A Crazy Idea that Just Might Work

Posted 5 October, 2007 in Uncategorized |

Jacob McArthur Mooney, a twenty-four year-old Nova Scotian now doing graduate work in Toronto, has found an innovative potential solution to the perennial problem of literary journals’ declining readership. His idea? Transplant a literary journal onto the hottest social networking site around.

Welcome to The Facebook Review.

According to the bumpf on the review’s Facebook page, “Our manifesto is humble and somewhat weak-kneed. Apologies. All we want is to publish the best work by Facebook members and to do so free-of-charge, free-of-cost, and completely within the confines of the Facebook network and software environment.”

Mooney, who is no stranger to literary journals, having upcoming poems in Zygote, Prairie Fire, and the Literary Review of Canada, and being himself the poetry editor for the online journal ThievesJargon.com, decided on Facebook as a platform for his new literary review “because it is a massively popular social phenomenon that seems to serve no purpose except to be a massively popular social phenomenon. I’m interested in what Facebook can do, what its outer limits might be. Without moving outside of its narrow parameters of shape, size, colour, and scope, what kind of art can it contain?”

To this end, Mooney is soliciting submissions of poetry, prose poetry, short fiction, and drama. (And, before you ask, no, the contributors will not get paid.) The content for the first issue will be edited by Mooney, but subsequent issues will be edited by what the site calls an “editorial train” of writers from the previous issue.

For example, lets [sic] say issue #1 features work by 15 pink fluffy bunny rabbits. Once issue #1 goes live, our managing editor will forward the contents of his inbox to each fluffy bunny. The bunnies will read through the pile of would-be contributors and decide if they like any of them. Each bunny will then send the managing editor a “vouch” list of work they liked from the submitted pile, and the, say, 15 or so submissions with the most vouches will make up the content for issue #2.

Mooney’s inspiration for this rather iconoclastic editorial set-up was the nature of Facebook itself. “It’s essentially about taking the ethic of open-source and laying it over the necessity of running a literary journal.” He is aware that he is giving up a certain amount of control over the journal’s contents as a result, but this doesn’t seem to bother him. “It’s exciting (and, obviously, terrifying) to be associated with something that I will soon have next to no control over the ‘quality’ of.”

The relative strength of each issue, content-wise, will be determined not by Mooney, but by “the revolving door of editor-writers.” This idea could, indeed, result in a diversity of content from issue to issue, since the sensibilities of the editorial staff will be in constant flux. It also could be a recipe for anarchy. But, ultimately, it’s not the work itself that interests Mooney in this particular online experiment: “My interest is not in publishing great work (although that would be nice). My interest is more in how the organism survives. How it sees itself.”

So far, the response has been very favourable. “We’re at the twenty-four-hour mark of the pre-issue one review and we have about 225 members and about twenty submissions. Which is more than we get in a day at TheivesJargon.”

As to how the journal grows or develops, Mooney says that’s not up to him. But he rules out any later life off the Facebook platform. “I’d much rather kill it than take it off Facebook. The internet is full of great sites doing the same thing as us in a less site-specific environment.”

So where The Facebook Review goes, and how it metamorphoses under the aegis of its ever-changing editorial board, is anybody’s guess. In the meantime, it will be interesting to watch its progress as it rolls out its inaugural issue.

[UPDATE: This kind of project does come with certain copyright considerations, as Sam Worthington, of Halifax, NS, points out on The Facebook Review page. Worthington quotes the following from Facebook’s privacy policy:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

Mooney acknowledges this rubric, but writes that there’s no evidence that Facebook is using user-generated content for their own purposes. Mooney writes: “Certainly, a person would want to consider this when submitting work, but I think we’re kidding ourselves if we’re saying that FB would move on ownership rights of individual works. Whatever would they want it for?”

Nevertheless, the potential for Facebook to assert these rights is there and writers submitting material should be aware of this before they press “send.”]

2 comments to “A Crazy Idea that Just Might Work”

Ed Janzen, October 6th, 2007 at 2:11 pm:

• The final block quote in your article appears on Facebook’s “Terms of Use” page, not its privacy policy. And, if you read further than the text you quoted, there’s this:

  “You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.”

  So, all you need to do to “take back” your property is simply remove it from Facebook. I’m not picking up for FB, here. But really, the sketchy thing about Facebook is not some kind of bumbling, megamaniacal drive to assert rights to other people’s information - it’s to convince millions of users to voluntarily participate in the collection of massive amounts of valuable consumer data (for subsequent resale) at virtually no overhead. Why pay for expensive focus groups or public-opinion surveys when you can get the info for free? That’s what Facebook’s all about.

Sam, October 9th, 2007 at 9:33 am:

• That’s good to know. It’s hard to get bogged down in legalese and confused about actual ramifications. I guess that’s the point though isn’t it?

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