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Ew. The site made with the bought bato.to domain. Ew.


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#21
pokari

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I actually approached other official publishers prior to putting domain up for auction to see if they're interested. From about a month and half before the announcement. Sadly, I either never got a reply or got turned down. I found that so stupid. They spend so much more money on advertising already and they were willing to let go of an extremely effective promo ability.


I'm not too surprised; from their perspective it's probably not clear what the risks of such a move would be. Like as not they'd have to be in a risk-taking mood to even go as far as to consider the proposition seriously.

 

And then Legal might balk at the idea of knowingly doing any financial transactions with a known pirate entity; indeed the vague notion that this would be dealing with criminals will hang over the whole consideration (copyright violations aren't necessarily a crime, even if you can sue over them, but that's not the public perception).

 

And then PR and similar might reasonably be concerned as to what sort of message this would project; the move could be misinterpreted either by their content providers overseas (which could get really awkward), or even by the some of the community they were attempting to attract (Thinking something like, "Damn legals bought out batoto and shut it down," perhaps).

 

And the benefits wouldn't be clear, either. A lot of advertising departments are very concerned with measurable effectiveness as expressed in numbers and metrics (I think possibly overmuch, but that's another discussion), but guessing at those numbers for this would be in advance would basically be impossible because it's non-standard advertising.

 

Even considering all of this thoroughly could take a good chunk of time and money.

 

And then, as the coup de grâce: When faced with a certain and an uncertain option, people will tend towards picking the certain one. So yeah, I can't say I'm really surprised.

 

(Of course, I could be entirely off-tack as I have no idea what the corporate culture at these companies is like. This is just what I'd expect if the subject was broached in any of the larger corporations I've worked with/for.)


Edited by pokari, 31 January 2018 - 11:19 PM.


#22
nopeewhy

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It does feel a little wrong though. Like it will be misused to represent their site as batoto to casual readers, or more frustratingly to anyone who followed any old notices saying "please use batoto". Such people will be few, though, I think.

I don't think it will necessarily a few. I myself only found out about batoto through those notices and I do think that over time a lot of "newcomers" to manga will find their way to the new batoto instead of mangadex or whatever. At least initially

 

Speaking of which, has anyone had any luck getting that mangadex site to import their follows?

I'm not sure if all my follows have been imported properly (I imported through JSON) but I think that some series are still missing and therefore still can't be followed but otherwise most of them look to be there.

 

 

I actually approached other official publishers prior to putting domain up for auction to see if they're interested. From about a month and half before the announcement. Sadly, I either never got a reply or got turned down. I found that so stupid. They spend so much more money on advertising already and they were willing to let go of an extremely effective promo ability.

 

I feel you. Having a great part of the batoto community visit their site would have been a good promotion especially as I feel that the batoto community is more likely to spend money on manga, merchandise and so on



#23
ZdrytchX

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Yeah it was definitely mangawindow a few days ago but then they changed their logo to represent the bato.to domain.

I didn't relise until reading this thread, but the fact that scanlators link to the old bato.to as their preferred reading site has become an issue because it means they will get the attention that they paid for... I saw somewhere that the domain was sold for something like 5k but honestly 5k isn't much if you compare it to the amount of work had been completed to make the site that famous for a not-for-profit community and that rather inefficient reader.

And no mangadex hasn't imported my follows yet, so maybe it has some bugs on invalid/blank IDs so it'll probably have to wait for some fixes.



#24
zetsuravez

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this is news to me... never thought some other manga site bought bato.to domain...



#25
Grumpy

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They literally copied mangawindow site, and just replaced the name with batoto,it's just lazy. I have a question, can't they use the same layout as batoto?

Well, I own the copyright to the layout as I made it. It's also built on top of the theme that I bought/licensed from IPS theme designing company (IPSFocus). Lastly, IPS itself. So, they would be infringing on three copyright owners issues if they copied ours.

But there's nothing physically stopping them.

So... they can, but they shouldn't.


I'm not too surprised[...]

Batoto was just an image hosting site with convenient sorting and a forum. Don't be calling us names now! :P

 

Number of companies actually already worked with us and actually had another one that was rolling out before I told them sorry for wasting their time. So, I don't really think they were shy from being associated with us.

 

One company whom I was in contact with was super into buying it. But couldn't convince their CEO. So, there is a lot of mixed desires on their side too.

 

The quantity of batoto traffic + smooth transition is worth seriously quite a lot. I actually had the site evaluated with a consultant prior to approaching them. To a strategic buyer (like manga publisher), I was supposed to approach them with low 6 figure (for site, not just domain). But did warn me that the strategic route of selling rarely work and shouldn't get my hopes up simply because they usually don't assign a budget for this type of nature, even for large companies. Meaning, they'd have to reassign their budget to make it work. This was a super bargain though. Still feel like a big loss of opportunity for them. 

 

In the end, market has spoken. The domain's value is 5k and it's where it's sold.



#26
GodricKharg

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I wasn't expecting any better, but it's still quite sad to see what has come from buying the bato.to domain

One of the mangapanda-like network of reader sites.

 

I hope Grumpy sold it for a fortune, at least.

 

BTW, while I'm here, I wish you guys well in the future, wherever you land to, no matter what reader site you end up picking :)

When I was watching the auction the last I saw was around $4,900.  It's going around that it went for around $5,100 USD.  Not bad.  Not great, when you consider how much the new owners might make off it.

I've already fielded one statement in discord about 'bato is back up' making it sound like its Grumpy back...

 

Good luck in the future Grumpy with whatever you decide to do.  For now, relax and spend many nights out drinking it up with friends and family!


Edited by GodricKharg, 03 February 2018 - 12:29 AM.

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#27
TheTruthOfPerfection

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Feels like a repeat of Zomganime all over again. Was the king of anime sites for a while, with an incredibly large community, then the owner sold it to NOEZ, and following that, NOEZ forbid any of the moderators from moderating on the forums, and it just slowly was forced to die over the course of several months. Then, when there was almost nobody using it anymore, they made the domain redirect to their own created site, which was much worse.


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#28
PandaBuluk

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Welp, glad i checking with Vatoto forum after seeing 'new' batoto up.

Now i know to not touch that site anymore.

 

Unfortunately for some reason i only can open mangadex by using proxy site... so I don't think i will use them for my primary reader until i can do something about it.



#29
Syri

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mangadex is probably blocked by your ISP as they host 18+ material without any entry restriction. It's something I've seen mentioned a few times with regards to their site.



#30
chiisanakyo

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after seeing the new batoto i think i will stick with mangadex


Edited by chiisanakyo, 04 February 2018 - 11:46 PM.


#31
agent020

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Hi guys,would you try helping up www.mangalism.com? No VPN needed, users can upload and store their image files as well.


www.mangalism.com, nice to see you there!


#32
fruiteaterz

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simply speechless


Edited by fruiteaterz, 04 February 2018 - 08:12 PM.


#33
Hasya

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i mistook it for batoto and made a new account there  >_<



#34
shinyray01

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They imported my list, looks just fine.......well, the format sucks, but they all appear to be there at least.

 

Speaking of which, has anyone had any luck getting that mangadex site to import their follows?

How does that work? I clicked on the link that said "check out here" and took me to the sign in page. Do I have to make a new account with the same username as my old account? Is it worth it making an account there or do I have to find better sites? I only really used batoto.



#35
steamshark

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For now mangadex looks ok to me also 2 or 3 days ago they finally imported my 324 follows so it works, I just hope that they will have philosophy similar to old batoto, also "the new batoto" if we can even call it that  looks really yuck.


Edited by steamshark, 06 February 2018 - 01:31 AM.


#36
svines85

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How does that work? I clicked on the link that said "check out here" and took me to the sign in page. Do I have to make a new account with the same username as my old account? Is it worth it making an account there or do I have to find better sites? I only really used batoto.

 

I happened to have already been signed up with MangaPark, so both the Mangawindow and the site that's now being run under the bato.to domain already had me signed up, I at least didn't have to do anything other than copy/paste that json thingy/doc to import the follows.

 

Yeah, that new "batoto" ain't got nothing to do with the old Batoto other than they bought the name, you'll have to create an account (under whatever/however you want to do it, none of those details should have anything to do with it) so there's someplace for them to import your follows to.

 

Hey, I think that new mangadex or what the hell ever its name is seems okay...

 

https://mangadex.com/

 

I'd give them the business first and see how it works out.......they did finally I guess have time to get my follows imported (hey, I had around 800 or so, I understand it not being a high priority for them, they're trying to build a site from scratch over there :D ). Though yeah, you'll have to make an account there too, same deal, they'll at the least need you to sign up with them now so there's a place for them to import your list to.


Edited by svines85, 06 February 2018 - 03:13 AM.

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#37
APines

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Mangadex is pretty good yeah. I've been using it a bit lately. I sort of dislike how blurry the main covers look on the main page on mobile or my mobile at least...then again batato did am even worse job for me...the right bat would basically block the whole image haha

#38
AyaLover

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I will stick with mangadex



#39
Roxis

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So let me get straight, basically Batoto brought by mangapark aka NOEZ aka mangafox, right?

Isn't this quite irony, they are the reason why we created batoto in first place. To against the oppressor and brought just to scanlators.


Edited by Roxis, 07 February 2018 - 02:27 AM.

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#40
Natureboy

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The domain name was sold at auction.  If you only wanted the "good guys" to bid, it would have had to be a private sale.