purplepopple (purplepopple) wrote in metametameta, @ 2008-03-27 08:06:00 |
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Entry tags: | fanlib |
FanLib: One Year Later
FanLib: One Year Later
There are versions of this post: The Long One and the Short One. Why two versions? I started writing the first one, intending it to be an all comprehensive guide to what FanLib's been up to over the past year. I've been watching them and I've been watching what fandom has been saying about FanLib. It's been a fascinating to watch and fascinating to participate in. I really love the topic. The long version says everything that I need to and want to say about FanLib. As I started writing it I realized that important points were being buried in my love of the minutiae. A short version, a greatest hits of FanLib in the past year, was needed. So there are two versions.
FanLib: One Year Later, The Short Version
On March 4, 2007, FanLib invited Lord of the Rings and other fandom authors, culled from various fan fiction archives and FanFiction.Net, to join their site and offered them an incentive based on the amount of stories they contributed. These incentives included things like iPods. A lot of authors took advantage of this. The site officially launched their public beta on April 8, 2007.
During April of 2007, FanLib saw increased daily traffic. Around May 10, 2007, parts of LiveJournal fandom became aware of FanLib, reviewed the site and developed a number of objections to it. By May 11, JDSampson, a FanLib employee, started participating in the fanthropology post in order to defend the site. Around May 14, a number of fans on LiveJournal registered their names in order to protect them from being used by other people on the site. On May 17, Chris, the CEO of FanLib, showed up on Telesilla's LiveJournal entry in order to defend the site. That same day, it came out that FanLib's CEO and another person involved with FanLib's management had been sockpuppeting on a Lord of the Rings message board. Around May 17, a semi-organized effort was undertaken to inform people about the site, their objections to it and asking them to ask others to boycott the site. This would turn out to be somewhat successful. FanLib had negative mentions on a number of services: Xanga, Tokyo Pop, GreatestJournal, InsaneJournal, MySpace, orkut, MySpace, and Xanga. The situation would later catch the attention of the media and was mentioned in publications like the Christian Science Monitor, Valleywag and elsewhere. Chris Williams would discuss the site with Henry Jenkins in his blog. The resulting kerfluffle resulted in a situation where some authors who had been using FanLib left and took their stories with them.
FanLib held a number of successful contests in the past year, between the fall out from their launch and the present. They include:
Yes... And the FAQ isn't up yet, because it's currently in the *open beta* stage of development, so they are trying to get everything in place before writing up the FAQ's.
The alert system is almost ready to go online, but we threw a little monkey wrench in there when we told them everything that should be in there. laugh.gif So, it will probably take a little bit longer for it to be ready. We'll just have to see. You can, however, "subscribe" to authors to make it easier to see what's going on.
There is a somewhat new site out. its fanlib.com. it has a very different layout than most fiction sites out there. the sailor moon section isn't that large yet and most of it based off of the live action series, but its growing. if anyone goes there look me up. pen name is superkawaiifoxy. ^_^
30,000 teenagers registered for the HarperTeen FanLit online writing contest, contributed, reviewed, and voted on chapters of which six were chosen for the final short story, “Reflection Perfection.” The contest, which is a collaboration with social media company FanLib, generated more than 6 million pageviews on HarperTeen and drew a community of more than 200,000 visitors.
The end product was published as a free downloadable e-zine and an extra on the L Word DVD. The contest generated over 3-million page views and 175,000 visits. Showtime also announced that the ratings jumped 51% over the previous season.