More on FanLib

[megpie71]

Well, things are getting interesting in the whole "FanLib" thing. I got involved with a thread over on fanthropology last night. I posted a total of seventeen questions for the person from FL who stated that she was willing to answer questions. Just for the sake of kindness, I'll post the questions below

Comments

[entropy_house]

My feeling now is that they're going to do exactly what all the fan-run websites do- that is, keep their heads low and hope no one goes after them. I no longer believe they're going to attempt to publicize the site. Their 'press' releases on their website all predate the site. I could only access 2 of them to read them fully, but I suspect they all talk about the contest they were hired by Showtime to run, getting fans to write scripts for one show. That was a very limited permission, indeed, one time, one purpose, one media property

[entropy_house]

The one recent publicity release (May 10) that pretty much started all the hoorah, was on a Yahoo business investment related group, IIRC, meaning they were just looking for more people to give them money, not trying to spread the word where media would be likely to see it.

[highlander_ii]

*wandered over from here*

Am I the only one thinking that these CEO's / suits / what-have-you at FanLib need to be asked and forced to answer why they are avoiding the questions from the very people they are trying to entice to use their site?

Wouldn't it make much more sense to directly answer the questions and step-up and explain what they're doing? After all, avoiding the question didn't work for Bill Clinton either. *g*

[megpie71]

Given their later attitude, I doubt they're going to answer the questions in any manner other than either disingenuous, or dishonest, if indeed they answer them at all. The amount of respect they don't show fandom as a whole is frightening - they obviously weren't expecting what they found, and they couldn't adapt to what they did find quickly enough. I mean, it's one thing to think that the only people you'll have to bother with are teenagers, who don't have much real-world smarts or real-world clout - and with the teenagers they appear to have made a bit of a hit. But being faced with a group which is largely female (where all their marketing appears to be aimed at male targets), and largely older than they'd expected (which really *did* surprise them, I think - they must have thought their tame fanwriter was an anomaly, rather than an indication of the norm) must have come as a bit of a shock, particularly when it became very clear that the primary response of a lot of fandom as it actually existed to their whole concept wasn't

[highlander_ii]

Given that their site design very much resembles MySpace, I'm less surprised that they had no idea who their target actually was, more disgusted that whoever runs their marketing is an absolute idiot.

It's as though they did a quick peek through a narrow window and saw TONS of stuff on FFN and TONS of stuff on MySpace and decided: "Hey! Why don't we combine the two and be the kewlist of the kewl on the net?!!!11!" Except they weren't and now they're screaming and crying because we don't want to play in their sandbox. They're defending their territory like a MarySue author defends her self-insertions.

Been a long time

[anonymous]

Haven't seen you around Tolkien fandom for ages - thank you for posting those questions, Meg, though like others, I have no expectation they're going to respond. I think the Jenkins interview will form the party line for as long as FanLib endures and be what is repeated ad nausea.

"Any questions? We already answered them when Dr. Jenkins asked - go look and see! It's a Professional Interview!"

... which conveniently ignores the fact that there is NO substantive answer in that entire interview.

TTFN,

Dwim