User blog:Brandon Rhea/2016: A Big Year for Fandom

Whew. 2016 was a heck of a year, wasn't it? Fandom powered by Wikia is no exception. We've had a really exciting year! Now that we're only 10 days away from the start of a new one, let's take a look back at some of the biggest things that happened on Fandom this year.


 * We rebranded! Our rebranding as Fandom powered by Wikia came toward the end of the year, in October, but it was the biggest step we took as an entertainment-focused company in 2016. This change brought our entire platform under one fan-first media brand that will give the company and your communities even more opportunities to grow in the future.
 * Fandom news and stories launched. An important step in establishing ourselves as a comprehensive entertainment destination was the launch of news and stories in January, along with the Fan Contributor Program&mdash;both of which created a brand new way to contribute to the site and learn more about the properties that you love. Drawing from the expertise and power of wiki communities, news and stories brought a new editorial voice that lets fans share their unique perspectives on all-things pop culture. So far, localized news and stories have been launched in the United States and the United Kingdom, and we plan to launch them in even more major markets and languages moving forward.
 * We launched Discussions. The debut of our new Discussions platform gave fans another new way to contribute by facilitating passionate discussions around their favorite topics. Discussions marked another big step towards being a truly comprehensive entertainment destination for fans to celebrate all they love.
 * New community features were built. New wiki readers often wonder, who creates the pages here? Who manages the content? Can I help? We introduced the Community Page to answer those questions in one central place, where readers and editors alike can find out more info about the community. We also released even more Mobile Apps for some of the most popular Fandom communities.
 * We introduced Service-Oriented Architecture. Just like a community of people, the software that powers Fandom is made up of many different components. We wanted to optimize how those components interact, to allow for faster development and maintenance. That led us to Service-Oriented Architecture, which we introduced to you earlier this year, and it will enable us to manage a much more robust and efficient platform moving forward.
 * Vanguard drove content portability. With mobile and other non-desktop devices becoming the norm, making sure that your content can be properly displayed on all devices (aka, content portability) became an even bigger goal in 2016. We introduced Vanguard, a group of volunteers tasked with helping communities make their content more portable, and we couldn't be happier with how the group has worked with communities to achieve portability goals.
 * Community Connect got even bigger. We held our inaugural Community Connect in 2015, and 2016 was an even bigger success than the first! Between our two events in Poland and San Francisco, we welcomed 61 community members to our offices to share our vision for the future of the site and hear feedback directly and in-person. We also began expanding our conversations with users by holding a virtual town hall about content portability. We hope to do more of these in the future, on a variety of different topics.
 * New York Comic Con was a huge success. We've had a huge presence at New York Comic Con for the last four years, and 2016 was our biggest event ever! We brought Fandom directly to the show floor with our Fantasy Food Truck, partnered with BBC America's new series Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency to create an interactive escape room, and shared a stage with Twitch where we welcomed a number of special guests.

We can't wait to see what 2017 brings. We'll be talking to you more about our 2017 plans in the coming weeks, so be on the lookout for those updates. As always, you can follow us on social media for the latest company updates. You can see the latest content updates on our Fandom Facebook and Twitter feeds, as well as company updates on Fandom Insider (Twitter) and LinkedIn.

What did your community achieve in 2016? Tell us all about it in the comments!