Ficlets

Ficlets.com is a new online community for people who like to write and read stories. What sets Ficlets apart is that anyone can add to anyone else's story by writing a sequel or a prequel. This means that each ficlet can become one chapter in any number of story sequences, contributed to by any number of different authors.

Most of all, ficlets is about fun. Ficlets are easy to write (they are limited to 1024 characters) and easy to read. You can rate other people's ficlets and leave them comments. You can get feeds of the postings by members whose writing you like. Ficlets members create a profile page. You can add other members to your "contacts" list. So, really, ficlets.com is a social networking community for writers and readers.

The Creator Behind Ficlets

Ficlets.com was created by Kevin Lawver and a small AOL developer team over a few months of work. Kevin is a software architect and lead developer at AOL. He got the idea for Ficlets.com as he was experimenting with Ruby On Rails, and when he suggested the project to his managers, they decided to provide him with hardware resources and a team to bring Ficlets.com online.

Kevin readily admits to being "passionate about web standards." He's a member of the W3.org CSS Working Group, and frequently speaks at technology conferences about microformats, mashups, and the construction of the emerging semantic web. Before inventing Ficlets, Kevin applied his vision to designing and developing AOL's AIM Pages (AIMPages.com).

“I am truly fortunate to work at a company where I can get away with stuff like this. This started as my own little thing to do on the side. When I realized that it was actually a pretty cool idea and that I didn't have the time or talent to do it all myself, I presented it at a meeting, and the next thing I know, I'm working on it full time with a small team of amazingly talented people. It was a pirate project in the best sense of the word. We didn't really do a project plan or start with a big committee. It was four people in a room, working towards something we were all geeked about. From the beginning, we treated it like we were in a startup, very few rules, no defined roles (except that I got two votes, and Kerry got three). It worked so well, and we had too much fun designing and building it.”

— Kevin Lawver

What People are Saying about Ficlets

Best New Mashups: Diversions
“Ficlets: Collaborative short-story writing site using Creative Commons-licensed photos from Flickr as inspiration for stories, OpenID for authentication, and the AOL WIM API for authenticating AOL users. This is the first AOL product to launch using Ruby on Rails, Creative Commons, and to accept OpenID logins.”

— John Musser, ProgrammableWeb.com

Storytelling at South by Southwest
“The obvious poster child of this new revival is the superb Ficlets, brainchild of Kevin Lawver and executed—with AOL’s approval—by a kick-ass team including Jason Garber and the amazing Cindy Li. But even if you look at any of the other hip web apps like Twitter and Flickr, you’ll find that the reason why they’re so engaging is that they’re allowing people to tell their stories. ”

— Jeremy Keith, Adactio

Independent content is the new web app
“The kind of content we used to create on personal/independent sites like {fray} and afterdinner.com, many of us are creating again (not that we ever stopped). But this time, we are creating it at the behest of companies like AOL, Google, and Yahoo. Ficlets, for example, is a collaborative fiction site put together by Cindy Li and her colleagues. It's awesomely cool. But instead of being something Cindy and her colleagues do at night, after their day job, Ficlets is their day job. And it's not a long-shot day job at an underfunded startup. It's a day job at America On-Line (and the content is part of the AIM.com network).”

— by Jeffrey Zeldman, zeldman.com

Free collaborative fiction = Ficlets!
“Ficlets is a neat new site from AOL for collaborative fiction writing:

• Write 1024 characters or less.
• Others can write a sequel or prequel to your ficlet.
• Everything is licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike.

— by Mike Linksvayer, Creative Commons

Ficlets | Welcome to Ficlets!
“I've already done two stories. The Bottle (late last night) and The Pencil (this morning). This may be more addictive than Flickr.”

— by Bearded Jon, Cha Cha Cha Blog