8 - The BNR World Launches:

Oh, we got all kinds of heck when Version Vibrant launched. “You broke myOtaku!” “You got rid of cosplay!” “You got rid of NEWS!”

Well, as proved several times this past year: if something’s not there, then do it yourself.

Founded by TrignCat4, the Bootleg News Reporters gave us a world to keep tabs on the worldwide comings and goings in anime, manga, video game, and otaku circles. They kept theOtaku, as well as the podcast, fueled with things to talk about while Adam eventually worked something out into what we have now, and they were one of the few theOtaku.com Worlds to get a special promotion and link on the front page.

The most important lesson learned through the BNR, though, has nothing to do with amateur internet news gathering. Rather, the Bootleg News Reporters saw something that was missing from the site and stepped up to fill that gap. The same could be said of Desbreko and his two hours programming the new myOtaku comment window. If people had complained less about what needed to be fixed and actively worked towards bettering the site, can you imagine how awesome we’d already be? I’m sure there’s an Aesop in there somewhere…

…So if this was about news brought in by people who missed news, I’m sure you can all guess which comes into our next spot on the list…