Bloggasm

(Updated below)

Tor Books, a major science fiction and fantasy publisher, announced recently that it would offer free weekly ebooks of its print titles if you sign up for its email newsletter. But this is just part of a larger online expansion that will include social networking and the publication of original short fiction and nonfiction, sources familiar with the project told me.

Two sources who spoke to me on condition of anonymity said that it’s intended to be a “go-to site, a central community” for science fiction and fantasy fans. A few authors have already been approached to submit original short fiction to be published online. Tor is paying upwards of 25 cents per word for these stories and right now is only dealing with solicited authors.

According to one of the sources, this website will act in part as a form of branding and promotion for Tor book titles, “with an eye towards leveraging traffic into advertising revenues, down the road.” The project is being largely organized by Patrick Nielson Hayden, a senior editor at Tor.

So far the details of this site have remained a secret, hence why the sources spoke on condition of anonymity.

In an email on Friday, Nielsen Hayden confirmed many of these facts.

“Yes, it will involve lightweight ‘social networking’ features, although I don’t think those will be the core value proposition of the site,” he said. “We’re not going into competition with Facebook.”

The editor described the site as “a platform for original short SF and fantasy, by both Tor authors and non-Tor authors.”

As for those free ebooks?

“The free digital books are exactly what we say they are: an inducement to get people to pre-register as users and allow us to send them emailed progress reports,” Nielsen Hayden said. “The book-length freebies are a temporary program slated to run from now until when we launch. Although the site will be ‘giving away’ a lot of content–indeed, all of its content, as we don’t anticipate any part of it being DRMed or paywalled–the core of the site will not be built around a program of free novel giveaways. That said, we reserve the right to give away free digital books any time we think it’s a good idea to do so. (With the cooperation and consent of their authors, naturally.)”

He confirmed that the site would be functional in approximately three months, “but any such estimate has a large margin of error.”

Ebooks slated for free publication include Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, and Through Wolf’s Eyes by Jane Lindskold.

In an article published last week titled “The rise of the genre ezine: Will it ever find a profitable model?” I predicted that many companies would launch online publications to act as a form of branding for their products. I think this project with Tor supports my theory.

UPDATE: Irene Gallo, an Art director for Tor, writes:

I will add that the commissioned fiction will be accompanied by commissioned artwork and we are working gallery section that will contain portfolios for 100 artists. This wont be the kind of peer-to-peer workshop site that ConceptArt.org and CgSociety is, but it will be a place for fans and art directors to get a taste of an artist’s work and then link into the artists’ sites.

ABC News’s website has a new article up titled “Is MySpace Over?” I’m quoted a few times in the article.

The day has finally arrived. Last Sunday I declared January 30th to be International Delete Your Myspace Account Day. The idea quickly caught fire, being linked to on hundreds of websites spanning from Digg to Fark to MSNBC. Several journalists interviewed me about the day, including live radio and television interviews. I was also interviewed by a journalist at the Washington Post. A Myspace spokeswoman even responded to the event.

Many of the people who linked and commented on my post agreed with me whole-heartedly: Myspace sucks. And to drive that message home, we’re finally disposing of our useless profile pages all together on one day.

So if you’ve deleted your Myspace page today, tell us about your experience in the comments section. Several people have emailed me over the last few days to tell me that they tried to delete their profiles only for the confirmation email never to be sent. If this happens to you, it’s a serious issue that Myspace needs to address. Please let us know about it.

If anyone needs to contact me about this day, you can email me at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com for more information.

Below is a list of steps for you to delete your profile. I already tried them on my own myspace page. Supposedly Myspace is supposed to delete it within 48 hours. We’ll see if that happens.

Now, the steps:

1. Log in at Myspace.com

2. Click on “account settings” next to your profile picture

3. Click on the “cancel account” link at the bottom of the screen

4. On this screen it tells you to confirm your cancellation. It also provides you a box to explain why you’re canceling your account. To really drive home the message, you should put “Because it’s International Delete Your Myspace Account Day” as your reason. That will let them know that you’re deleting the account because of the cause.

5. You should receive an email that will allow you to “confirm” (hey, didn’t I already “confirm” it like two clicks ago? Myspace sure doesn’t want me to leave) your cancellation. After you’ve once again confirmed it, it tells you to give it 48 hours to complete the cancellation.

6. If your profile doesn’t disappear in 48 hours, raise bloody hell.

Good luck everyone! Happy cancellation!

–Simon

UPDATE: New Matilda has published a feature article about the event.

UPDATE 2: Here’s a video clip from one television news station that covered the event. Here is the story done by the Washington Post.

UPDATE 3: Another TV news station does a report about International Delete Your Myspace Account Day. (The video is on the righthand side)

UPDATE 4: News.com, the publication that had the response from the Myspace spokeswoman, has published a follow-up article after interviewing me. It includes an additional non-response from Myspace.

UPDATE: International Delete Your Myspace Account Day is finally here!

That’s it, I’ve had it. After months of only visiting my myspace profile in order to delete spam friend requests from half-nude women, I’ve reached the end of the line.

The other day I received an email from Myspace announcing something semi-relevant: “One of your friends is having a birthday this week.”

Intrigued for once, I actually opened the email to find out who was having a birthday, and was met with this:

Visit Myspace to find out who? No, I’m not going to fucking visit Myspace to find out who, there’s absolutely no reason why I should have to visit the website, wait for it to load because of the excessive banner ads, and then log in just so I can find out who is having a birthday. If you’re going to take the time and energy to spam my inbox with the message, then you can tell me in the email itself whose birthday it is.

I’ve been thinking about deleting my Myspace account almost since the day I got it but always opted out of doing so because of the few friends I have who don’t have Facebook accounts. But by remaining on Myspace, I realize, I’m becoming an enabler. I’m giving those friends no reason to switch over from Myspace by giving them access to my Myspace profile.

But rather than deleting my account right away, I’m going to hold off until January 30th so that other people have time to join me. I’d love to see a large number of people delete their accounts all at once in order to send Myspace a message: your website sucks.

So, if you’re reading this and you’ve experienced any of the things on the list below, your account may be in need of deletion:

1. You rarely log in to Myspace except to delete spam friend requests from nude webcam girls.

2. You spend five minutes writing a wall post only to hit an error message when you try to post it because of all the website glitches.

3. You’re a girl who constantly gets marriage proposals from random men in the middle east.

4. You visit someone’s Myspace profile only to suddenly have music start blasting out of your speakers. Bonus points if it happens to you while you’re at work.

5. You have to make redundant clicks to perform simple tasks because Myspace keeps taking you to advertisement pages where you have to click on “return to myspace profile” in order to continue what you’re doing.

6. You visit someone’s profile only to have your eyes bleed because of terrible page layout with non-matching designs and font colors.

7. Your experience is hindered because of intrusive banner ads that either talk to you or try to reach out and block your view of what you’re trying to look at.

8. You read yet another news account about how some child predator using Myspace has abducted a little girl or that some hoax myspace account has caused a teenager to commit suicide.

9. You’re frustrated with the fact that Myspace doesn’t allow you to post your contact info, meaning to contact someone you can only use Myspace’s glitchy Instant Messenger, message/email system, or wall commenting.

10. You’re tired of seeing Tom stare out at you from millions of friends lists and just wish he would change his fucking profile picture.

Have any of these things happened to you? Well you’re the perfect candidate for Myspace deletion. Join me on Wednesday, January 30th by deleting your Myspace account. You won’t regret it!

UPDATE: A commenter was kind enough to create a facebook group devoted to International Delete Your Myspace Account Day.

UPDATE 2: A Myspace spokeswoman has responded to International Delete Your Myspace Account Day.

UPDATE 3: If any journalists or bloggers would like to interview me about International Delete Your Myspace Account Day, please email me at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com for additional contact info.

1. The greatest science fiction porn of all time

2. I’ve heard of elaborate Facebook pranks, and I’ve reported on some here, but I think if you manage to trick the entire French media into believing your prank then you get to take home the gold medal.

3. I use Google as much as the next person, but let’s face it, their algorithm has some serious flaws.

4. A former editor for The New Republic has died. Luckily for him, he stopped working there when the magazine still had some credibility.

5. Why you shouldn’t exercise to indie rock

6. When I heard that The Virginia Pilot was for sale (Disclaimer: I work for a competing newspaper), the last thing I was expecting was for Pat “700 club” Robertson to consider buying it.

7. Some interesting Twitter messages that have emerged from the presidential press bus.

8. The blogosphere increases its influence on the 2008 presidential election.

I have written before about the fetishistic egotistical trends within the Facebook community, most noticeably the tendency to create groups with the sole purpose of amassing as many members as possible. Such tendencies are part of a larger cluttering of the social network that seems bent on flooding you with so much information that Facebook is rendered almost useless.

More disturbing, though, is the uptick in the number of fraudulent groups that have grown in popularity. Last year, a person who claimed to a be a man named “Brody Ruckus” created a group that told potential members that if they joined en mass, then his girlfriend would agree to a threesome and invite another girl to join them for some coital activities.

As I reported soon after the group was created, Ruckus was a fraud, and his/her/its lies were most likely attempts to sell music through a company called Ruckus Music.

He did have some short-lived success, however, and he has paved the way for a profusion of other fraudulent groups.

A few days ago, a group called “If 1,000,000 People Join I Won’t Put My Dog To Sleep!” was created by a person supposedly named “Mark Talon.” Before I even quote from him, let me prelude his atrocious grammar with an old-fashioned “[sic].”

“My dog just recently bit someone and he’s only a few months old….,” Talon writes. “They are suing, I can’t afford to pay for it, so I was offered that if I put him to sleep i’d pay a lot less…. I don’t want to… So I asked advertisers that if I came up with 1,000, 000 people how much could I get…. They said they would give me enough to pay the whole lawsuit amount and to be able to put him through the best dog training!”

His affinity for exclamation points only increases in intensity further down the page. It’s mere child’s play to debunk his claims. Firstly, there are no “advertisers” that exist in the group, other than the advertisers that go through Facebook’s channel, which have nothing to do with group creators. His grasp of the legal system is laughable at best — his summary of the lawsuit against him is like a 7-year-old’s reenactment of Law & Order. And the cherry on top of the icing? His facebook profile picture was blatantly taken from a Busted Tees website.

But though investigating these things might provide one with some pleasure, I knew that this group was a fake after reading the first paragraph. What worries me, though, is the popularity of the group.

As of this writing, the group has over 200,000 members, meaning that its existence is being announced to millions of news feeds. A simpleton with the grammar of an elementary school kid has seemingly risen through the upper echelons and become a social powerhouse. Now, consider if this imbecile actually did want to promote some commercial product with a simple link near the top of the group. He would be unstoppable in creating thousands of page views to whatever site he linked to. He has become a PR company’s dream.

Which leads me to this question: Why should fraudster PR companies bother with sites like Digg and Reddit when Facebook is obviously much easier to game? The founders of Digg devote a significant amount of time to finding ways to oust fraudulent diggers, so perhaps facebook can become a new haven where they can thrive.

UPDATE: It appears that the group has been taken down. I’m guessing that Facebook employees didn’t like the fact that this guy was fraudulently claiming that its advertisers were somehow cooperating with him.

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For about a year now, there has been a profusion of Facebook groups titled “1,000,000 strong for [insert cause].” E.g., there’s one group called “1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T Colbert.”

Only this example is different from all others because of one simple fact: It actually has over a million readers.

Seriously people, quit it already. If you type “1,000,000 strong” into Facebook’s search field, you’ll find 500+ groups that use it in the title. And out of all those groups, only one has reached the goal.

By giving yourself such a grandiose title, you’re actually diminishing the effect of your cause. For instance, let’s say your group reaches 10,000 people — that’s a pretty sizable number of supporters– a group that big has clout. But the way the group has been framed, it comes out looking like a loser, a lost cause.

The reason I’m talking about this is because today I happened across a group called “1,000,000 Fans Strong for Striking Writers.” Now, I may be wrong, but I would warrant a guess that there aren’t even more than 1 million facebook members who know anything really substantial about the strike. In other words, there may be a lot who know that a strike exists — but people who are actually following the story?

So what are the chances that you’ll find 1 million facebook members who not only follow the story, but care enough to join the group? Not very good. In fact, the group has been up for a few days now and it has amassed fewer than a thousand members.

So even if this group managed to pull in, say, 50,000 people, it still looks like a failure — it’s a PR nightmare because it creates the illusion that people aren’t supporting the writer’s strike.

Several people have already begun to mock this “1 million strong” trend, including one guy who created a (now deleted) group called “If this group gets 20 people my girlfriend will fuck a horse.”

Indeed.

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Related posts:
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2. Blogger’s pseudonym gets deleted from Facebook