Fan History Elevator Pitch

Event
Event:	Fan History Elevator Pitch
Participants:	Laura Hale
Date(s):	July 41, 2008
Type:
Fandom:
URL:	"Fan History elevator pitch - YouTube". Archived from the original on 2014-05-13. Wayback ; another link is at Fan History is growing!
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

a screenshot, Laura Hale and her bookshelf; the most visible book is "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!" by Jack Trout and Al Ries (April 27, 1994) -- Law 1: "It's better to be first than it is to be better."

Fan History Elevator Pitch is a one-minute video pitch for Fan History Wiki by Laura Hale.

It was uploaded to YouTube on July 14, 2008.

It was uploaded at "TechCrunch" on July 14, 2008.

It was uploaded to Fan History is growing! on September 18, 2008.

Transcript

My name is Laura Hale and I’m the founder of Fan History. You might not be aware of what Fan History is but if you’re at all involved in fan community, you definitely should. Fan History is a wiki project dedicated to documenting the history of fandom. It’s also a project dedicated to creating a larger index of fan sites, conventions, fans themselves, and any community of interest to fans Fan History has two audiences. The first audience is fans themselves. We’re a great tool for them to discover more about fandom. The second audience is businesses operating in fan spaces.Businesses can use us to find out what’s going on, who’s who, and what else is happening in fandom of interest to them. Fan History plans to make money in two ways. First through outside advertising and paid ad placement. Second, Fan History plans to make money by offering consulting services to businesses operating fandom. We’re pretty knowledgeable about the subject, so we can explain to businesses about what’s going on and what it means to their bottom line. We’d love to see you. Thanks.

Fan Comments

Comments from "Fan History elevator pitch - YouTube". Archived from the original on 2014-05-13. comments at TechCrunch:

Summation: fans of things are great, blah-blah-blah. How is anyone supposed to make money off of this?

This is going to fail....

needs a lot more focus. what kind of fans? sports? music? pottery? The average person has no clue what fandom is in the first place.

Concept needs refinement but helping entertainment companies better understand and interact with creators of fanfiction, TV mashups etc. looks valuable.

Are you going to pitch the part about how you think bad information is better than no information, and about how you run this wiki not like a collaborative tool but like your own personal crazyspace? Because you should! That's one of the main selling points, don't you think?

Please include the pertinent information your potential investors might need to know, such as how you remove anything from your wiki that you disagree with, and how you have people volunteering for you to find negative reactions to anything that might threaten your precious, ill-informed, malicious, biased, self-important, self-serving, and almost entirely incorrect source of disinformation. By the way I think you're missing the word "revisionist" in between "fannish" and "history.

One might want to note that Laura V and tzikeh are both members of a *rival* fandom organisation, which intends to start its own fannish history wiki, and take their comments with a LARGE scoop of salt.

One might note that the "rival" wiki is a non-profit.

Ethical considerations aside (and those are MANY) this is not going anywhere because Fan History is a terrible site. The current site is drowning in pages of outdated and pointless information created by bots trolling sites like fanfiction.net- information there is useless. And let's not forget- in order for a wiki to be truly useful, it has to have user-created content and be a trusted resource within a community. Fan History has a terrible reputation and 99% of fans shun it.

Hey, Fan Tired of Fanfeuds, one might want to check one's facts before posting. I'm not a member NOR A SUPPORTER of OTW--information easily obtained by, I don't know, LOOKING AT THEIR SITE. Proving once again that Laura Hale and her minions are not interested in any kind of accuracy, but rather in tearing down anything that might get in the way of making money off of fandom, which is the #1 Do Not Do This that has existed in fandom, specifically media fandom, since it began nearly thirty-eight years ago.

Fan Tired of Fanfeuds, it's true that I am a member of an OTW committee. What you don't seem to understand is that -- to the best of my knowledge, and not speaking officially -- no one in the OTW cares if a zillion other fans put up a zillion other wikis. It's not a rivalry. It's fandom; the more resources the merrier. Further, I was (and am) speaking as a private entity, not as an OTW spokesperson. Hale is trying to build something with free labor and then sell the products of it. I think she'll find that the ill will of the people whose labor and sense of community she is trying to abuse will impact the marketability of her concept. Laura Hale's name is worthless in many parts of the fannish community -- just like the information in her wiki. I think any venture capital firm looking at her work would want to know that.

Checked it out. It's a dud. Most of the pages are created by a bot that scraped info from the massive fanfiction.net site. These pages are unreadable lists and dates of fanfiction stories with one line of guesswork about the user, useless for marketing. Looking at edit histories, most of the work on FanHistory was done by one person. The site has an ugly relationship with fans. This happened last year with FanLib. FanLib was shunned and never saw the level of activity of fanfiction.net. Finally, FanHistory has a competing site looming. The competing site has: 1) a nonprofit behind it 2) fan support 3) coverage in the press from NPR, magazine articles, bloggers It's clear why Laura Hale is trying to sell her incomplete FanHistory site immediately.

To echo what others have said above - this venture has little support among the target community and in recent weeks the founder has further alienated their 'consumers.' I strong advise any investor to do extra due diligence before investing. Based on what I've been able to observe this is not a venture that will fully disclose the weakness in their business model nor that they've mismanaged their community relations.

How about the part where Laura bans everyone who tries to remove misinformation and considers personal disagreements and insults to be history? How about the part where she and her minions post in communities and ask to be directed to the good "wank" (insults, arguments, outraged and angry behaviour)? If Laura's breathing she's probably lying. If Laura's mouth is moving she's definitely lying. Her vendettas against Heidi and HPEF (I was in the splatter range on that one) and the OTW are legendary.

My company caters specifically to fans. Fans are intensely loyal to businesses that treat them well and take them seriously, and quick to denounce those that don't. Our success is based on carefully nurturing our relationships with our customer base. Word of mouth and our good reputation are our two most powerful marketing tools. I googled your name. Your reputation among your fandom peers is that you are controlling, obsessive, and act on your personal grudges. That doesn't encourage me to invest in you or support FH. Nor does the fact that FH has very little content of interest to prospective users, or that will ensure repeat visits. Padding a wiki with bot-culled profiles from fanfiction.net is not the same as creating content. A pan-fandom wiki is a nice idea, but poor execution and your poisoned reputation make FanHistory a sure loser.

Kudos on your attempt to turn what others do as a hobby into profit - for YOU. I'm thinking WRONG doesn't begin to cover it. Enjoy your 15 minutes. That sound is the clock tick, tick, ticking.

Too bad this "wiki" values misinformation over actual facts. :(" -- comment by Nick</ref>

[FanLib.com]] was a similar site, headed by Chris Williams (formerly of Yahoo) with ties to publishing companies and a clear business plan. Williams had plenty of start up funding. A year later, on August 4, they are shutting their doors. How is this different from FanLib.com? How would it avoid the same pitfalls?

I have to ask abotu the legality of this. considerign fanfiction is written, typically, with a disclaimer that states no moeny is being made form the article in question and that the writer does not own the characters and or liknesses of those involved in the story. How can this in any way not be a violation fo that on some level? As a related note. How can you not take that into consideration? that is the first thing any sane buisiness considers before thinking of using a resource such as yourself.

So exactly what is this? A demographics mailing list? Selling your self as an expert based on your inside knowledge of fandom? Just based on the comments that people have left here, I'm guessing you've alienated the demographic based on a lack of knowledge of these "fans"...so why would anyone want to invest?

The apparent involuntary sneer when you talk about "the fans" at 00:25 is a complete turnoff right there. Even if it were possible to make money off a wiki - something that is FREE everywhere else, your clear disdain for the people who would be the source of your product tells me that this enterprise will be short-lived. Even if not, there is no concrete information here; who is the target? Fans themselves? Businesses? I don't see why people should care about what sites a person posts on. Nope. Tanker.

The utter disregard you have for fans and fandom is revolting. The fact that you take information without permission via bots, but then tell fans that it is THEIR job to police your site to make sure no article is written about them if they don't want to be listed is insulting and disrespectful. Fandom is supposed to be a community, friendly and supportive. It doesn't always function that way in practice, but there is no reason that you should disrespect people's privacy. Try asking permission for something for a change, try EARNING the respect of the people you want to exploit. Have an OPT-IN policy for your site, instead of an OPT-OUT, to trap people who don't know they're being written about. Then, MAYBE, you'll have a product worth selling.

There are some great books on your s[h]elf 22 laws of marketing perhaps there are some insights there that will compel you to stop the bleeding re-purpose the server and sell rights to the domain on ebay