MyFursona

July 27, 2024

MyFursona was a furry social networking site founded by KovuTheHusky in September 2007. It aimed to be a community hub from which users can maintain both their online and offline furry lifestyles. MyFursona is notable in being the only furry social network to hold furmeets, as well as being completely coded from scratch, rather than using pre-existing software or a hosting website. As of May 2009 there were over 5,000 users registered on MyFursona. However, the site was closed in 2011 due to staffing issues.

History
MyFursona was founded in September 2007 by KovuTheHusky - a young programmer who has produced a range of different applications and websites in his spare time. This version (dubbed MyFursona Beta) was maintained solely by Kovu, over the next few months volunteer staff came on board; including Xerxes, who initially came on as Flash development but later as community control, xcxeon as security coder and Tori Belliachi as head of graphic design.

Several additional staff members were added subsequent to this, but were noted as "moderators" as opposed to "administrators" to distinguish them from the four "executive" board members (whose usernames are preceded by an @ symbol when displayed on the site). In November of 2008, NightWolf was promoted to administrator status, making him the fifth board member.

The name is possibly derived from MySpace and The Knack single, My Sharona; the similarity between the song and the site's name has previously provoked discussion.

On March 1 2008, the new version of the site came online, named MyFursona RC1. It sported a new design - which was praised by the site's community and was for the most part completely re-coded from the last version. Over the following month many new features were added, including a site wide search feature - provoking one user to humorously deem it "better than Fur Affinity".

Planned additions include an integrated forum, groups and an international furmeet and convention organization model — which is planned to be a major identifying feature of MyFursona and its aim to bring the furry community together.

Head of design from 2007 until 2009 Alexander Grey announced his resignation on April 1, 2009, due to personal commitments. Xerxes Qados followed soon after, leaving his post as community relations administrator in May, 2009.

April-May 2008 suspension/downtime
On the weekend of April 26-28, 2008, a massive influx of new user registrations was brought on by the plugging of profiles belonging to various well-known furs on sites such as Fur Affinity. Approximately 400 to 500 new registrations were made, a third of the user base before the weekend; this high volume of users was initially suspected to have caused downtime of the website on April 28.

It was later determined to be caused by KovuTheHusky's side project, Yiffbase, a Google-like search engine for furry art. It had been set up to index sites such as Yiffstar and Fur Affinity by running a script from the MyFursona server, but due to a bug in its code it requested 400,000 pages in a short period of time. KovuTheHusky's host noticed this and suspended his network of sites temporarily, including MyFursona.

The site returned online at 9-pm EST on April the 28th, however was brought offline again due to people exploiting a previously unknown security hole. They were later found to originate from not420chan. The site was shut down by administrators less than an hour after the first attack. It came back online on May 5, however many features were disabled.

MyFursona Eden
MyFursona's first primary release version - dubbed Eden - is currently in the works, bringing with it numerous new and requested features and a complete UI and branding overhaul. Eden has been available to all MyFursona users since it's inception and can be publicly viewed, tested and used by any MyFursona user. Eden already includes a number of features not available on the main MyFursona website.

The reason for the name was described as follows:

Eden changes the site's original slogan of "A Place For Furs" (a play on MySpace's "A Place For Friends") to "Go Furpile!", which was chosen because KovuTheHusky began ending several announcements of new features or bug fixes with this phrase.

Temporary closing
On October 2010, Kovu announced that MyFursona would be temporarily closing its doors in March 2011 due to the absence of Alex Grey and Xerxes Qados, as well as RL issues, with the site registration being taken down on December 1, 2010, logging in being removed on January 1, 2011 (making the site essentially read-only), and the whole site alltogether sometime the following March. Alex Grey announced he would return to working on MyFursona, following the closure of FurteanTimes.com.

On January 7, 2013, the MyFursona Twitter account mentioned that the site relaunch project is not dead, just inactive.

Events
One of MyFursona's defining features is that it hosts a number of events outside of the site itself.

MyFurmeet
The first MyFurmeet was held on May 31, 2008, in Coram, New York. There was a total attendance of 15 people.

Fursonal Experience
Fursonal Experience was a convention, organized and "branded" by MyFursona, originally proposed for May 2009 in Long Island, New York, U.S.A.

MyFursona never obtained a contract for convention space nor opened a website for registrations for an event. In February 2011, the MyFursona forums were removed to support a site upgrade, scheduled for June 2011. As of July 6, 2011, the new website has not yet opened, and no announcements of a continuing the planning process for Fursonal Experience have been made.

Mascot
MyFursona's mascot is a fox by the name of Orson, who was drawn by Kira specifically for the website. A more fleshed-out redesign by Laura Whent debuted on November 28, 2008. In keeping with the site's community-centric approach, the name was chosen by the users - the name Orson was first suggested by Warszawa. .