Hosting
I've no idea who's conducting this study, but I thought this look at FanFiction.net's use had some interesting implications for LJ's future as a fic archive. (I could be wrong, but I think it will play out differently for AO3 for various reasons such as both the responsiveness and self-selectivity of the site).
To start with:
1) "Two thirds of all members are pure readers" in that they have never posted stories to the site.
I find that very interesting. On LJ there are all sorts of reasons why someone might have an account even if they don't write fic, or if they don't post at all. But there seems to be much less reason to open an account at FFN. Am I mistaken in thinking that all content there is open to viewing? Is participating in forums or being able to be notified of new fic that much of a draw?
2) "78% of all accounts on FanFiction.Net are dead" with only around 528,000 currently active and hosting stories.
This doesn't surprise me. As long as FFN has been around I would have expected at least half of the accounts to be inactive. Also, since there isn't much reason to be active on the site unless you're posting or commenting to fic, I would expect their attrition to be much higher that on a multipurpose site like LJ. I'm pretty sure a lot of people who have been on LJ for several years are likely to be using it for more than simply fic reading by now. I don't know how many that might be, but I'm betting it's more than 10%.
I was curious as to why LJ would now begin deleting inactive accounts (as opposed to just deleted or purged ones). This could only hurt them by providing a more accurate view of how many people are still on the site. My guess is that it has to do with spam accounts because there's definitely a ton of those. How many inactive accounts on FFN also fall into that category?
3) "We have found out that there are 5259 fandoms on FFN, which would mean 54 people keep a fandom alive in the course of 6 months."
Actually, I'd guess it was more skewed than that with many fandoms there effectively dead while some are reasonably active. It does raise the question though of how many people it takes to make a community seem active.
4) "Since September 1998 fanfiction deleted over 20,500 users for infringement" (although they left out people deleted for writing story types that are no longer accepted).
This seems like a relative drop in the bucket given the total number of accounts, and it certainly pales in comparison to how many people have given up their accounts voluntarily. It does, however, suggest what a lot of trouble keeping accounts in compliance can be.
5) "The site will fail to get new members by 2017, to be precise. This is the scenario we follow if the site does not gain momentum by 2012."
I thought their other posts on top fandoms tended to support the above conclusion. The top canon category was anime/manga (about 1 of every 3 stories on the site) which tends to skew young and thus is less likely to support longevity. Television, which is third after books (note that HP makes up the bulk of that category), still has Buffy as the top fandom. Given how long Buffy has been off the air and the relative quantity of production for Buffy on LJ these days, my guess is that FFN is less a hotbed for Buffy writers so much as that new TV fandoms are not choosing it as their main archive.
Also interesting is their statistic that eventually one out of every two stories uploaded to FFN will be deleted for some reason. I know I've read that some fan authors chose to delete their content from the site, and certainly many more have had stories deleted due to account violations of some kind. But that seems like a really high number.
At the same time, links to work on LJ tend to become erratic within a few years also. Some of this is due to hosting/bandwidth problems, particularly for vids and icons. But it happens for fic too, due to changed account names, locking, deleting, or moving to new host sites. I wouldn't put it at that high a number though.
I found this write up of Conan O'Brien's San Francisco appearance (with Andy Richter and Patton Oswalt) very interesting and was sorry a more detailed report isn't available. Apparently it was an all-out blab session about the realities of the entertainment industry today and how the Internet has affected it. I thought it funny that I came across it now given my last post. Probably the most interesting quote:
"the chaos [in the television industry] is so high that anyone in the audience could just as likely be running a major network in a few years."
I also really agree with the comment discussing Conan being a part of Generation-X and how the combination of the recession and the structural changes enabled by the Internet are hitting them particularly hard.
Comments at Dreamwidth
.
To start with:
1) "Two thirds of all members are pure readers" in that they have never posted stories to the site.
I find that very interesting. On LJ there are all sorts of reasons why someone might have an account even if they don't write fic, or if they don't post at all. But there seems to be much less reason to open an account at FFN. Am I mistaken in thinking that all content there is open to viewing? Is participating in forums or being able to be notified of new fic that much of a draw?
2) "78% of all accounts on FanFiction.Net are dead" with only around 528,000 currently active and hosting stories.
This doesn't surprise me. As long as FFN has been around I would have expected at least half of the accounts to be inactive. Also, since there isn't much reason to be active on the site unless you're posting or commenting to fic, I would expect their attrition to be much higher that on a multipurpose site like LJ. I'm pretty sure a lot of people who have been on LJ for several years are likely to be using it for more than simply fic reading by now. I don't know how many that might be, but I'm betting it's more than 10%.
I was curious as to why LJ would now begin deleting inactive accounts (as opposed to just deleted or purged ones). This could only hurt them by providing a more accurate view of how many people are still on the site. My guess is that it has to do with spam accounts because there's definitely a ton of those. How many inactive accounts on FFN also fall into that category?
3) "We have found out that there are 5259 fandoms on FFN, which would mean 54 people keep a fandom alive in the course of 6 months."
Actually, I'd guess it was more skewed than that with many fandoms there effectively dead while some are reasonably active. It does raise the question though of how many people it takes to make a community seem active.
4) "Since September 1998 fanfiction deleted over 20,500 users for infringement" (although they left out people deleted for writing story types that are no longer accepted).
This seems like a relative drop in the bucket given the total number of accounts, and it certainly pales in comparison to how many people have given up their accounts voluntarily. It does, however, suggest what a lot of trouble keeping accounts in compliance can be.
5) "The site will fail to get new members by 2017, to be precise. This is the scenario we follow if the site does not gain momentum by 2012."
I thought their other posts on top fandoms tended to support the above conclusion. The top canon category was anime/manga (about 1 of every 3 stories on the site) which tends to skew young and thus is less likely to support longevity. Television, which is third after books (note that HP makes up the bulk of that category), still has Buffy as the top fandom. Given how long Buffy has been off the air and the relative quantity of production for Buffy on LJ these days, my guess is that FFN is less a hotbed for Buffy writers so much as that new TV fandoms are not choosing it as their main archive.
Also interesting is their statistic that eventually one out of every two stories uploaded to FFN will be deleted for some reason. I know I've read that some fan authors chose to delete their content from the site, and certainly many more have had stories deleted due to account violations of some kind. But that seems like a really high number.
At the same time, links to work on LJ tend to become erratic within a few years also. Some of this is due to hosting/bandwidth problems, particularly for vids and icons. But it happens for fic too, due to changed account names, locking, deleting, or moving to new host sites. I wouldn't put it at that high a number though.
I found this write up of Conan O'Brien's San Francisco appearance (with Andy Richter and Patton Oswalt) very interesting and was sorry a more detailed report isn't available. Apparently it was an all-out blab session about the realities of the entertainment industry today and how the Internet has affected it. I thought it funny that I came across it now given my last post. Probably the most interesting quote:
"the chaos [in the television industry] is so high that anyone in the audience could just as likely be running a major network in a few years."
I also really agree with the comment discussing Conan being a part of Generation-X and how the combination of the recession and the structural changes enabled by the Internet are hitting them particularly hard.
Comments at Dreamwidth
.