Sorry for the late reply but yes, I very much like the fact that AO3 is NOT a social media website and is clear in that vision. But it does have *just* enough social features (comments, user profiles, challenge communities, etc.) and a huge size such that it has become THE place to post fanfiction. I think it's hard for a lot of people to justify posting their work on some other site (Dreamwidth, Tumblr, etc.) as the main community/audience they're talking to and then just back up on AO3, rather than post to AO3 directly (with everyone who checks a fandom's tag as the audience) and then use other social media presence as a kind of "meet the author one-on-one behind the scenes" sort of thing (with no larger community available on those sites at all). Like, if posting to AO3 is like presenting at a conference, then seeking out someone's presence on another social media website is like exchanging business cards to connect more later or something like that. The archive site has become the only real communal space (and it's got basically one privacy setting because... it's an archive) and most social media sites are like the personal feeds of individual fans rather than any kind of (smaller, more private) community (with Discord as the main exception here).
Anyway, kind of rambly, but yeah, I'm not sure how smaller communities will be able to work alongside such a big fanwork archive juggernaut like AO3, which fulfills most (but not all) of people's needs for an audience for their fanworks, fannish social interaction, etc. I guess why Tumblr/Twitter/Dreamwidth are doing okay is because they work as a deeper way to interact with a single person (which AO3 doesn't provide) and Discord provides a more transient/chatty/informal/quick-paced communal space that contrasts with AO3's function as a place to publish polished works. So they've been able to carve out a complementary niche to AO3. But I wonder if it's going to continue to be very difficult to build non-Discord fannish communities outside of AO3, especially on Dreamwidth or of the forum variety (so many forums I knew died when LJ/blogging/modern social media started to take off and they've never been able to recover, even with a highly motivated moderator and highly usable site interface). I don't know -- it seems hard!
no subject
Anyway, kind of rambly, but yeah, I'm not sure how smaller communities will be able to work alongside such a big fanwork archive juggernaut like AO3, which fulfills most (but not all) of people's needs for an audience for their fanworks, fannish social interaction, etc. I guess why Tumblr/Twitter/Dreamwidth are doing okay is because they work as a deeper way to interact with a single person (which AO3 doesn't provide) and Discord provides a more transient/chatty/informal/quick-paced communal space that contrasts with AO3's function as a place to publish polished works. So they've been able to carve out a complementary niche to AO3. But I wonder if it's going to continue to be very difficult to build non-Discord fannish communities outside of AO3, especially on Dreamwidth or of the forum variety (so many forums I knew died when LJ/blogging/modern social media started to take off and they've never been able to recover, even with a highly motivated moderator and highly usable site interface). I don't know -- it seems hard!