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Ficlets was a
non-commercial A non-commercial (also spelled noncommercial) activity is an activity that does not, in some sense, involve commerce, at least relative to similar activities that do have a commercial objective or emphasis. For example, advertising-free community ...
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community
website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...
dedicated to publishing and archiving ficlets, which are similar to flash fiction. It was founded on 31 October 2006 by Kevin Lawver, although it did not become fully operational until early to mid-March 2007. On 6 June 2008, Lawver severed his employment from AOL and, in turn, departed as system administrator for Ficlets. No new administrator was announced to replace Lawver, leaving the respective duties for the site unmaintained. On 2 December 2008, it was announced on the People Connection Blog that Ficlets would permanently be closed, as of 15 January 2009. On 6 December 2008, a banner was placed at the header of Ficlets pages that announced the closure of the site and a pop-up window was added to the main page that read "Ficlets is going away soon :(". Lawver attempted to save the site to no avail, so he began a "Ficlets Graveyard" to archive all the ficlets written prior to the closing of the site. Lawver announced on 10 January 2009 that, with the help of Ficlets.com programmer Jason Garber and design team Viget Labs, a replacement site entitled Ficly.com would be launched. At the time of the announcement, the Ficly front page consisted of a logo (subtitling the format "A better, shorter story"), a statement of not being active yet, and a form to sign up an e-mail address for notification of the official launch. Lawver stated that the Ficly.com team is "slowly making progress" in constructing the site, referencing the possible launch date as "maybe by ficlets' 2nd birthday at the beginning of March". All content on ficlets.com was licensed under the
Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
Attribution-
Share Alike Share-alike (🄎) is a copyright licensing term, originally used by the Creative Commons project, to describe works or licenses that require copies or adaptations of the work to be released under the same or similar license as the original. Copy ...
2.5 license and viewable to any patron of the site. Users who completed the free registration process could submit their own ficlets (either completely original, inspired by a Creative Commons-licensed Flickr image, or as a prequel or sequel to another's ficlet), host a draft of a ficlet in progress which was not viewable by others, maintain a user profile, comment on and rate other's stories, contact other users via private messages, and maintain a list of favorite ficlet authors and stories. There was also a Ficlets
blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
wherein Lawver and
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
author
John Scalzi John Michael Scalzi II (born May 10, 1969) is an American science fiction author and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his ''Old Man's War'' series, three novels of which have been nom ...
posted entries in an assortment of categories, including Book Tour Diaries, a Ficlets Spotlight, and interviews with published authors. For registration, the site accepted OpenID and AOL/AIM screen names.


Creation

The site was created in late 2006 by
AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017â ...
system architect and lead developer Kevin Lawver, who handled the back end
website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...
programming, as a repository for ficlets. The concept for the site originated with Lawver being a "frustrated writer", unable to find the time to complete a fictional work; as an alternative, he conceived ficlets – a format that allowed a work to be written in "five or ten minutes at work during lunch or uringa break" and the site was to provide "inspiration" via "pictures, phrases or other stories" as well as circumventing, through the prequel or sequel option, having "to start from scratch when I had time to write". The name of the site and fiction form were derived from a unison of words:
fiction Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditi ...
and
chiclets Chiclets is an American brand of candy-coated chewing gum manufactured by Mondelez International. The brand was introduced in 1900 by the American Chicle Company, a company founded by Thomas Adams. History The Chiclets name is derived from the ...
, specifically the "lets" part of the later meant to indicate "a small version of". An additional four-person AOL developer team provided time and effort in the creation of the website: * Jason Garber, who handled the front end website programming. * Ari Kushimoto, who assisted with the
user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
design and programming. * Cindy Li, who assisted with the user interface design and programming as well as aiding in the promotion of the site. * Jenna Marino, who handled the website and logo design.
Science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
author
John Scalzi John Michael Scalzi II (born May 10, 1969) is an American science fiction author and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his ''Old Man's War'' series, three novels of which have been nom ...
was a principal contributor to the site from its launch as a
blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
ger, though he departed that position at the end of 2007.


Content

The site hosted "ficlets", not strictly linear ''very'' short stories between 64- and 1,024-
byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
s in length. Ficlets are modular in that each is intended, but not required, to be a stand-alone story but once posted any registered user could continue the narrative thread by writing an indefinite number of prequels or sequels to the ficlet. All ficlets are licensed under the
Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
Attribution-
Share Alike Share-alike (🄎) is a copyright licensing term, originally used by the Creative Commons project, to describe works or licenses that require copies or adaptations of the work to be released under the same or similar license as the original. Copy ...
2.5 License. Mature Content was allowed within ficlet stories, but explicit pornography, obscenity and "hate speech" were banned. Ficlet stories with mature content were required to be designated as such, thus allowing only registered users who opted to view mature content the ability to read the stories. The use of the
intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
of others, such as
fan fiction Fan fiction or fanfiction (also abbreviated to fan fic, fanfic, fic or FF) is fictional writing written in an amateur capacity by fans, unauthorized by, but based on an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted characters, settin ...
allow, was likewise banned from Ficlets. The use of real people was also forbidden in ficlet stories, unless they were public figures, although slanderous or libelous remarks directed at those public figures were prohibited. As of 4 January 2009, the site hosted almost 49,000 ficlet stories, over 80,000 comments on those stories, and had in excess of 10,000 registered members.


Notable contributors

Several published authors, aside from
blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
contributor and
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
author
John Scalzi John Michael Scalzi II (born May 10, 1969) is an American science fiction author and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his ''Old Man's War'' series, three novels of which have been nom ...
, participated on the site with original content. These included: * Science fiction and
fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...
author Rachel Swirsky, who contributed four pieces (entitled: "Whistbone's Chase", "DNA Designs", "My Way Out", and "Falling Further In"). * Science fiction author
Brian Francis Slattery Brian Francis Slattery is an American writer and an editor at '' The New Haven Review''. He has published three novels, ''Spaceman Blues: A Love Song'' (Tor, 2007), '' Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the Unit ...
, who contributed three pieces (entitled: "Asbestos", "Invisible Wars", and "Telescope") *
Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
acting alumni
Wil Wheaton Richard William Wheaton III (born July 29, 1972) is an American actor. He portrayed Wesley Crusher on the television series ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'', Gordie Lachance in the film ''Stand by Me (film), Stand by Me'', Joey Trotta in '' ...
, who contributed nine pieces (entitled: "The Fifteenth", "They Don't Come Out at Night", "Nevermore", "Snowfall", "A Godawful Small Affair", "Wallace", "Real Life", "An Unremarkable Factory", and "Hunter and Hunted").


Awards

In 2008, Ficlets was a Gold Award Winner in the category of Social/Networking from W3 Awards. In March 2008, Ficlets won the CSS category and was nominated for the Community category of the
SxSW South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Te ...
Web Awards.


Critical reception

Within the site's first week of operation it had received nearly 400
blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
posts regarding it, including a solicitation for new users from Boing Boing. Mike Linksvayer of
Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
was particularly "excited" with the creation and usage of the site. On 6 and 9 February 2008, the
CBC Radio CBC Radio is the English-language radio operations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC operates a number of radio networks serving different audiences and programming niches, all of which (regardless of language) are outlined below ...
show '' Spark'' ran a profile on Ficlets, including an interview with Kevin Lawver and the reading of two ficlets from the site.


References


External links


Archived official site
*
Ficlets Memorial

Ficly.com
– "replacement" site by Lawver
Ficlatte.com
– Community replacement site following Ficly closing to new stories in 2015 {{AOL Inc. AOL American literature websites Internet properties established in 2006 Internet properties disestablished in 2009 Internet services supporting OpenID