Fametracker
Fametracker was a popular culture website which called
itself "The Farmer's Almanac of Celebrity Worth". The site was
started in 1999 by Tara Ariano (screenname Wing Chun), a sometime MSNBC.com
contributor, and her husband David T. Cole (screenname Glark), who lived at the
time in Toronto and also co-created Television Without Pity, along with friend
Adam Sternbergh.
Fametracker was known for its monthly Fame Audits, in which
a particular celebrity's level of fame was assessed in comparison to other
celebrities. Other regular Fametracker features included "2 Stars 1
Slot" in which two similar celebrities sparred for a single dubious title
or niche; and "Hey It's That Guy!" which traced the burgeoning career
of an unknown but recognizable actor. The "Hey It’s That Guy!"
feature was inspired by legendary character actor J. T. Walsh, who appeared in
over 60 films but was not well known by name. The creators expanded upon this
idea in 2005 by publishing Hey! It's That Guy!: The Fametracker.com Guide to
Character Actors.
For over five years, Fametracker also operated extensive
message boards, which were frequented at one point by over 100 posters. The
message boards closed in March 2005 when the moderators could no longer afford
the excessive bandwidth.
The final new article was posted on Fametracker.com on 26th
February 2007 - since then, the site has displayed a message saying
"Fametracker is on hiatus until further notice", though the existing
content archive remains available to site visitors.
Many of Fametracker's functions have since been merged into
Television Without Pity.
FunTrivia
FunTrivia is the largest trivia website on the internet,
with over 2.4 million registered users and over 6 million guests. FunTrivia is
available in over 100 countries. It boasts a selection of over 110,000 quizzes
and over 1 million questions.
Description
FunTrivia was the first trivia website added to the Yahoo
directory and has been the largest trivia site on the web for over a decade,
both in terms of traffic and content. FunTrivia is notable in that it was one
of the first entertainment sites on the web in 1995 to use a
community-generated content model to create all of its content, well before
"Web 2.0" became hype.
It contains over 1,000,000 trivia questions in 90,000
quizzes, all submitted by over 4,000 different contributors. Quizzes are
created and submitted by members of the community, and placed online for anyone
to play free.
FunTrivia also pioneered the "Ask a Question"
model in early 2000, where visitors could ask a trivia question and receive
answers from other guests, well before Yahoo answers or WikiAnswers existed.
FunTrivia's editing system is similar to Wikipedia's more
recent model, but has tighter editorial controls. New submissions are completely
checked before being published and prior accepted submissions may be modified
without editor intervention. All editors on FunTrivia are volunteer community
members who dedicate their time to ensuring that content is of high quality, as
with Wikipedia. As of 2009 there were 40 volunteer editors maintaining the
site's content.
User Features
Free (non-subscribing) members of FunTrivia may play most
games on the site, and are able to play all user-created quizzes. However,
scores are only saved for the first 100 quizzes. A free member is able to
participate in the majority of hourly and daily trivia games. All players may
create quizzes.
A subscription (Gold Membership) option is available for
frequent players. A Gold Membership costs $20 for a 6-month and $38 for a
12-month subscription. A FunTrivia player that has paid to become a Gold Member
has access to more activities than a free member. A gold star will appear by a
Gold Member's account name whenever he/she posts on a chat board, makes a quiz,
etc. A Gold Member can play as many quizzes as he/she desires and have the
quizzes recorded and receive points. The Gold Member can also pick out a
picture to have displayed on the chat boards when they post. There are numerous
other features that Gold Members get that free members don't, such as quiz
analysis options, no ads, and faster searching.
While exploring FunTrivia users can be on the look out for
ways to get certain badges, badgelets, and maybe even find the coveted
FunTrivia Treasure.
