In her write-up of the Futures of Entertainment conference, Flourish Klink does a great job of summarizing some of its dominant themes:

* The death of "viral" and "meme." People choose what they pass along to other people. The content matters. If something is viral or memetic, it's caught or coded into DNA, not chosen. "Viral" and "meme" are broadcast ideas, where the all-powerful content producer forces the weak consumers to enjoy and propagate something. They're wrong. From Henry Jenkins.

* The birth of "spreadability." When people say that they want a video to "go viral," they mean that they want it to spread. Good media is spreadable media. From Henry Jenkins.

* Value vs. worth. Things have monetary value, but their worth is hard to measure. Companies exist in a world that's all about money, but fans typically participate in gift economies. When companies try to "monetize" fans (and incidentally, the death of "monetize" was extensively discussed on the hashtag) they run into problems because fans don't operate that way.

In contrast, the word "monetize" was in the very theme of the MIDEMNet program ("Monetizing the fan-artist relationship") and was absolutely the dominant theme of the meeting. Viral got an occassional nod, though often as something scary, and the notion of spreadability was not even close to present (except when presented by those outside the industry). With a very few exceptions I heard very few people at MIDEM asking the question "how can we provide value to our audience?" Instead I heard them asking "how can we get money from our audience?"

The people at Futures of Entertainment, some of whom were working at huge mainstream media companies like HBO or NBC, were all asking: how can we use new media to get fans more involved with our product? How can we use these tools to keep them engaged and give them the resources to help them bring in new fans? How can we collaborate with fans in ways that make the product and the experience around it better for all of us?

The people at MIDEM were asking "how can we make sure that every time someone downloads a song, we get paid?" Though there were some great examples of keeping fans engaged (Mike Masnick summarizes them well here), with the exception of the industry people who worked directly with fans (like the person who runs Pearl Jam's website or the guy who oversees Kanye West's online presence) for the most part, there was simply no concept of "fan" there at all. Sure they used the word, but what they usually meant was "downloader," an entirely different concept.

At MIDEM I met many industry people who are passionate about their work, and who see their chance to do what they do professionally disappearing. I spoke with a wonderful woman who used to be in music videos, for her the fact that fans will now make awesome videos for free is not a great example of artist-fan connectivity, but the end of her chosen career.

At the same time, I also met many many people who are building new careers by asking the hard and interesting questions about how to make the internet and mobile media work for both artists and fans. I left believing that the jobs are not disappearing, but they are shifting. I imagine if college teaching were replaced by, say, user-built wikis that could result in the earning of a college degree, I would feel profoundly threated as well. I would probably rant against it and point out its shortcomings.

But I hope that if I were faced with a seismic shift like that, I would be able to look toward the future and ask how I could use the skills I have to provide value to those students instead of looking to the long arm of the law, hoping they would pass regulation to ensure that students still had to take my classes the way I want to teach them.

Finally, lest this seem like I am unappreciative of having attended MIDEM, quite the contrary -- I had a great time, I learned a great deal, and I find it very heartening that people like me and Mike Masnick were invited to speak there.

I identify 5 key social practices in fandom, 5 reasons the internet has superpowered fans, and make 4 suggestions for how artists and those who represent them can make this work for everyone. I argue that the key to fostering fans' strong connections to artists is fostering their connections to one another by understanding and nurturing the activities that bind them together in their fandom.

For me, this page in the middle of the talk is the key:

Of course, the flip side to fans' empowerment is what seems a lot like disempowerment to those who've been able to control music production, distribution and coverage. It's natural to respond to this with fear. The threats are real. Those in industry]]> Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:04:40 -0800 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/1058340 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/1043792 One thing I love about my new President is that he inspires his followers to create in ways that erase the boundaries between politics and fandom. Here's to President Obama:

I've got this image on today:

Now let's fix the world.

]]> Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:19:36 -0800 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/1043792 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/1034830 I've finished up the syllabi for the two classes I'm teaching this semester.

I'm teaching an undergraduate course called Communication On The Internet. The sections of the course outline correspond to the chapters of my book Personal Connections In A Digital Age, which I hope will see the light of day around this time next year.

I also teach a graduate course on Qualitative Research Methods in Communication Studies, which includes some material on qualitative research and the internet, including, of course, the book Annette Markham and I just co-edited on the topic.

I hope they're useful for some of you.

]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:53:40 -0800 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/1034830 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/1017782 Next week I am headed to France to attend my first MidemNet conference. I'll be offering a "master class" called "Making the Most of Online Music Fandom" in which I will overview the social activities that motivate fans to engage one another, how the internet transformed those activities in ways that empower fandoms, why this terrifies people used to having all the control in the relationships between musicians and fans, and I'll suggest some key principles for forming symbiotic relationships with fans.

When I was first asked to do this, it inspired a long line of thought about who I would invite if I were going to put together my dream program to hear people talk about building relationships between musicians and fans.

I'd include people having great success with the patronage model of fan funding for recording costs like someone from Marillion or Jill Sobule.

I'd want some people from labels who have been genius about opening new avenues for artists and fans to interact, people like Terry McBride or Martin Th]]> Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:35:05 -0800 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/1017782 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/1006881 Now in their 1970s, my parents have belatedly come around to Beatlemania, suggesting strongly that either my fandom genes are inherited from parents who'd simply failed to express them, or there's some kind of reverse inheritance going on in which my parents have picked up fandom from me. Either way, John Paul George and Ringo are getting a lot of loving and critical dissection from this pair of retired literature professors.

One of the discussions we had was when I visited over the holidays was about the lack of a proper Let It Be DVD despite the ease of finding low quality bootleg versions through Amazon and other online retailers. My mother explained how the guy with all 72 hours of footage couldn't bring himself to go through it all to reedit the film. I said this sounded like a perfect project for fans, who would surely do a magnificent job.

So it was fun this weekend to see the curatorial wonders of Beatles fans popping up in a New York Times article. The question posed by the column was what's wrong with the music business that it can't reissue material people actually want to purchase:

And how many record labels, just now, are facing an army of consumers who are saying, in effect: "We've bought this music several times already -- on mono and stereo LPs, on picture discs and audiophile vinyl, perhaps on cassette and most recently on CD -- but please, we beg you, sell it to us again."

But fear not:

While EMI and Apple have been squabbling, collectors have taken matters into their own hands, pooling unreleased tracks and compiling anthologies that are far more ambitious than anything EMI is likely to release. Usually, these unauthorized desktop bootleg projects which are of course illegal have attractive cover art and copious annotations, and these days money rarely changes hands for them: the people who compile them distribute them freely and encourage others to do so either on home-burned CDs and DVDs or, increasingly, on the Internet.

Some are curatorial masterpieces. A label called Purple Chick has assembled deluxe editions of each commercially released album, offering the original discs in their mono and stereo mixes, along with the singles also in mono and stereo released at the time, as well as every known demo, studio outtake and alternative mix.

What can Purple Chick offer my mother, the Let It Be fan?

And if you want to begin the new year by commemorating the 40th anniversary of the "Let It Be" sessions, which ran from Jan. 2 to 31, 1969, you still have a few days to find Purple Chick's "A/B Road," which offers nearly 96 hours of those sessions on 83 CDs.

96 hours. 83 cds.

And people put them together lovingly because of their passion for the band and the knowledge that the fruits of this creativity would be savored with appreciation by others.

Too bad about that "which are of course illegal" part...

]]> Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:37:34 -0800 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/1006881 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/947235

I am just back from a very inspiring weekend attending the Futures of Entertainment 3 conference hosted by the Convergence Culture Consortium. One of the most exciting elements was getting to hear directly from several media producers who are doing fascinating transmedia "world building" projects in association with their television shows and movies.

One example was Lance Weiler (seen on the far left), director of the horror film Head Trauma, recently named one of the 18 People Who Changed Hollywood by Business Week magazine. He spoke about extending Head Trauma beyond the film (transcribed by Xiaochang Li on the C3 weblog -- click through to read the whole panel discussion):

The movie is about the fragmentation of memory, a guy who comes back home after 20 years to settle his grandmother's estate and finds it inhabited by squatters; he hits his head and starts having recurring nightmares that start to turn into reality. So we started to play with what's real and what isn't. We started with interactive comics and there were all kinds of easter eggs and rabbit holes as you moved through it.

We interjected mobile experiences so when the movie had a world premiere we handed out these Jack Chick-style comics and there were ciphers and clues within them. On the back it asks "do you want to play the game?" and when you called the number that's there you'd get the nemesis of the movie; they'd hang up and then we'd call or text them back. This continued back and forth. Even when you went to the website, we could figure out that you were on there and call you during your visit to it. Throughout the premiere there was a whole give and take with phones - about 86% of the audience was engaged mobilely.

And we had an online series with all these subliminal things in it, and there was a remix area, where people could remix their own fragments. At one point when people showed up somewhere based on the clues in the game for a secret movie showing I ended up calling the LAPD and they came by with the helicopter and I executed all these SMS and phone calls saying things like "We're watching you!"

They built a fake exit box into the website associated with the game so that when people tried to get out of the site they instead got a telephone call that said "Where do you think you're going?"

Creepy.

But wow.

There are many things to admire about this, but I was particularly struck by the integration of film, internet, telephone, and face-to-face encounters.

I will write more about the event in the coming days, but if you just can't wait, check out the thorough coverage of every panel on the C3 blog here.

]]> Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:06:36 -0800 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/947235 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/925287 I was recently a guest on Kansas City current affairs show Up to Date on Kansas City NPR affiliate, KCUR. My co-guest was Michael Zimmer of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who is an expert on issues of ethics, privacy and the web. Our guest-host Stephen Seligman led us through a lively and high quality discussion of social networking sites and what people ought to understand about their advantages and risks. It's an hour long show with a call-in segment.

And, best of all, it's available in mp3 form.

]]> Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:43:13 -0800 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/925287 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/887921 Last week I attended the Association of Internet Researchers' 9th annual conference, this time in Copenhagen Denmark. One of the things I did there was participate in a roundtable about social networking research called Life On the Move put together by Daniel Skog (Ume]]> Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:40:32 -0700 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/887921 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/879160 I'm very happy to announce that I'll be speaking at Futures of Entertainment 3, put together by the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT:

Convergence culture has moved swiftly from buzzword to industry logic. The creation of transmedia storyworlds, understanding how to appeal to migratory audiences, and the production of digital extensions for traditional materials are becoming the bread and butter of working in the media. Futures of Entertainment 3 once again brings together key industry leaders who are shaping these new directions in our culture and academic scholars immersed in the investigation the social, cultural, political, economic, and technological implications of these changes in our media landscape.

This year's conference will work to bring together the themes from last year - media spreadability, audiences and value, social media, distribution - with the consortium's new projects in moving towards an increasingly global view of media convergence and flow. Topics for this year's panels include global distribution systems and the challenges of moving content across borders, transmedia and world building, comics and commerce, social media and spreadability, and renewed discussion on how and why to measure audience value.

Confirmed speakers for this year's conference include: Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman), Alex McDowell (Production Designer, The Watchmen), Kevin Slavin (Area/Code), Donald K Ranvaud (Buena Onda Films), Amber Case (Cyborg Anthropologist and Social Media Consultant), Mauricio Mota (New Content [Brazil]), Alisa Perren (George State University), Amanda Lotz (University of Michigan), Sharon Ross (Columbia College Chicago), Nancy Baym (University of Kansas), Alice Marwick (New York University), Vu Nguyen (VP of Business Development, crunchyroll.com) with more to come.

It's going to be good, so if you're in the neighborhood or looking for a good excuse to visit Boston or bone up on the latest in fandom's key issues, be there!

]]> Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:26:59 -0700 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/879160 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/873838 One of the big questions raised by social networking sites is what the heck those "friendships" really are. In this paper, written with my former Ph.D. student and now Ohio University professor Andrew Ledbetter, we examine this in the case of Last.fm. Based on a large survey of users, we pose the question of what predicts how strong or well developed Last.fm friendships are.

The short answer is that the best predictor is not shared taste in music (which has no effect on relational development), but how many different ways people communicate with one another. For each medium added, people's relationships are a little closer. This means that sites like Last.fm can provide pairs with an additional way to maintain and strengthen their relationship that goes over and beyond what they get through email, instant messaging, phone calls and other means of interaction.

On the other hand, the "friendships" that begin via Last.fm don't go very far, even if shared taste was important to the relationship's initiation.

Overall, the "friendships" on Last.fm are pretty weak. The notion that shared taste makes people "musical soulmates" makes for good mythology, it seems, but not strong interpersonal connections.

You can download and read the paper here. For reasons I don't understand, the tables did not get included in this PDF. If you really want to see them, email me.

If you're in Copenhagen this week for Internet Research 9.0, drop on by and hear this presented live in person.

]]> Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:32:27 -0700 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/873838 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/867153 Hi there. Remember me? Ok, so I've been an epic blogging fail lately. But there's a good reason! I've been writing full length things. Like the 2 papers I'm about to share here.

This coming week I'll be in Copenhagen presenting at the Association of Internet Researchers' ninth annual conference (Internet Research 9.0). I'm giving two papers, one about Swedish indie fans online and one about friending on Last.fm.

Here is the paper about Swedish indie fans. My collaborator Robert Burnett and I interviewed a number of mp3 bloggers, archivists, indie label guys and musicians. In this, we demonstrate the importance of the (unpaid) work fans do in spreading this music beyond the border of Sweden, making it a globally accessible and appreciated commodity, and we pose the question of whether this is exploitation or empowerment.

There is a critique of Web 2.0 that argues it is based on free labor done by users from which others profit. We argue that this critique has some merit, but undervalues the rewards fans get from doing this kind of work. We identify the costs fan laborers pay and the rewards they receive. In the end, the tension between empowerment and exploitation is one that each fan laborer has to manage on his or her own. We identify three strategies through which they do this: distancing themselves from the scene as outsiders, viewing themselves as peers of those they 'work' for, and viewing their work as an investment in a future career.

You can download the paper here.

Come back next week for the Last.fm paper.

]]> Sat, 11 Oct 2008 03:27:52 -0700 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/867153 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/844238 Congratulations to everyone involved in the successful launch of the new fandom journal Transformative Works and Cultures! Here is the Table of Contents and live link to the first issue.

Transformative Works and Cultures
Vol 1 (2008)
Table of Contents

Editorial
-----
Transforming academic and fan cultures
TWC Editor

Theory
-----
Participatory democracy and Hillary Clinton's marginalized fandom
Abigail De Kosnik

"Emotions-Only" versus "Special People": Genre in fan discourse
Louisa Ellen Stein

Painful pleasures: Sacrifice, consent, and the resignification of BDSM
symbolism in "The Story of O" and "The Story of Obi"
Anne Kustritz

Women, "Star Trek," and the early development of fannish vidding
Francesca Coppa

Praxis
-----
"The epic love story of Sam and Dean": "Supernatural," queer readings, and
the romance of incestuous fan fiction
Catherine Tosenberger

Ownership, authority, and the body: Does antifanfic sentiment reflect
posthuman anxiety?
Madeline Ashby

The unlearning: Horror and transformative theory
Michael A. Arnzen

Soap operas and the history of fan discussion
Sam Ford

Symposium
-----
And now, a word from the amateurs
Dana L. Bode

On symposia: LiveJournal and the shape of fannish discourse
Rebecca Lucy Busker

Nothing but Net: When cultures collide
Cathy Cupitt

Fan labor audio feature introduction
Bob Rehak

Interview
-----
Interview with Henry Jenkins
TWC Editor

Interview with Wu Ming
Veruska Sabucco

Interview with the Audre Lorde of the Rings
TWC Editor

Review
-----
"Teen television: Essays on programming and fandom," edited by Sharon Marie
Ross and Louisa Ellen Stein
Mary Dalton

"Fans: The mirror of consumption," by Cornel Sandvoss
Eve Marie Taggart

"Cyberspaces of their own," by Rhiannon Bury
Katarina Maria Hj]]> Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:07:45 -0700 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/844238 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/841890 [housekeeping note: i hope to slowly ease back into more regular posting in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, here's the CFP for something I am very excited about]

Call for Papers

Affective Audiences: Analysing Media Users, Consumers and Fans
Preconference sponsored by the Popular Communication Division
Date: 20th ^ 21st May 2009
Venue: Marriott Downtown Chicago, Magnificent Mile Hotel

The study of audiences constitutes a central concern of contemporary (popular) communication research. As Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama fills football stadia addressing enthusiastic supporters and political commentators frequently refer to ,,Obama fans? and ,,Palin fans?, evidence of the centrality of notions of affect and participation in contemporary mediated communication - within and beyond the realm of traditional popular culture - is abundant. This preconference aims to explore the social, cultural, textual and psychological conditions through which readers engage with, and attach meaning and emotional significance to the texts they privilege in their everyday life media consumption.

Corresponding with the theme of the 58th International Communication Association,s conference - Keywords in Communication (21st-25th May 2009 in Chicago, Illinois, USA) - the field of audience studies constitutes a key conceptual battleground that has witnessed a number of paradigm changes over the past half century which have both reflected and contributed to the wider discourses of Social and Cultural Theory.

"Affective Audiences" explores these recent paradigm changes by offering a dedicated space within the ICA conference programme that combines empirical audience research with a thorough examination of the field,s canon and a discussion of its conceptual challenges vis-]]> Thu, 25 Sep 2008 01:21:17 -0700 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/841890 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/777477 Prince may be eagerly suing everyone who posts live videos of his shows on YouTube, but the Swedish label Songs I Wish I Had Written, headed by Martin Th]]> Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:52:46 -0700 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/777477 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/771757 Yeah I know, I've been a very lame blogger of late. Part of the reason is that I've been distracted by trying to get my courses in order for the fall semester, which begins next week.

For those who are curious, here are the new syllabi for my graduate seminar called "Personal Relationships and Communication Technology" and the undergraduate course called "Communication on the Internet." Neither deals much with fandom, but, given that online fandom is largely about relationship and community building, both touch on many issues that are relevant.

]]> Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:51:04 -0700 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/771757 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/752375 An anecdote from my weekend. First, a cut to the moral: Online music discovery is largely about architecture within and across sites, personal connections and serendipity. Focus exclusively on algorithms and radio streams at your peril.

Between about 1988 and 1992 I worked at a record store. My boss there was a cool local musician friend with great pop taste. When I finished my Ph.D. and moved away, he and I kind of lost touch except occasional reports from mutual friends.

A few weeks ago, he showed up on Facebook (as a number of my significant lost people from the 70s and 80s have started to lately). Yesterday he posted some pictures, including one of Future Clouds & Radar -- "my fav band, listen to them please" he wrote. He mentioned they were the same guy as Cotton Mather, whose record Kon Tiki is one of my favorite albums ever. What can I say? I was reared on "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and Rubber Soul.

I went to Last.fm immediately where there were 2 free downloads of theirs plus complete streaming of their 27 song double album. I downloaded. I listened. I liked. I checked out Amazon. All 10 reviewers had given it 5 stars.

I went to eMusic 10 minutes later and bought it all, including the 2 songs I'd just downloaded for free (even though it only had 4 stars there, too Beatleseque for some, apparently).

Now I'm blogging about them.

This is just a mundane little moment in one person's musical life story, but it's got some lessons that are important:

(1) I knew this guy from way back. He came prepackaged with massive credibility. The trick for the internet was to make his music recommendations available to me.

(2) He did it not through a playlist, not through a music application, not with a widget, not by sending me a link, but by posting a picture of the band in his Facebook photos (probably technically an IP violation and certainly not a venue seen as music recommendation related).

(3) Until the "new" facebook design, I almost always forgot to look for new friend photos. The new tab layout has made me remember to check for new pictures, so I actually found that picture.

Most online music discovery people assume that music discovery happens through radio, offline or online, which I admit much of it does, or through recommender systems, which again do have sway. Reviews in sites like Amazon, eMusic, and places like Pitchfork or Drowned in Sound are surely important.

But it's very important to remember the serendipitous ways that we stumble across music through our connections with friends, and the need to enable that kind of discovery by making the kinds of things that fans want to promote easy to pitch and easy to find. Too often music discovery sites foreground the parts that can be done by machine, forgetting that the most meaningful music recommendations emerge unpredictably when the technosocial fabric is woven well enough within and across sites to let interpersonal surprises occur.

On a related note, triple extra credit to Future Clouds & Radar for pitching this holiday bonus:

When Radiohead released their wonderful new recording "In Rainbows " last month for a special "pay what you want" price, few could have predicted the paralyzing backlash of consumer guilt and psychic gridlock that would grip the world as it became known that over 80% of consumers took the goods for free! The good news is Future Clouds and Radar can, in this special yuletide offer, help you and yours alleviate your guilt just in time for the holidays. By sending us just $23 US you will receive our double CD debut ($16 value) and make a $7 donation (actual Radiohead value) to our depleted coffers in the good name of Radiohead. Just write on your check or email with your payment the words "I feel bad about what I did to Radiohead" and we will make sure your act of contrition does not go unnoticed. Rest assured a band who needs your support far more than Radiohead will put the funds to good use and we will, as a special bonus, use a percentage of the revenue to fashion a Radiohead shrine available for viewing at our shows- topped off by a motorized Thome York figurine who will be programmed to gyrate spasmodically and caterwall in daring gibberish that verges on profundity at times!

I wonder how that worked out.

]]> Sun, 03 Aug 2008 18:33:46 -0700 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/752375 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/734394

I got my hard copies of my new book Fed Ex today, and it's being offered at 2/3 the regular price at Amazon so if you've been waiting to order it, now's the time!]]> Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:04:10 -0700 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/734394 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/724182 Along with Radiohead (though in fact far beyond them), Trent Reznor is often held up as one of the heroes of new media music promotion. This raises the usual litany of questions: Could this work for a new band without a huge following? Is this unique to him? Is this THE FUTURE? Blah blah blah?

Would what he does work for others? Well, no, not exactly. But what he does has got some lessons in it that would if you forget the specifics and focus on the concepts. Here are three things he's got down:

(1) He intertwines the online and the offline instead of focusing on one or the other. Past promotions have included USB sticks left in restrooms with songs he knew would be uploaded and peer-distributed and t-shirts with hidden URLs where devotees could find clues to forthcoming releases. His current schtick incorporates Google Earth to lead inquisitive fans to tickets hidden in places like drainpipes.

(2) He knows that fans experience music together and all of these strategies are designed to make fans talk to each other and do things together. Emotion is contagious and sharing these experiences makes them more exciting than they are alone. Just think about how much more you laugh aloud when you watch something funny with others.

(3) He intertwines the feelings evoked by his music with those evoked by these strategies. In the blog linked above, Mark Milian summarizes the feelings he and his friends had when they found the tickets:

As we jumped up and down, celebrating our victory, it was obvious that Reznor had accomplished his goal. Those feelings of excitement and anxiety are the same emotions he aims to put across in his music. And that could explain why fans have been so overwhelmingly receptive to such a bizarre spin on one of the oldest forms of music promotion -- a ticket giveaway.

The next band to hide USB sticks in bathrooms, put codes on t-shirts, or use Google Earth to point the way to hidden tickets will be rightly seen as copycats. But the next band to figure out how to take the experience evoked by their sound and find its counterpart in a social collaboration that fans can engage online and off will be rightly hailed as brilliant.

]]> Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:30:28 -0700 http://virb.com/nancy/posts/text/724182