. Through the creators of Fanpop failing to do this all of you in our class checking out the site are forced to seek out these fan club sites through the use of a search engine.

Fanpop's Search Engine

This process of having to search for a fan club to add to your Fanpop profile makes the actual social network seem extremely overwhelming because you do not have an example of what types of fan clubs can be organized underneath the site's definition of pop culture. For instance I searched for something that was far away from being considered as pop culture like apples and sure enough there is a fan club for apples.

The fan club for Apples

The other problem with the search engine is when you search for a fan club for lets say Marvel Comics you will receive a result for a Marvel club but you will also receive results for fan clubs dedicated to Marvel Superheroines or individual Marvel Superheroes and it is hard to decide what club to join because there are so many options.

Some of the various results you will find when searching for the Marvel Comics fan club

The other problem with Fanpop's organization and some of you may consider this to be nitpicky is the Videos sections featured on the movie and TV show fan club pages. As I said before these fan club pages are nicely divided into sections but in the Videos section it is hard to tell the difference between what is a clip, trailer or homemade music video.

How Fanpop Can Fix Its Organizational Problems

Fanpop can fix its organizational problems by encouraging you as visitors to the site to join fan clubs dedicated to your pop culture favorites by placing a section on your profile that recommends fan clubs you might be interested in joining or maybe the site can require you to join a new fan club after logging in a certain number of times. Fanpop is all about getting as many people as possible to join the fan clubs featured on their network and these methods might be a great way to increase their numbers.

The Fanpop fan counter featured on every fan club page

As for the search engine, I would keep it, but instead of you searching Marvel Comics and getting results for fan clubs dedicated to Marvel Superheroines or individual Marvel Superheroes, I thought it would be better if these clubs were organized as sub fan clubs underneath the umbrella of an overall Marvel Comics fan club because it would make the number of clubs less intimidating for you to choose from. I feel the creators of Fanpop should also set parameters about what constitutes a fan club to fit under the organizational banner of pop culture because it would help visitors to the site which includes yourselves to get more direction on the types of fan clubs to search for making the network not seem so overwhelming. With the Videos section on the movie and TV show fan club pages I would suggest that the different types of featured videos to be divided into sub categories within their respective categories like in Fanpop's image sections.

Final Thoughts
In writing this post I hope you the members of our Writing for New Media Class as well as the people behind Fanpop will end up reading it because I believe Fanpop is a great place for different types of people to express their enjoyment for topics that suppossedly fit within the realm of pop culture using a variety of New Media formats. Based on this observation if the creators of the site consider my suggestions on solving their organizational problems they could make the experience of expressing your fandom even better.