It was a social media Thursday on the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu podcast, as hosts Jason Boog of GalleyCat and AgencySpy's Matt Van Hoven welcomed Jürgen Fauth, co-founder of a social networking site for writers, Fictionaut.

The goal of Fictionaut is to get established and emerging writers to publish stories and interact with each other. "Publishing isn't really the problem any more," Fauth said about the world of writing and online publishing today. "So we figured, what if we had a site where anybody could come on a publish their stories? What would happen? The problem then becomes filtering. How do you find anything?"

The answer was using social media tools like favorites and collaborative filtering to allow the best stories rise to the top. The most successful writers on Fictionaut are those who post stories and then engage with the community, Fauth said. However, there's still no money in it for writers, just exposure. "It's a frustrating process for a young writer to get your short story out there," he said. "The marketplace for finding an agent for your short story collections is very difficult. Everyone says there is no market for them...I'd love it if Fictionaut could be a place for people to read more of them."

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