A really great video on what Reddit is and how you can use it. I think many people are intimidated by Reddit's interface and is confused by how to use it, but it is a great source of user-approved information that is constantly updated and relevant.

When the SOPA bills were around, many sites chose to do a 'black out' of their pages in online social protest to the bill. Tumblr extended that protest by offering their users the means to actually call to Congress and express their displeasure. The entire SOPA incident was actually a very interesting time for online history, especially for a large collective mass of people to all fight for a singular cause.

If we're talking about fanfics, we can't avoid the topic of slash, I think. Slash fanfiction has been around since the original Star Trek, where fans would write stories about the possible relationships between Kirk/Spock. With the advent of the internet, however, fanfics of all kinds now have a place to be archived shared widely, but it's important to know where most of it began.

Let's just reveal everything about my regular online life, lol. I play a lot of 'virtual pet' sites, where you collect little creatures, but Aywas is one that stands out a lot. In the spirit of participatory media, it's a very different kind of participation from the usual kind of pet site. Aywas encourages users to create their own pets by colouring them in with sophisticated art programs (such as Photoshop) and submitting them. In turn, these pets are then eligible to be 'bred' with pets other users have made, and a site artist will mix and match the designs on both parent pets to create a new one. It's a very interesting concept and heavily user dependent for participation. If you're interested, shoot me a message at user ID #6429 and I can get you started!

I think a great example of participatory media doesn't have to be a new concept--text based roleplaying has been around for ages, and barely needs any kind of infrastructure to work. I know people who've text based roleplayed through email and messengers, as I still do! It's incredibly fun and expandable to many people, and just needs a bit of imagination.