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Equestria Daily

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Equestria Daily
File:Equestria Daily logo.png
Equestria Daily's homepage on January 5, 2012.
Type of site
Fan site
Created byShaun Scotellaro
URLequestriadaily.com
CommercialNo

Equestria Daily (sometimes shortened as EqD or occasionally as ED) is a 2011-established fan site dedicated to news and fan fiction coverage of the 2010 animated show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The site is run with a blog-style interface by a dedicated team of several editors, and has been officially recognized by the show's production team as well as The Hub, the American children's network on which the show airs.

History

Jayson Thiessen (left) and Shaun Scotellaro ("Sethisto") at BroNYCon 2011

23-year-old Arizonan college student and one of the more well-known organizers of the Brony fandom Shaun Scotellaro established the website in January 2011 to collect fan fiction and news specific to the show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. In order to establish the site, Scotellaro had to cut back on his community-college classes in order run the site out of his parents' house in Glendale, Arizona.[2] Scotellaro has explained that he believed the show needed a unified fan base at the time, as he and many other older males had recently become supporters of the show – known as 'bronies' – and an overarching concern was that Hasbro would not be authorizing a second season.[3] Towards the end of 2010, when the fan-following was still in its infancy and confined mostly to the /co/ and /b/ boards of English imageboard 4chan, all pony-related content was banned by a moderator who had had enough of the flame war that was being waged between those who enjoyed the show and those who did not. Posting a message containing the word 'pony' became a bannable offense, and this was the final stimulus that prompted Scotellaro to begin Equestria Daily.[3]

After its creation, the blog quickly gained attention from the fan community. Though Scotellaro ran it solely himself to start with, more and more fans began sending news and updates to him, and the workload increased. By the end of June 2011, the site's staff had been expanded to include two more blog editors, an 'interviewer/YouTube organiser', and a corps of pre-readers for fan fiction submissions, all drawn from the user base of dedicated blog followers.[4] By this point, the website was garnering around 300,000 additional page views per day, and with the supplementary editors was managing to post a greater number of updates with increased frequency, though still primarily of fan fiction.[5][6] Equestria Daily has also partially branched into other forms of media dissemination, currently possessing a Facebook page, YouTube account and Twitter account, though all updates are still hosted on the originally-established Blogger site. As of April 2012, the site has boasted over 170 million hits since its creation in January 2011.[7] In an interview with CBC Radio in December 2011, Scotellaro stated that the site was reaching more than 500,000 views per day.[8]

Site Features

Categories

The Equestria Daily website features five main categories, each given their own page. These categories are Art, News, Fics, Media, and Comics. Posts tagged in these categories show up both on their designated page as well the home page.

Art

The Art category includes both two- and three-dimensional visual fan-art pieces. These can range from "customs," fan-made figurines, to papercraft, as well as paintings and digital art. Comics are not included in this section.

News

The News category shares updates about the show--episode announcements, extended song versions, and "Nightly Roundups" are included here. "Nightly Roundups" are a series of posts written in the middle of night, documenting all sorts of news about the brony community, and sometimes things not related as well.

Official response

The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic production team at DHX Media Vancouver, as well as the network which broadcasts the show, The Hub, have both acknowledged the existence of the fan community, and have individually sent official material specifically to Equestria Daily. The Hub had a summer advertising campaign for the show based around a parody of Katy Perry's "California Gurls" called "Equestria Girls"; one of the lyrics mentioned "bronies" hanging out with the ponies.[9] An extended promotional version of the song was sent to Scotellaro's blog for "our favorite Pony fans."[10] Hasbro themselves sent a review copy of their interactive iOS storybook "Twilight Sparkle: Teacher for a Day" to Equestria Daily,[11] and several key figures in the production team have done exclusive interviews for the website, including supervising director and current showrunner Jayson Thiessen[12] and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic developer and creative director Lauren Faust.[13]

References

  1. ^ "Equestriadaily.com Site Info". Alexa Internet, Inc. Retrieved 2012-04-15.
  2. ^ Vauhini Vara and Ann Zimmerman (2011-09-07). "Hey, Bro, That's My Little Pony!". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2011-09-23.
  3. ^ a b LaMarche, Una (2011-08-03). "Pony Up Haters: How 4chan Gave Birth to the Bronies". New York Observer. Retrieved 2011-08-03.
  4. ^ 'Sethisto' (2011-06-09). "Equestria Daily FAQ". Equestria Daily. Retrieved 2011-09-03.
  5. ^ Watchcutter, Angela (2011-06-09). "My Little Pony Corrals Unlikely Fanboys Known as 'Bronies'". Wired. Retrieved 2011-06-09.
  6. ^ Griffiths, Daniel (2011-06-09). "Colt success: My Little Pony's reboot, Friendship is Magic". Wired UK. Retrieved 2011-06-09.
  7. ^ Weinman, Jaime (2011-09-07). "Ponies Do Sondheim". Maclean's. Retrieved 2011-09-23.
  8. ^ Ghomeshi, Jian (2011-12-07). Curious about Bronies? (Adobe Flash) (Radio broadcast). CBC Radio. Retrieved 2011-12-07.
  9. ^ McLaughlin, Katie (2011-09-22). "The Throwback: 'My Little Pony'". CNN Entertainment. Retrieved 2011-09-23.
  10. ^ 'Sethisto' (2011-05-27). "Premiere: Extended Equestria Girls". Equestria Daily. Retrieved 2011-10-01.
  11. ^ 'Cereal Velocity' (2011-09-22). "Cereal Reviews Twilight Sparkle: Teacher for a Day". Equestria Daily. Retrieved 2011-10-01.
  12. ^ 'Tekaramity' (2011-09-14). "Exclusive Season 2 audio interview with Jayson Thiessen". Equestria Daily. Retrieved 2011-10-01.
  13. ^ 'Tekaramity' (2011-09-16). "Exclusive Season 1 Retrospective Interview with Lauren Faust". Equestria Daily. Retrieved 2011-10-01.
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