You know what would be awesome? If we could stop having to make this post.

Which is to say: there’s a new attempt at commodifying fanfiction in town. It’s called fanfic.me.

From a half-hour of digging through the site & Google, I can tell you the following, in no particular order and without comment:

• their tag line is “fanfic as easy as blogging”
• their site is built on WordPress with plugins — they’ve beefed up the search function, added forums, and themed the admin pages
• there are 1,409 members, including my Investigation Account
• there are 10,229 stories; I can’t tell how long they’ve been getting uploaded, as there seems to be a “backdate” function
• their Twitter account is @fanficme
• their Facebook fan page has 8 likes
• they’ve drawn their genre categories from fanfiction.net
• they’re using MPAA ratings
• the domain was registered 19 July 2011
• they’re going to be featured in the New York Web 2.0 Expo‘s Startup Showcase on October 12, 2011

It’s the last item that concerns me; there’s no information on the site, Twitter, Facebook, or Google that I can find about their plans for financial stability, but their presence in the Showcase suggests they’re hoping for venture capital. (One of the judges of the Showcase is a partner in a VC firm.)

(I can’t afford a ticket to the Expo, or I’d go to ask questions; if any NYC-area fangirls with some spare cash and an evening to kill want to do so, I imagine it would be an interesting half-hour.)

I can find no information about their copyright policy; I don’t know whether who owns work uploaded to their site. If you’ll recall, this was a concern of many fans when Fanlib was around. The site, in fact, has no Terms of Service. As someone who was involved in creating the Terms of Service for the Archive of Our Own, I find this terrifying.

The company which registered the site is named Fandom Entertainment. They also own:

• FanFicFan.com
• L-Word.com
• myFandoms.com
• FanficSidekick.com
• SouthofNowhereOnline.com
• Lip Service
• Anyone But Me
• Xena Fan Fic
• GleeKlub.com
• TwiFics.com
• CowgirlUpFans.com
• LeishaHailey.com
• The L Life

(Azz found out that they’ve also registered mmorpgfanfic.com, as of 26 September 2011.)

The fandomentertainment.com website has an “advertise” page. This page reads, in part, “Contact Fandom Entertainment to discuss advertising opportunities on any or all of the sites.”

Yeah.

I don’t think I need to rehash the many discussions we’ve had over the past several years about fandom and capitalism and the relationship thereof; if you haven’t been a part of those discussions, you could do worse than to start by reading the Life Without Fanlib archives, which links to many if not all of the posts on the topic since 2007.

I will say that I am very uncomfortable with this site, the way it approaches fanworks, and the lack of information about policies and procedures important to fans. I don’t necessarily think that fanfic.me will attract much, if any, positive attention at the Expo Showcase — they’re not doing anything exciting in terms of tech, unless I am vastly misunderstanding their code, and I cannot imagine a VC firm which would look at their website and think oooh, that’ll get us a return on investment! But I do think it behooves us as fans to know who the people who are trying to turn us into revenue streams, monetize our gift economy, and take advantage of our community are, and to decide actively if we trust them.

The only name I can find in connection to Fandom Entertainment is “Jacky Abromitis.” The email addresses I can find are info@fanfic.me and info@fandomentertainment.com.

ETA, 1 October 2011, 2:58 PM EST: ainsley has found the fanfic.me about page, because she is cleverer than I am. Franzi has found the most awesome article ever, in which Jacky Abromitis speaks. The user-generated content on fanfic.me seems to have been ported from myfandoms.com (also a Fandom Entertainment production) — hat tip to facetofcathy and fanficforensics for figuring that one out.

ETA, 1 October 2011, 5:08 PM EST: The article linked in the 2:58 PM ETA has a comments section. At 3 PM-ish, there was a comment there from a “drst”, a paragraph or two long, pointing out a few of the logical flaws in the article and Abromitis’s comments. That comment is now gone, and I would now expect the comment from “Fandom” to be gone shortly. (I didn’t think to screencap drst’s comment, which I’m sorry for — it was well-written and an excellent example of fandom being awesome. drst, if you’re reading this, feel free to repost in the comments!) Excellent journalism, TechCocktail. Well done.

ETA, 1 October 2011, 6:27 PM EST: And now drst’s comment is back. *baffledface*

ETA, 2 October 2011, 10:31 AM EST: Fans: totally fucking awesome. elf has been testing the site. fanficforensics found an article from 2007 which talks about the OTW/AO3 and fanfic.me, which is suggestive about how fanfic.me has been getting its content. I’m not comfortable linking to the Fan History Wiki, but apparently the entry there on fanfic.me seems to have been written by Abromitis herself, and is full of red flags for the discerning reader. facetofcathy reminds us that there is room for a variety of models in the fannish archiving world; I remain concerned about how they seem to be seeking venture capital, but that is my personal mileage. Abromitis has already attended one startup showcase, although I don’t know if that was meant to help startups find funding or what. In (temporary) conclusion, fanficforensics wrote an actual analysis of this whole thing, with real sentences and blockquotes and everything, and I kind of want to print it out and roll around in it.

ETA 4 October 2011 12:11 PM EST: Oh God. There is so much information coming in I’m certain to miss something; let me know what I’ve forgotten, preferably with a link, and I’ll add it to the next ETA. *deep breath* Fanfic.me has achieved TOS! elf’s fic has been deleted without notice to elf, which seems to violate their TOS! fanficforensics, who is revealing amazing Nancy Drew capabilities, has discovered yet another Fandom Entertainment site, Fansitepress.com! Fansitepress and/or fanfic.me — the relationship between the two isn’t clear — seem to be violating the WordPress GPL license! I look forward to the next installment of As The Fandom Entertainment Turns. (Guys, where is the fic slashing Jacky Abromitis and Chris and David Williams of Fanlib? Seriously, we got Pinboard anthropomorfic within a week of delicious keeling over, I refuse to believe we can’t create some good hatesex.)

ETA 4 October 2011 9:40 PM EST: Ugh. elf has been informed that she is “not welcomed to post to Fanfic.me” based on “intentional posting of offensive material and ‘testing’ of us.” Fanfic.me now has an “About” section, which they did not have as of two days ago. This section contains (1) a welcome, (2) an explanation that “Fanfic.me is both the plugin – and this multifandom site,” (3) an explanation that “We are the same fans who bring you myFandoms.com and FanficFan.com. We’ve ported the stories over here (for those who didn’t opt out)” and (4) the statement that “We’ve got huge plans for improvements, but we are functional and ready to make this available to writers and readers.” Which, to me, does not sound as though the site is not launched (an assertion in the email to elf, see above); it sounds like open beta. They are not, for example, controlling registration, suggesting that they do not expect their servers to get overwhelmed. Public on the internet means public on the internet. There’s also a privacy statement, which I haven’t reviewed in detail yet, although I note it explicitly provides for advertising.

The About section further contains a biography of Jacky Abromitis, including her fannish history (fanficforensics, elf, stealthily, frogspace and I have been discussing possible culturally-based communications misfires), and I would really appreciate it if we could stop trying to determine if Abromitis is “fannish enough” — at this point it seems pretty clear that Abromitis is Not One Of Us in a different way than Chris and David Williams of Fanlib were Not One Of Us. The point remains that Fandom Entertainment, the company, owns sites which (a) approach the line in the sand which many fans have drawn vis-a-vis commerce and fandom, but that’s a personal mileage thing, and for all I know, her fannish community is more comfortable with the intersection of capitalism and fandom than I am; I would still like an explanation of WTF she hopes to achieve by attending the NY Expo Startup Showcase; (b) commercially exploit fans who may not know better (disregarding the Tolkien estate and Disney and Warner Bros. entirely, I am comfortable making a blanket statement that tricking your fellow fans into paying for unnecessary services is not cool); and (c) are not very good fanfiction archives.

ETA 5 October 2011 2:35 PM EST: We’re starting to dig into the text of the TOS, Privacy Policy, and Abromitis’ bio in comments, including their RPF policy, which is a special kind of special; this is seriously a moment of many hands make light work, so if you have something to contribute, please do! Point people here if they are good at close textual analysis of bullshit! There’s also some Plucky Detective Work of the technical variety going on, so we’re especially in need of PHP/Wordpress developers to look at what we can dredge up of the fanfic.me plugin itself, and someone with knowledge of the GPL to figure out if fanfic.me is obeying the letter if not the spirit. Man, who knew being a Plucky Girl Detective required work?

ETA 6 October 2011 7:50 PM EST: The party is moving to Fanlore (thanks, elf!). Contribute, edit, screencap, discuss, cite (fanficforensics, I am counting on you and your pure awesome) — I’ll do my best to move all the information contained in this post & the related comment threads, but it will take time. Links are still totally kosher! Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of…snark and logic.

Feel free to link to this post.