esteliel sent me a message about LOTRFanFiction.com being sold. Read about it at her journal:

http://esteliel.livejournal.com/428988.html?format=light

Also well worth reading: a comment by Adora, who sold the web site.

http://esteliel.livejournal.com/428988.html?thread=3322556&format=light#t3322556

The new owner, Keith Mander, has purchased other fan sites, such as TwilightArchives.com. He writes in his blog:

Deja vu? LOTRFanFiction.com is a fan fiction archive, just like TwilightArchives.com (another site I snapped up a couple of months ago).

The thinking is that I can leverage the technology behind the Twilight site's redesign to quickly rejuvenate the LOTR site. Plus, plenty of opportunities for cross promotion and integration (SSO, for example). The longer term thought is that with the combined user base, I'll be able to quickly enter and dominate new fandoms, hopefully creating some returns.

Yep, it's deja vu all over again.

I recently blocked partly_bouncy -- FanLib apologist, Fan History owner, and all-around bad news -- from this community. Two days later, there was an inept attempt to troll the comm by taiyoukai_nile, a partly_bouncy subscriber and Fan History member.

I then found at a Fan History blog an ungrammatical post by Nile, presumably taiyoukai_nile:

I stumbled across the article Disney purchased FanLib in May/June 2008, two months before FanLib's "closure." which basically grumbles (sounded a bit bitter at least) about FanLib was bought out by Disney two months before its announced its closing, letting the community to speculated the reasons. ( More. )

If you are not familiar with Fan History, it is the failed attempt by partly_bouncy to make money off fandom through despicable practices such as publishing the real names of fans. After exposure in July, 2008, by Ithiliana and others, partly_bouncy crawled under a rock, making all of her LJ entries friends-only.

But two months ago, partly_bouncy dusted off her LJ and began posting publicly again. She also commented here, which led to my banning her (I thought I had done so at the time of Ithiliana's post).

Taiyoukai_nile's Fan History blog comment is a weak derailment. But as taiyoukai_nile just "stumbled across" FanLib two and a half years after it was big news in fandom, I'm assuming her post reflects partly_bouncy's current thoughts on FanLib.

You may find it humorous that taiyoukai_nile characterized this community as a place for people to get together and mourn FanLib's passing, when we anticipated and welcomed it. But partly_bouncy is trying to rewrite the history of FanLib, and of this community, for a purpose: her rehabilitation. When partly_bouncy chides us for still being hung up on FanLib, her goal is to erase her past as a profit-seeking FanLib supporter.

She was a FanLib cheerleader because she believes in her right to profit from fan works and fan data. Her well-known hatred of the OTW and An Archive Of Our Own stems from this as well; fans creating a non-profit to accomplish what she hoped to earn money on through Fan History undermines her business model. She also hates DreamWidth, which has committed the grave error of providing a popular, ad-free service, further destroying her dream of profit. Partly_bouncy does not embrace competition.

Partly_bouncy may be through with riding FanLib's coattails, but this community exists to keep fresh the lesson of FanLib: it is not inevitable, as FanLib owners Chris and David Williams wished us to believe, that someone or something will unfairly profit from fan works. Fans can retain control of all aspects of their work -- creative, social, and publication -- rejecting mainstream commodification.

In November, 2009, Julie Levin Russo wrote, "To FanLib, the vast commons of freely exchanged fan works perhaps appeared as if it simply lacked a businessperson with the savvy to privatize it." Because of this and many other misreadings, FanLib failed to profit from fandom. It sold its marketing software and servers to Disney, and had to completely scrap the fanfiction archive.

It is bizarre partly_bouncy chose this community as an entry back into fandom. It's amazing she still believes she can make money from the thoroughly discredited Fan History site. It's repulsive she continues to use lies and disinformation to increase her bottom line. Like FanLib, she will earn only failure.

From paidcontent.org:

Less than 18 months after acquiring Ideal Bite for $20 million, the Walt Disney Co. is folding the green-living tips company into the Disney Interactive Media Group. Disney spokeswoman Michelle Bergman said it's not being shut down, that DIMG is "evaluating the situation" and has made no staffing decisions yet. But it may not be that simple. A source familiar with the situation tells paidContent that staff members were told Friday in a conference call that they were being laid off effective Dec. 9. Cofounders Heather Stephenson and Jennifer Boulden, who started the company in 2005, signed three-year contracts in 2008. They have not yet returned voice messages; Leigh Zarelli, a Disney VP working with emerging business acquisitions, referred questions to Bergman. A staffer who did return my call said I may have gotten some misinformation but couldn't talk about it.

Ideal Bite, which was supposed to be Disney's answer to DailyCandy, offers seven newsletters and a site that links to ABC.com, ABCFamily.com and other ABC sites. It's one of a number of "emerging" businesses Disney acquired over the past couple of years, including Digisynd, picked up for $15 million, and FanLib, now known as Take180.com. Bergman says moving Ideal Bite into the Interactive group was always the plan. Technically, the emerging business group is part of DIMG but have been reporting to the corporate strategy group.

Emphasis added.

From SoCalTech.com, dated March 31, 2009:

Burbank-based Take180.com announced Tuesday that the firm has officially launched a web site which looks to create original web series based on audience participation. The site--which is owned by The Walt Disney Company--said it has created three web series called "My Date," "I <3 Vampires" and "Electric Spoofaloo" all derived from user videos, stories, photos, and artwork. The new site is headed by Chris M. Williams, and has been in beta since the fall of last year; the site is built on top of Los Angeles-based FanLib, which was also headed by Williams and acquired by Disney last year.

The continuing saga of the worst kept secret ever:

ABCFamily.com has picked up short-form Web series, My Alibi, from Disney-owned Take 180, a teen-targeted portal that creates short-form Web series and then integrates viewer ideas and submissions into those series.

Take 180 is run by Chris Williams, who used to run a site called Fan Lib. That site did something similar – it got fans engaged in shows and tried to incorporate their views into storylines. FanLib worked on engaging fans with existing shows, such as Showtime’s The L Word. Take 180 goes a step further: it offers lots of opportunities for fans to get involved with online shows that it’s producing.

Rest of the article at broadcastingcable.com. Chris Williams was CEO of FanLib before the company "closed" on August 4, 2008. Disney's Take180, built on top of FanLib's servers and with its software, opened around August 29, 2008.

I'm supplying this for reference. Very little content on FanLib's origins still exists on the web. All the material at FanLib is gone, and so are many press releases. Edit: FanLib has excluded their site from the wayback machine. Wow do they suck.

Material includes the URL where it was once found. Most links now produce pinatas 404s.

Includes makeup of FanLib's original board, and detailed bios of the board members.

Includes gems such as: "Fan fiction has existed long before Al Gore invented the internet!"

( Read more... )

I saved the information in May of 2007.

Another news article ¹ about FanLib partner Craig Singer's newest venture casually mentions FanLib has become Disney's Take180.

This is the second article ² confirming Disney bought FanLib; I assume the information appears in a Disney financial report. Any Disney stockholders out there? The financial report may state the price paid for FanLib.

Take180 is visually ugly, and laden with "challenges" and prizes. It looks exactly the way you would expect FanLib to look after a quick re-do to serve Disney's interests. It is also riddled with the celebrity brown-nosing rampant at FanLib. The pitch (Be part of a creative community. Get in the spotlight. Prizes happen.) is nearly indistinguishable from Chris Williams's promotion of FanLib in July, 2007. ³

The men who owned FanLib (brothers Chris and David Williams) did not have the balls ⁴ to tell the 25,000 members of the sell-out. They have said nothing publicly on the subject (according to my daily news webcrawl since June, 2008). At the time of the closure, I speculated the only confirmation might be a FanLib-like product from Disney. ⁵ Now we have it. FanLib closed on August 4, 2008. ⁶ Take180 opened around August 29, 2008. ⁷

I had the lowest possible expectations of the Williams brothers, but even I didn't expect them to lie about matters of importance — not when the lies would inevitably be exposed. Apparently they thought lying was the better trade-off: better to lie and cowardly escape the reaction of fandom, even though they would be exposed later as liars.

Perhaps the FanLib founders feared their members would join Take180 and make a wreck of its forums, sullying its Disney purity. Perhaps they feared FanLib's failure ⁸ would foul Take180 before it was out of the dock. Or perhaps Disney publicists, reviewing the Williams brothers' track record ⁹ in communicating with fans, ordered them to be silent.

Five months have gone by since FanLib closed. Its members are scattered; articles about FanLib have dwindled. If nothing else, the lies bought time.

There's more. Craig Singer's current venture, the film Perkins' 14, came about this way:

"A year and a half ago, Singer was sorting through hundreds of one-paragraph ideas submitted through his Web site, FanLib [...]. The 10 fan finalists were then asked to create a 'video pitch' for their idea. It was a fan in North Carolina who came up with the premise of 'Perkins 14' [sic]— about a town that has suffered 14 child abductions, and the obsessed cop [...] who finds that the kids have been turned into zombified killing machines." ¹⁰

Craig Singer used a FanLib member's original idea to launch his new career? ¹¹ I need a stronger stomach. Edit: Jeremy Donaldson's idea was submitted through massify.com in association with FanLib. ¹²

Another thing: numerous people in fandom (and outside of it) distrusted the Disney buyout rumor because it was farfetched Disney would believe a fanfiction website could be profitable (especially after FanLib's example). But Disney had no such foolish belief. Fanfiction appears at Take180 only as an interest in member profiles.

Take180 is built from FanLib's corpse, using a single limb added in October, 2007, vid hosting. ¹³ (Edit: Turns out this is literally true. Take180 URLs indicate it lives on FanLib's former servers.) Instead of the female dominated world of fanfiction, Take180 goes after amateur film makers — a fandom YouTube; you can imagine the corporate orgasm the concept would induce — presumably to gain the young male demographic FanLib slavered after. ¹⁴

Just one more thing. Confirmation of the Disney buyout means we must reconsider FanLib.

As a fanfiction archive and as a fandom community, FanLib was a disaster. ¹⁵ But as a money-making venture for a small group of wealthy white businessmen, it was a success: with $100 million ¹⁶ to spend on acquisitions, Disney probably paid quite a bit more for FanLib than its initial investment of $3 million in venture capital. ¹⁷

This is bad news for fandom; it will encourage future greedy and destructive corporate interference with fan creations.

( Sources )

From moviemaker.com, dated October 21, 2008.

Are you an aspiring, tech-savvy moviemaker posting your short films on YouTube, hoping to use the Internet to eventually develop your first feature-length movie? Your dreams may become a reality now that Perkins’ 14, the first feature film to be developed entirely over the Internet, will soon be released.

Says Craig Singer, "I had long been interested in what’s now called 'user-generated content,' from the days of my previous company, FanLib, which I started with partner Chris Williams. Now was really the right time to use crowd-sourcing to create a professional film for theatrical release."

Now was the right time because FanLib went belly-up? Ah.

So they are moving from ripping off fanfic authors to ripping off amateur youtube moviemakers. The FanLib talent-suckers got the massify.com crowd to do all the work, and will release the film Perkins' 14 in 2009.

Yes, that should be Perkins's 14, or Perkin's 14. What dumbasses.

More from Singer: "This is my second feature for After Dark Films. After Dark and [online community] Massify Media and I wanted to make what would be the world's first 'crowd-sourced' feature film, a film that opened up the filmmaking process to emerging talent by utilizing the reach and efficiencies of a social network."

I wonder how long it will be before the "emerging talent" realizes that, when these people say "crowd-sourced," the translation is: they make money off other people's creativity and pay nothing for it.

Full article:

http://www.moviemaker.com/producing/article/craig_singer_looks_to_the_internet_for_perkins_14_20080828/