Why Did You Join FanLib?

[stewardess.livejournal.com]

A discussion invitation to anyone who is, or was, a FanLib member. Because I'm curious. Please include:

How you learned about FanLib [email invite or other]

Promotions or contests you found attractive

Impressions of site: ease of use, search functions, etc.

EDIT: I'm a FanLib name squatter, by the way.

Comments

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

I saw a post in... I think telesilla's journal was the first one. You'd suggested locking in our fan names and I thought that was a good idea; that's the only reason I signed up.

I think the site is ugly -- busy and chaotic. I get the impression it was designed for the MySpace crowed, people in their teens and very young twenties. It's also difficult to navigate, with even the simplest search tools, like clicking on a letter of the alphabet to see a list of all users whose names begin with that letter, inexplicably absent.

None of the promotions or whatever on the home page interested me, and I didn't go looking for others. I did click through on all the stories on the front page (at the time I was there) and scanned the headers of the ones which had headers. Even aside from the fact that few of them were based on fandoms I'm interested in reading, none of the stories were terribly appealing, and I do read outside my fandoms if something catches my eye, even if I've never seen the original show or movie.

If it weren't for the copyright issues and the possibility that FanLib could be bringing a ton of bricks down on all of us, I'd have just ignored the site. I only archive on one site off of LJ anyway I'm not looking for another, and there was nothing about FanLib which made me consider changing my mind about that.

Angie

[makamu]

I joined Fanlib to safe my pen-name, although I never intend to use the site for various reasons, the ugly money-oriented site design and the pretentious and ignorant tone of their responses being the top reasons. Although their shifty TOS beat it all hollow...

[scifiroots.livejournal.com]

Well, here's the three posts that pretty much track my history with them. Includes various messages and such.

http://scifiroots.livejournal.com/125723.html <-- The frigging amazing contest.
http://scifiroots.livejournal.com/126045.html <-- the confirmation that the contest was real
http://scifiroots.livejournal.com/127431.html <-- And hook, line, and sinker.

Then of course as I put up a note about the iPod Nano the other day a friend commented and gave me a link. Reading through the various articles about FanLib from fans, well, it took me all of five minutes after reading 'em to go to my account and delete all... hmm. 100 or so? fics I had posted. I'm really disturbed by it all, especially since I honestly didn't notice anything wrong when I began beta'ing the site back in March - and I read through everything very carefully... or so I thought. *sigh*

[stewardess.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! This is fascinating. I doubt we'll see promotions like this again from FanLib. All I see now are the T-shirt offers, and the drawing for the "win a movie theatre for a day" thing.

[rez-lo.livejournal.com]

Based on David G. Williams's description of how they goosed traffic at The L Word site, I'd bet that their strategy is to generate lots of traffic/posts with (comparatively) generous prizes like iPods in order to make the numbers for their VCs or corporate partners. They don't really care if you take down your stuff after that. It's served its purpose and they can always do it again when they need more content. Most people won't go to the trouble of removing their stories, I'd bet; they'll just away, which FL is also counting on.

I'd lay money that most of their user research wasn't to find out what fans want, it was to figure out how they could manipulate the ephemeral nature of the traffic at sites like ff.net to their advantage. They probably have some really interesting numbers.

[quicksilvereyes.livejournal.com]

Wow, those are some pretty serious measures to get stories. Lucky!

[scifiroots.livejournal.com]

Whatever else they are, FL did a brilliant job utilizing the contests... Although I'm appalled with everything I'm finding out now about them, I can't say I regret having been in the beta'ing stage and winning the stuff. I love writing fanfic, and I don't need incentives to do so, but after eight years and only recently pursuing publishing in zines, it was pretty damn awesome to get something else out of it as well.

[havocthecat]

I'm namesquatting.

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

I'm another namesquatter.

[meoinya.livejournal.com]

I got an invite when the site was in its beta stage. I registered then and put up some fics. I just took them all down today.

[stewardess.livejournal.com]

You have my gratitude. *g*

[scifiroots.livejournal.com]

Thank goodness I have a fellow joined-and-left person. =| It's a little intimidating to suddenly find a swamp of anti-FL ain't it? It seemed pretty generic at first.... *sigh*

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Protecting my pen name, not that I'm well known, but I don't want anybody posting stuff under my name.

[edrys.livejournal.com]

As others have put it, I'm simply namesquatting. Back when I joined LJ I'd intended to use my nom de plume, but discovered that some teenager was already using it. :( So I'm taking no chances with FanLib. Whatever meager reputation I may have gained as a writer is too valuable to me to chance its being highjacked.

And based on what I've seen, and have been reading about FanLib, any fanfiction I have written, or will manage to write in the future, will never be posted there. The site is unattractive, and not at all user friendly.

Nor am I at all impressed by the language and manner of the FanLib execs in their various responses to the questions and concerns of the fanfiction community as a whole.

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

I'm yet another namesquatter chiming in. I'm gobsmacked by FanLib, and not in a good way. :-\

[kenazfiction.livejournal.com]

Namesquatting.

That said, I decided to delete my account entirely-- potential hijacking of my penname notwithstanding-- and found, much to my dismay, that there is no automatic function to delete your account. Maybe I could contact support@fanlib.com, but I'd just as soon not draw any further attention to myself in their database.

I find this really disturbing.

[stewardess.livejournal.com]

That is alarming. Much site functionality is missing. Under another name, I joined and posted fic there. There wasn't so much as a FAQ to explain how to post, and it was a tedious process.

[dunv-i.livejournal.com]

Name squatter, reporting.

Seriously, whoever compared it to MySpace and FaceBook - my thoughts exactly, and even worse, these sites do attract teens and such.

In fact, it's very interesting to me that my classmates (yeah, I'm a teenager) cannot live without their MySpace/FaceBook/Whatever their big one of the day is, but half of them have never heard of LJ and the ones who do don't understand how it could possibly be a form of social networking.

[scifiroots.livejournal.com]

Isn't that interesting? I love LJ with a passion. I think the communities are wonderfully varied, easy to use, and well, the site in general is flexible and easy. I absolutely rufuse to touch MySpace and I rarely use Facebook except to be reached by other friends while at college for events and sharing photos. / tracking people to be able to contact them. But yeah, LJ is my "social network". =)

[killersharky.livejournal.com]

Another namesquatter. How many of us are out there? Must make up 90% of all the users on FL.