Most of the hosting sites are looking long in the tooth right now, so this is an opportunity to set a new standard.
For fun, I'll offer a few predictions, based solely on gut feeling, overheard remarks and unreliable bits of gossip.
- I expect state of the art performance in comic hosting.
- I expect a site that is somewhere in between ugly and bland. If they job out the home page we don't know what we'll get but if there's a big, raised "CS" in the upper left corner we'll know who to blame.
- I expect advances in internal networking for comics members, but not external networking, innovations in ad serving or community formation.
- If it is fast and easy to load your comic -- the opposite of Web Comics Nation -- people will rush to join. The question is whether members of lowbrow sites will make the migration.
- Since the comics people who have made the most impressive proposals for rethinking site design and services and building a definitive site have apparently not been consulted, either the site will lack their insights or the owners have gotten those insights from other sources. I predict some of the most compelling ideas will be missing and this will give rise to yet another heavyweight site a year or two down the road.
Take these predictions lightly, but let's see what comes of them.
