Our daily traffic is just as good as ever, and maybe even better on our forums. Unfortunately, usage (sign-ups and discussion posts) doesn’t seem to reflect the phenomenal visitation numbers. Why?

It’s because the few people who are using it can’t exactly carry out a conversation with themselves! They need your participation, too! Go on, you know you’ve checked out our forums. It’s time to take action, sign up, and get to know your fellow Tanooki readers! Besides, I’m going to need a path of communication if I want all of your input on some of the big changes planned for the next three months, and then the next six months…

The Tanooki Forums

So tonight we’ll be posting a special podcast focusing almost entirely on this little gizmo we’ve got at The Tanooki. You might have heard of it, it’s called a DSi. Tonight, Matt, Joey, and I will take to the mic to share our thoughts and opinions on the DSi, what we liked and what we didn’t like.

Obviously, it’s a little unfortunate that the majority of your won’t have a DSi to play with for several months, so please! Send us your questions and queries by writing the mailbag, and we’ll do our very best to answer them. We’re encouraging mostly DSi questions, but non-DSi questions will be answered towards the end. We’ll even try to get up a video of our session later on, so you can check out the DSi in action.

Write the mailbag!

I remember back towards the beginning of this year, I decided to google “The Tanooki” and see what kind of an impact we’d made. After all, Matt and I started this site literally from the ground up a year earlier, with what little pocket change we had as our entire budget, and with any free time we had during our hectic sophomore years of college as our work hours. It was a two-man show, and it was pretty amazing how great a start we had.

That Google search turned up, among other things, a random discussion about our site. Some people were talking about how our site just turned a year old… and that they didn’t expect us to get through a second year. Sorry to burst their bubble, but it’s a done deal. We’re here to stay. We’ve added some capable writers to our staff, and we love what we do. You could even say it’s still just a fun hobby for most of us, not something we need to do each day to make a living just yet.

That said, we’re going to need some additional help now and in the future. Matt and I are finishing college at the moment - he already has a job with web video, and I’m preparing to student teach next semester. As much as I’d love for all of us to keep posting 25 items a day every day, it’s not realistic for such a small group any more. Our writing staff has done a great job keeping the site going strong, but even they’re dealing with increasing school work as they finish their degrees. So, if you think you’ve got some time each day, some good writing ability, and perhaps want to dip your feet into gaming journalism, drop up a line.

We’re looking primarily for daily news reporters, night reporters, reporters based in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan, and weekend columnists, but if you think you have something to offer, let us know. Want to help moderate and maintain our forum? Want to help in watermarking and uploading all the screens and videos sent to us? Want to code us our own video player? Let us know! We want to keep growing as a site and as our own entity, keep expanding to cover news in more areas, all while keeping everything to a top notch standard.

You can check out requirements for writer positions and fill out the application form here. App materials and other application questions should be sent to apply@thetanooki.com. If we’ve turned you down in the past, I encourage you to try again. If you have previous writing experience, I also encourage you. If you’re simply curious, feel free to contact us. I’m looking forward to hearing from some of you!