SoulPancake

SoulPancake
Web address http://soulpancake.com
Slogan Chew on life's big questions
Commercial? No
Type of site
 Interactive Website
Registration Optional
Created by
Launched March 2009
Current status Active

SoulPancake is a media company that provides various platforms to explore "big think" topics such as spirituality, creativity, religion, arts, and philosophy. With a tagline of "Chew on Life's Big Questions", SoulPancake offers exclusive videos, creative challenges, and interviews across its platforms. SoulPancake is not affiliated with any one religious or spiritual organization.

History

The SoulPancake website beta-launched in March 2009 with an official launch in January 2010. By November 2010, the community had 50,000 active registered members and 1 million page views per month. SoulPancake was originally founded by actor Rainn Wilson and his friends Joshua Homnick and Devon Gundry in 2008. The original concept was based on a video series called "Metaphysical Milkshake". The founders deemed that the idea was too narrow and expanded it into a multi-platform media company. Soon after the launch of the website, Shabnam Mogharabi and Golriz Lucina joined the company as creative executives.

The website has since been taken offline, with its operators citing their lack of sufficient resources and inability to properly serve the community. "At the end of this month, we will shut down the current version of SoulPancake.com to make way for a more informative site that will focus on telling people about SoulPancake's story and mission to make meaningful, joyful content. We know this will come as bittersweet news for many members of this community, but we really believe that change is good, and this is the right thing to do." As of April 2015, the site remains offline.

Site contents

SoulPancake.com offered discussions, blog posts, questions, creative activities, writing exercises, polls, interviews, columns, videos, and original art by up-and-coming artists. Discussions were open to all registered members, regardless of gender, sexuality, religion, etc. SoulPancake's internal content creators posted one or two new pieces of content each day called "Perspectives". In addition, there was a user-generated "Conversations" that features questions posed by community members. The layout of the site had been criticized for not having a decisive direction[1] and was revamped in October 2011 to address these issues.

In March 2015, it was announced that the "conversations" section of soulpancake.com would be removed at the end of the month due to a lack of moderation resources. As of April 2015, the website has been taken offline.

Other platforms

In the summer of 2009, SoulPancake was approached by several book publishers about developing a book. The result, SoulPancake: Chew On Life's Big Questions, was published by Hyperion in November 2010 and became a New York Times Best Seller within weeks of release.[2] The book challenges readers to take a creative, action-oriented approach to self exploration.[3][4] Since the release of the book it has gained attention from a diverse demographic of readers, and has even been introduced as reading material in a high school English class.[5] Rainn Wilson was invited to numerous talk shows to discuss the book, including Conan, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon[6] and Rachael Ray.[7]

In October 2010, SoulPancake signed with the newly developed OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network to develop a series of SoulPancake-themed short interstitials.[8] The series was included as a segment of the series Super Soul Sunday.[9][10]

On July 23, 2012, SoulPancake launched a YouTube channel to complement the content on the website and book. SoulPancake has created a number of different shows, such as:

As of April 24, 2014, the channel has over 1,190,000 subscribers, and over 139,000,000 video views.

In December 2014, the SoulPancake YouTube Channel was listed on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #58.[11]

References

  1. ↑ The Big Question About SoulPancake | Net Insanity
  2. ↑ "New York Time Best-Sellers"
  3. ↑ Rainn Wilson: Destroy my book – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs
  4. ↑ Seeking and Finding
  5. ↑ http://www.soulpancake.com/post/1355/can-they-teach-soulpancake-in-school.html
  6. ↑ Late Night - All Videos : Newest - Videos - NBC.com
  7. ↑ Rachael Ray Show - On the Show - The Office's Rainn Wilson
  8. ↑ "Rain Wilson Joining Oprahs OWN Network?'
  9. ↑ SoulPancake: Find Peace in the Zen Den - Video - @OWNTV #supersoulsunday
  10. ↑ OWN To Launch 'Super Soul Sunday' Block - Deadline.com
  11. ↑ "The NMR Top 100 YouTube Channels: 75-51!". New Media Rockstars. Retrieved 6 January 2015.

External links