So I'm putting my money where my mouth is and adding social networking to Firefox News, with the service aimed specifically at fandom and the creative community. It will be open to the general public but with a focus on fans. Basic accounts will be free, and, yes, you can certainly post fanfiction and fanart to your account.

It's like this: I'm a member of fandom. I write fanfic, I go to cons, and most of my friends and a few family members are also quite fannish. I've run mailing lists and bulletin boards and hung out in chat rooms and IRC. I've been online long enough to have been a subscriber to Strek-L and SF-Lovers and to have a fanfiction.net account in the low four digits. I remember when the biggest spam problem on the rec.arts.sf newsgroup was get-rich-quick pyramid schemes involving sending dollar bills through the mail. I've even had poetry and artwork published in a 'zine in the pre-internet days of fandom, way back when I was a fanbrat.

In other words, fandom's my people. And I've been around awhile. This project is about giving back to fandom and fellow fans, who have been a big part of my life for a long time.

Right now, I am not happy -- for a variety of reasons -- with the options for social networking and blogging for fans. I've been critical of various services, and I think I can do a lot better. I also have a pretty good idea of what I'm getting into, both on the technical end and the *ahem* user behavior end. And it's got me laying awake sleepless at night.

I have the resources in place to get things up and running and support the site for the near future, a real good developer (Hi Miz!) working on the build, and an awesome ISP that knows what the heck they're doing to host it. I also want to make perfectly clear that I'm not asking for money or funding from anyone; I am covering 100% of the development and hosting costs out of my own pocket. If I need help and I have something already in place I'll ask, but right now, it's not necessary. It's my site and my financial risk. You won't see me begging for people to donate, or to buy permanent accounts, in the near future.

However, I am laying my cards out on the table, and asking for fans who want to pitch in and help to join a Google Groups mailing list. I don't need money or technical support but I do need people -- volunteers -- to help develop fan-friendly policies and pitch in to shape the foundation a fan-friendly community.

This is what is under development now:

1) We are currently modifying the open-source Livejournal application for our needs. I'm electing to use it because most fans are familiar with it (from Livejournal.com, Insanejournal.com, and Journalfen.com, among others), it works well, and to create an application from the ground up would take more work than it would to modify Livejournal for our needs.

2) We will be integrating Adsense API with the Livejournal application. For users over the age of 18, you will be able to sign up for Google Adsense through the site and share in ad revenue for your journal. You will also be able to turn ads off on specific posts or your entire journal. The site default will be "no Adsense" and you are not required to join up with Google. (There will also be other advertising on the site, in the interest of paying for the site overhead.)

3) The Livejournal code currently has three categories of posts: private, friends-locked and public. We will be modifying the code to add a fourth: "news." If you have covered breaking or first person news or written meta, or if you have a review, opinion piece, or other post that you would like a larger audience to view, you will be able to submit it as "news" to a queue that Firefox News's editorial staff will review, in addition to posting as a "public" entry in your journal. If we approve it, it will be reposted to Firefox News and you will share in the ad revenue.

(And there's no real limit to the amount of news we can approve for Firefox News, it's not like we have a quota. We'll be looking for good grammar, a clear writing voice, and subject matter that will be of interest to our readers. Our readers are diverse enough that there's a lot of things we'd accept.)

While I don't need help on the technical end (except possibly template designs, for while I will pay) I do need assistant with the non-technical end of the site development. If you'd like to pitch in, please join our mailing list, here:

http://groups.google.com/group/ffblogs

As a bonus, volunteers who join the mailing list will be allowed to register a few user names for themselves or their friends before we open the site to the general public. (Yes, you can be "harrypotterslash.firefox.org" or "trekkie.firefox.org")

What we do need volunteers to help with:

1) Establishing a clear, consistent, rules for dealing with problem behavior, and guidelines for what is, and is not, acceptable. The site will need rules that reflect real-world legal and advertiser realities while still allowing for as much freedom as possible.

2) Feedback on application design and modifications. This may take the form of polls or requests for input/critique. Also, I'll be open to suggestions for features you'd like to see on the site.

3) Application "bug hunting" during the beta phase of development -- you find the bugs, we squish them.

4) Template critiques.

5) Publicity and PR -- you can help in getting the word out now, when we go live, and then with continuing ideas for marketing for the site. This may include simply lurking on the development list and then telling your friends what we're up to, or more involved projects such as flier distribution and and t-shirt designs.

Anyway, I'm excited about this, and I hope our readers will greet this project with enthusiasm too. If you would like to volunteer, or just want to keep tabs on the project, please join our development discussion list at: http://groups.google.com/group/ffblogs. And remember, if you join the development list, you get to to cut to the head of the line when registering user names!