Clubs Have a Brand-New Look—In-App!

In its heyday, the clubs feature on MAL was the place to make friends and connect with other members about anime. Sadly, a lack of updates over the years and popularization of instant messaging apps like Discord have led to most clubs being inactive.

To rejuvenate the club feature for the next MAL generation, we are excited to announce an all-new messaging system for clubs!

• For phase 1, this feature will be in-app only to make it more convenient to talk with club members on-the-go.
  
• In the next phase, we'll be bringing it to web (desktop/mobile) too.

Clubs in-app is opt-in only. This means an admin of the club needs to enable the club to appear inside the app for members to start using the new messaging system. You can request to be an admin of an inactive club using this thread.

Give it a whirl and let us know what you think! If you don't have the app yet, you can get it here.

We have a bunch of additional features planned to expand upon this first phase to keep making clubs better, so we hope you'll look forward to more updates~

man I feel bad for not making enough time to update the clubs I got, thanks for the reminder

When's the website getting the visual overhaul?

I love this update! It's definitely gonna make discussion with many people on this site more fun and engaging :D
I'm really looking forward to spending more time on the Clubs part of the app :)

Wow the mobile app getting and becoming better each month with a new update.... GGs staff team

Do we need to wait for the app to be updated before we can see the changes? I've activated AEGC and BFVRAT, but the app opens the clubs in web browser mode, which means we can't see the new feature.

Edit: all good, the update just appeared in my app store

Well hopefully overtime there will be more functionality to it.
But yeah, the Anime Guild has been activated.

I went into the Play Store and manually updated the app, which showed me the clubs



As has Namine's Cafe. We'll give it a whirl and see how it goes.

Now something that I've noticed since the Club App went up is the display now says "Displaying 5 of 0 topics" and its like that for other clubs that are enabled as well.

@Kineta will we expand the amount of colors the color theme has in the future? Like adding more specific shades of RGB?

You guys tried passing us up again, but I pestered enough people to get it up in H&E, I guess. I haven't looked yet, so I don't know if it's up for us yet or not. I just know that I had to actively seek out the person who was going around to activate this in other clubs without creators, and I sent them our stuff when they asked for it. Which is ironic, because we're probably the only club with an admin present here who still has the resources to actually make specialized content for this as opposed to just recycling old assets made years ago. I'm kind of pissed that we're still having to fight for acknowledgement that clubs that don't have even half of our presence in the more competitive scenarios seem to get without issue. I can only wonder what the reason for that is.

Otherwise, I'm happy! I think this won't do much while it's mobile-exclusive, but when it rolls out to desktop it might help some. We need more small-talk focused things in clubs, because that's the appeal to the demo who primarily use clubs and Discord being a straight up superior alternative is a large part of what makes it so hard to have activity in main clubs these days. While I'm quite proud of our Discord server, it'd probably increase activity by quite a bit if we weren't having to try to funnel people offsite to find where the *real* activity is at. Ours looks good so far.

I'm looking forward to see this rolled out on desktop as well. I hope it goes smooth!

I miss the good old days of MAL clubs being super active. Hopefully this can restore that a bit :D

Discord. We either moved to Discord or died. Clubs are still active, just not on MAL itself so much.

The few of us who still have active clubs, cough, are in the wonderful position of having to always tell people that we're all on Discord now so people know we're not dead.

I am waiting for the desktop release as a normal houseki fan and I know how to wait, thanks

I know. My club has been on discord for years already. Would love to see more stuff being added in MAL though

I am pleased to announce that - as usual - H&E seems to be doing better than the rest of you :) We've gained about 50 new members in the day since this has launched, and our little chat thingy seems to be the most active or among the most active. Also, the banner my head GFXer (because we still have our GFX department cough) made on super short notice to get this up in time looks great.

As a token of our appreciation, I'm offering all of the other HAs from every other club a chance to get a personalized banner! The way I envision the format is something like, we'll find a good, lewd picture of a muddy or dirty anime girl, then the text right beside it will say "(Your club's name here!) has been losing to H&E since 2019 :(" - then, once we get it made, we'll send it your way and you can put it in your club's layout! Hell, I'll even make the dimensions fit the app requirements in case you want to use it as your app banner :) Just let me know in this thread if you want one! Cheers!

Since when did MAL care about clubs lmao.

Well I might as well enable the Best Boy Club that I oversee called The Immemoriam Library as well.
As for the Anime Guild, we have seen a good amount of new joinees as well.

This might be a good start but the app lacks so many things to the point that almost every feature is not in the app and the app redirects you in the browser

I hope this makes clubs more active. The thing the app needs most is the ability to add detailed info when adding a series to our lists. I feel like I have so much I want to put in the comments section of manga that I'm reading, but can't easily because of this missing feature.

Thaaaaaaank youuuuuu guuuuuys !

This is a great feature, I love it !

It's precisely what was missing from clubs, that's super cool of you !

Thanks a million for your work !

Nice try, but I will never install this useless app.

'Tis interesting to notice that rather than trying to improve this antediluvian website, priority is given to trivialities such as this new app-exclusive (sigh) feature for the unpopular clubs. After all, it should not come as a surprise after the last update on the design of lists of favourite cartoons and people (it was a fine change though).

It should be obvious that the reason why the feature is not available on the website is to promote the app, but since clubs are mostly dead, it seems like a dubious strategy... This "update" only makes the moderation of clubs more cumbersome too; I will pass.

This has been pretty successful, I'd say. Moreso than I thought, since I thought it wouldn't do shit. We've gained about 150 members since our part of the app launched, and we've had a good amount of activity from some of these new people on our little chat thing. I talked to the HA of TNC and he told me they'd climbed by 103 members since launch when we talked a few hours ago. I'm actually excited about the desktop launch, considering the way this has gone.

That said, I have a concern about the whole president schtick. I really think the idea of club creators as the be-all end-all should be revisited if you want to help stabilize activity on this section of the site, considering there are about 0 major clubs that have anything to do with their creator anymore outside of nominal positions and acknowledgement, and in some cases they don't even get that. Like, the big activity hubs on this section of the site just aren't and haven't been run by their creators for years, yet under the current system people who haven't interacted with these communities for years in most cases can simply decide to come back and clean house. Sudden, random changes in structure - especially in communities as in need of activity as clubs are - can be devastating, doubly so when we're talking about the places that host the most activity on this section of the site if we're talking about the bigger picture.

People will leave clubs over minor disagreements with their staff, or even less than disagreements. Exoduses happen. We had one at the tail end of 2018 and had to rebuild nearly from scratch. People have relatively little loyalty to a brand or image and moreso to how that community is tailored to individuals like them. So we tailor our content and how we incite community interaction around them, all while there's some giant, looming presence that can come and completely destablize that because of what seems like a poorly thought out ruling that ignores context and circumstances, and driving activity away from that club.

In turn - and what's more relevant to MAL as a whole than just the actual club - they don't tend to go to new clubs. They tend to create offshoot discord servers to sort of keep their group together, pretty much denying even a connection to MAL in that activity loss. And a sudden, complete change in structure can absolutely cause that on a far greater level than any major club has had to deal with, I'm sure. It just opens up the door for people almost totally detached from our communities at this point to sniff that they can just bulldoze their way back into a community that's grown by tens of thousands since they left it, and seize control of what has been built entirely without them with no questions asked and no opposition able to be mounted.

What comes off as an attempt to simplify internal issues with clubs winds up coming across like nothing more than a giant, looming threat to what little we have left. I really would like to just say that whole thing should be revisited, not reinforced with this whole president/secretary schtick. Context, circumstances, et cetera, should be taken into consideration. It's less a growth thing and more a stability thing, and I get that focus should be on growth right now, but all the same. Might as well say it while I'm here.

But, again, other than that concern, the app launch has actually been great for clubs. We're getting a lot more activity from new people and growth than I was expecting, and I expect that to go even better with the desktop launch.

Thank you! This should be fixed now.

mobile first since the future profit and growth is from mobile

We're transitioning from the "Creator" system to a "President/Vice-President" system so that clubs can continue to live on more smoothly without their creator. It's just going to take more development time to get it all set-up. I'm well aware of the issues with the creator system and would be very happy to be able to close the admin request thread :)

Well, then I look forward to seeing what comes of that! God only knows how long clubs have gotten the shaft, so it's great to see us finally getting more stuff to work with in community building and that it's not just stopping here.

So it's gotten that prevalent to the point MAL is aware of it, huh?
Yeah, Discord single-handedly killed MAL activity. Forum games has been real inactive since most members left for some Discord group of some sort. Sad, but what can ya do? That's their decision, at the end of the day, and they're more than allowed to do it
(I'm sure the shutdown of Current Events caused some people to leave, but I will forever stand by MAL's decision to close that board)


I'm all for any attempts to try to get any sector of MAL back to its former levels of activity. Here's to hoping this helps clubs and the site as a whole in the long-run

As much as I hate the fact that Discord has taken people away from club discussion, I will not be implementing this in my club, as I have a staunch hatred towards mobile phones, and the "Apps" that they have.

IM apps have always been popular. Before Discord everyone had to use Skype after shutdown of Microsoft messenger which coincided with Yahoo Messenger and AIM becoming less popular in America while hanging on in different countries. Club use died down because the trend of making an IM group for so many clubs and how people treat Discord like public social media while past IM program use people reserved more for closer contacts and because Discord better handled large groups like IRC channels could handle while Skype would act up.

I do hope MAL isn't heading in the design direction most modern sites are where the desktop site looks like the mobile app and mobile site and vice versa just crippling design....although MALs design has always been fairly simple so not a huge worry.

That said it's nice to get an update like this. ...if only I better understood what it looks like and how it functions without having to install the app myself.

My theory is that it's easier to update the app then the website since most of the website code was probably written back in 2010.

Interesting theory, but I doubt that it is the only reason why it was updated first.

Good job with the update. Can't wait to see how forum will look in the app.

Spy x family is the very...

We need Arabic

Nice update but incomplete. There are no notifications, the letters are insufficient in the search section. There is no letter ü, ö, ç, ı, ğ.The Discuss part is very lagy on mobile, the application crashes constantly. When these are fixed, the update becomes very useful.

For a starter, I think this is a nice feature. Although I would’t want to have to use the app just for it, which is the reason this hasn’t been enabled in my café yet.

Let’s wait & see~

Good job with the update. Can't wait to see how forum will look in the app.

I didn't know MAL had an app O_O, i'm download it right now

Can you make it so you can download/save pictures on the app. I know that's asking a lot but it sure would be nice.

I wish there's a link in club pages in the app that could direct to the club's desktop version so we can see the relations and comments made on desktop. When I want to check something on the desktop while I'm on mobile, I just click on a random user's profile, then check their club list and look for a specific club until it brings me to that club's desktop view. Can you please make the messages/comments viewable on both the app and desktop? Most clubs are active on the desktop version but I've seen a bunch of clubs like The Ramen Shop and The English dub Anime Community aka T.E.D.A.C which are very active on the app but inactive in the desktop version. It would be nice if club activity reflects in both the desktop and app.

The App is becoming better and better! Love it! :D

Perhaps there could be a separate tab/page for club invites in the app just like with the desktop version ('Invitations')? It's kinda annoying that they're always on top of the 'Discussion' page. So I'd have to scroll past them to see 'My Clubs' and the 'Recently Active Clubs'.

I know they're collapsible but that option isn't even on default. Yeah, we can always click 'Deny' to get rid of them but I don't want to do that.

Possibly, similar with the desktop version ('Invitations'), there might be a specific tab or page in the app for club invitations? These always appear at the top of the "Talk" page, which is sort of aggravating. Hence, in order to see "My Clubs" and "Recently Active Clubs," I would have to scroll past them.