[identity profile] icarusancalion.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] life_wo_fanlib
Here's something I missed a while back. Apparently [livejournal.com profile] mimbo, our friend Chris Williams, the CEO of FanLib, was posting to boards defending FanLib to critics without mentioning his affiliation to the company.

Chris' posts on the Lord of the Rings forum, Northern Kingdom.

Apparently he was (ever so politely, I love the Tolkien fans) caught. The members never knew he was the CEO, but they smiled as they noted he was repeating the company line.

I found it here, in a new article about FanLib Social Media and Communities: How Not To Approach Them

oh, the stealth!

Date: 2007-06-21 07:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lilithilien.livejournal.com
Nice touch there, Chris, referring to "their TOS." You so sly!!

This man can't even be an ethically reponsible forum participant. And he wants people to trust him with their creative works? Riiiiight.

Date: 2007-06-21 08:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kitesareevil.livejournal.com
Oh that's just beautiful. "He says the same thing you do!" A complete pwn in the form of polite conversation.

Date: 2007-06-21 08:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] caras-galadhon.livejournal.com
Ah, that's beautiful, and the exact thing I needed to give me a bit of a smile today. ^_^

Date: 2007-06-22 11:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] caras-galadhon.livejournal.com
Well, in public, anyway. ^_~ There's something beautiful about subtle/coldly polite smackdowns. *G*

Date: 2007-06-21 08:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] angiepen.livejournal.com
Someone explain to me one more time just why anyone would hand someone as socially inept as Chris Williams three million dollars in investment capital...? Anyone?

Or at least, hand the money to a company with him as its main face and voice to the public. I could see if he were a techy who hung out in the back and banged out code or something, while someone who actually has come idea of how to deal with people did the smiling and talking. But as the CEO?? [headdesk] Jeez....

Angie

Date: 2007-06-22 11:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] angiepen.livejournal.com
Or maybe he's just a great shmoozer. [wry smile] I've known people like that -- born salesmen, can persuade anyone of anything, if only for a while.

And yeah, that's quite possible. Although they started doing the "fanisode" thing several years ago, so it'd be interesting to see just how the investment history goes. IIRC, the press release said that FanLib had three million in venture capital, but they've had the collaborative writing gig going longer than that. [ponder]

Angie

HAH a HAH a HAH.....NO.

Date: 2007-06-21 09:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] snowflakeimp.livejournal.com
Haha I have never seen anyone so completely owned in such a polite fashion. The gold medal goes to LoTR fandom!

That was a great article btw. Thanks for sharing. I wonder if Chris has any shame in his body. Do you think he whistles while he works, happily participating in polls where he praises himself (Liek, ZOMG I are awesome yay fanlib!) and not understanding he's a giant douchebucket (Hay guyz, THEY're totally cool, I checked them out myself, they rule! POST on there, I am! Now let's all go streaking together, chums!)

Or do you think he posts with shifty eyes, hoping no one can see through his master disguise?

Date: 2007-06-22 12:52 am (UTC)
zellieh: kitten looking shocked, openmouthed, text: WTF? (What the fuck?) (Fandom Pit of Weasels OTP)
From: [personal profile] zellieh
Chris' lack of integrity at that forum annoys me intensely. Every time he opens his mouth online, I trust him less.

I still can't believe he calls himself 'mimbo'. Makes me laugh every time.

Mimbo: a male bimbo; an attractive but vacuous male. Seinfeld - "He's a male bimbo. He's a mimbo!"

I have no idea about the 'attractive' part, but judging by the way mimbo interacts with fandom, he has the 'vacuous' part down pat.

Date: 2007-06-22 04:40 am (UTC)
ext_18500: My non-fandom OC Oraania. She's crazy. (Aeriseph)
From: [identity profile] mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com
One might see that as a good thing about the 'net - we don't get distracted by people's looks because we can't see them.

Date: 2007-06-22 11:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] scarah2.livejournal.com
Did we ever figure out if they're actually brothers? For some reason I had thought it was a coincidence, being a common name, and that we were calling them brothers for the incest/strikethrough related lols. But I could have totally made that up.

Date: 2007-06-22 11:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] scarah2.livejournal.com
The article mentions numerous examples of this, but only links the one. Article writer, got more?

Further examples

Date: 2007-06-23 08:42 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Hi Scarah and everyone at life_wo_fanlib,

Well, I can point you in the direction of Chris' Digg account http://digg.com/users/mimbo/news/submitted

Personally I don't think it's proper to be diggin' your own stuff, but if you do, you should at least disclose your relation to the stories. Failing a mention in the post itself, your profile should at least provide the necessary disclosure. Neither of which Chris does.

I'm pretty sure there was at least a couple other forums out there which had postings similar to that in the LotR forum. When writing my blog post I had some 2-dozen tabs open in Firefox with assorted examples of things FanLib has been doing wrong, but I'm afraid I parred back the number I included and didn't hang on to them. A few googles or technorati searches on 'mimbo fanlib' should be able to turn them up though.

Before I blogged the story, I passed it along as a listener comment to The Hobson and Holtz Report, a twice-weekly podcast on New Media as it relates to Public Relations. The show's hosts bumped it up to be one of their main items of discussion for show #245 (http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz/index.php/weblog/the_hobson_holtz_report_podcast_245_may_31_2007/ ). Both hosts were fairly disgusted with the practices being put to use by FanLib.

---
Rob Clark
http://www.theelusivefish.com

Date: 2007-06-23 11:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] scarah2.livejournal.com
What happened to Rob's anon comment? I got it in email so I'll reply to it anyway. Here's some stuff that I found thanks to his links.

Ad for the Star Trek contest which it looks like he wrote himself (http://www.mania.com/55020.html) and also dugg himself (http://digg.com/users/mimbo/news/submitted). Couple other things on his digg account there too. One of them is an article about some sort of webisode contest where some horrible sounding plans to integrate MySpace profiles are described. Don't know why this never happened, but one theory is that MySpace wised up and blocked them the same way ff.net did.

Here's a podcast (http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz/index.php/weblog/the_hobson_holtz_report_podcast_245_may_31_2007/) with a piece about FanLib, inspired by a comment from Rob. The whole podcast is an hour, but the FanLib stuff starts about 970 on the counter.

I've been saying it short for "library" all this time, rhymes with "vibe." Perhaps I am incorrect.

This (http://fanfic.meetup.com/cities/us/nj/woodbridge/506078/?ic=sn42) sounds like a good time, eh?

I can't tell if this is him or not, but it's a possibility that he thinks we should stop Sanjaya (http://stopsanjaya.blogspot.com/).

Date: 2007-06-23 11:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] scarah2.livejournal.com
Wow, we must be missing tons of FanLib people replying! Ha!

Who knows, maybe he paid for the copy. It does have proper capitalization.

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