Newgrounds

Newgrounds is an American online entertainment and social media website. It hosts user-generated content including gaming, animation, audio and artwork. It also provides member-driven voting and ranking of submissions."Newgrounds: A screening of classic internet…". Medium. December 27, 2014.
Tom Fulp founded the site in 1995 and produces in-house content at their headquarters in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania. "Cheltenham Township Business Directory".
Time ranked Newgrounds at number 39 of its "50 Best Websites" list in 2010."50 Best Websites 2010". Time.
==Layout and overview==
===Content and general===
Users can upload content and categorize it into one of Newgrounds' 4 portals: Movies, Games, Audio or Art. 
Movie or game submissions undergo a process termed "judgment", where they are rated and reviewed by users through a 0-5 star system. The average score calculated at various points determines whether it'll be saved or "blammed" (deleted, with only its reviews saved in an obituary section).
Art and audio are instead processed through "scouting". All members can post either one to their profile, but only members who are scouted will have their works appear on public pages to prevent stolen content, spam or prohibited material from reaching the whole site. 
As movies and games were Newgrounds' original focus and remain the dominant mediums, these submissions are also displayed in an area simply called "The Portal".
The homepage features selections from each category, as well as awards and honors to creators whose submission meets certain requirements. All content is rated either "E" for everyone, "T" for teen, "M" for mature or "A" for Adult. Adult-oriented works are restricted to members aged 18 and up. Submissions can also be flagged for violating the site's guidelines. A weighted system recognizes experienced users and gives their flag more voice.
===User communication and behavior===
A Community portal is available where users can communicate with each other through a forum. Competitions following a certain theme run occasionally, where they can receive prizes presented by either a recognized user or staff member. Another system developed, termed "Private Messaging" and abbreviated as PM, is also granted, similar to email where people send messages via the site to other members. A live chatroom is also available.
Anyone breaking the rules can be warned or subjected to sanctions, such as account restrictions or banning by the staff.
==History==
===1990s: Organization===
At age 13, Tom Fulp started a Neo Geo fan magazine under the name "New Ground" in 1991, mailing issues to roughly 100 members of an internet-based club."Newgrounds Wiki: History - 1991: The Zine" - Newgrounds
He later launched a website called "New Ground Remix", which gained popularity during the summer of 1996 after he created the games Club a Seal and Assassin."#105 At World's End - Reply All by Gimlet Media". gimletmedia.com. September 21, 2017. Fulp went on to develop sequels to them on a separate site titled "New Ground Atomix" while he was a sophomore at Drexel University."Newgrounds Wiki: History - 1997: The Tale of Two Newgrounds" - Newgrounds
He began experimenting with Flash a few months later, where he made the infamous "Telebubby Fun Land" that resulted in a lawsuit from the BBC. After Inside Edition contacted him to do a piece on Assassin, he decided to merge the two websites into "Newgrounds" to have a short, memorable URL when he appeared on TV. Though Inside Edition never followed up with him, traffic accelerated anyway; leading him to constantly upgrade hosting and sell t-shirts to pay bills.
Fulp partnered with Troma in 1999 to host the site in exchange for a share of ad revenue. A chatroom and message board were added around then, which allowed people visiting Newgrounds to interact with one another. Many users had submitted their own Flash creations to Fulp, so he added a section called "The Portal" to display them. A friend of his named Ross developed the “Grounds Gold System” to let members gain points for voting on submissions. Revenue increased, so Ross was hired and development began on an automated Portal that let creators submit their content directly and have it judged by anyone visiting the site.
===2000s: Developments===
After the dot-com bubble burst, Newgrounds struggled to pay its bills. Many ad companies either ignored the site for its controversial content or defaulted on payments. This left Fulp to resort to adult ads/pop-ups in what he later termed his "mom on a stripper pole" years."I am Tom Fulp, creator of Newgrounds.com and co-founder of the Behemoth.". reddit. October 29, 2009.
The affiliation with Troma ended in 2003 and the site switched to another provider, significantly reducing costs. The Audio Portal launched the same year, which allowed anyone to use uploaded music for non-commercial projects. 2004 saw them recovering from the crash and the Numa Numa Dance debuted near the end of the year, becoming one of the internet's first viral videos.
Medals were introduced in 2009 (the equivalent of in-game achievements), followed by a "sharing" component that allowed content to be distributed within games. The Art Portal also launched that June, coinciding with the renovation of the company's headquarters.
===2010s: Financial concerns, copyright and format changes===
Newgrounds published their first mobile game GroundCats in 2012​​​​​. Major changes to the site that year included the launch of a video player and support for HTML5 games, no longer limiting members to only Flash projects."Video is a GO!". Newgrounds. April 15, 2012."Newgrounds Founder Tom Fulp Has Been Preparing for the Death of Flash for Years". New York Magazine. July 26, 2017. They also released an open source SWF-to-MP4 video converter called Swivel, which Newgrounds used to update old movies on the site to reflect Flash's declining popularity."Swivel - SWF to Video - Released!". Newgrounds. January 27, 2013.
The site suffered heavily through financial issues around that time and closed its online merch store shortly after."Important Store News". Newgrounds. September 25, 2013. A 2014 update to the popular mobile game Geometry Dash allowed music from Newgrounds to be used in custom levels. The Audio Portal began receiving numerous copyrighted songs as a result, leading to nightcore and mashups being banned."Newgrounds Wiki: Audio Guidelines"
Copyright issues came to further prominence in 2016 when Newgrounds received a serious legal challenge to deal with content containing unlicensed music and images. This resulted in many submissions being removed, including the aforementioned Numa Numa Dance."Numa numa taken down?". Newgrounds. September 21, 2017. Improved servers and video encoding were unveiled in 2018, along with developments for the site to become ad free.
Newgrounds experienced a surge of new members from tumblr in late 2018 when they banned adult content after an issue resulted in their app being removed from Apple's App Store."Tumblr shutting down? No. But there's exodus and Newgrounds is gaining from it". Piunika Web. November 22, 2018."9 Best Tumblr Alternatives: High Authority Sites Like Tumblr to Boost Blogging". eAskme. January 2019."Welcome, New Artists!". Newgrounds. November 20, 2018."Welcome, 2nd Wave of New Artists!". Newgrounds. December 3, 2018."Flash & The Future of Interactive Content". Adobe. July 25, 2017.
In the wake of Adobe discontinuing Flash at the end of 2020, Newgrounds developed the "Newgrounds Player" as an alternate way to view Flash projects on desktops."Newgrounds Flash Player""Newgrounds Wiki: Games and Movies" They're also working on an open source in-browser emulator called Ruffle, which even lets Flash games play natively on phones."Flash Emulation & Brave BAT". Newgrounds. August 23, 2019.
==Jiggmin==
Jiggmin joined Newgrounds in October 2004, later posting his games to the site once he started making them a few months afterwards."Jiggmin" - Newgrounds He was a fan of the Brackenwood series on the site, which lead to him joining its official forum in 2005.
The majority of his games were either featured on the frontpage or received various awards on the site. Musical Evenizer specifically received a Review Crew Pick and Neverending Light was selected as making Flash Portal History in 2009."Jiggmin's Trophies!" - Newgrounds"Newgrounds Wiki: Flash Portal History 2009" Photos of Tom Fulp and Bitey from Brackenwood are also included in The Game of Disorientation as some of the many that fly across the screen in the final level.
Most of his games utilized music from Newgrounds' Audio Portal, with him uploading some songs to the portal himself in 2006. It was also where he posted Star Wars Translations and officially announced he was working on Uber Space Shooter and Platform Racing 2."Uber Space Shooter". Newgrounds. July 18, 2007."No new levels for Platform Racing". Newgrounds. January 15, 2008.
===Games on Newgrounds===
*Red Earth
*Red Earth II
*Kimblis the Blue
*Uber Breakout!
*Uber Breakout II
*Cooties
*Mines
*Uber Pool
*Game of Disorientation
*Rolley-Ball
*Click Upon Dots
*Beat Master 3000
*Platform Racing
*The Musical Evenizer
*Volly-Bounce
*Uber Space Shooter
*Platform Racing 2
*Neverending Light
*Effing Hail
*Effing Meteors
*Creation
*War of the Web
===Music===
Song	Name 	Length
 	Thanks. 	2:00
 	Beat Master 3000 	1:58
 	Rolley 	1:09
 	Game of Disorientation 	1:48
 	Spokies 	2:08
 	Incorrect 	2:20
 	Twelve Point Two 	2:09
 	Superheroes in Disguise	1:46
 	Mrs. Insanity 	2:16
 	Evil-Flavor Ice Cream 	3:10
 	gEORGE 	1:34
 	Weary 	3:29
 	Lukratia 	2:02
 	runMan 	1:45
 	Haoila 	0:58
==References==
Category:Websites