Wow! Yeah, we're really sorry for leaving everyone in the dark there for a bit. But trust us, we got crankin' between then and now. Updates were scheduled but then guess what? EVERY MEMBER OF MEMEFACTORY HAD APARTMENT DRAMA. D:

Long story short Patrick and I had to move and Steve "dodged a bullet" as he put it. And now we're back to work after an extremely real-life-stressful couple weeks. On with the news!

CONTRIBUTORS

We are extremely pleased to announce that  we have secured not one, but two amazing contributors for the MemeFactory book. Biella Coleman will be writing the MemeFactory Book introduction, and Tim Hwang will be painting some pictures of the possible future of the internet. We are sure the talents and genius of Biella and Tim will serve to improve your reading experience and also make us - the MemeFactory guys - feel slightly less smart. 

RESEARCH WIKI

The research wiki is fully underway. Everyone who should have gotten a username has done so and we even have some comments on in-progress chapters (see next heading for details on that stuff). If anyone feels as though they should have gotten a username and didn't, please drop me a line and let me know! Those who have access, you can keep tabs on us by checking the writing meeting notes. Links are posted on the bottom of the front page.

Also! Steve has started a writing process tumblr at http://memefactorybook.tumblr.com/ He calls it the "extracurricular writing blog for thoughts about process unrelated to the actual topic of the book itself."

We've also been working really close with friend and developer extraordinaire Greg Leuch on a piece of software which will allow us to save and track media as we are doing research and working in the wiki. The project which has come of this is called MetaFetch, and was inspired by our need for citable, attribution friendly media collection and local storage. We think it's the coolest.

CHAPTERS IN PROGRESS

We currently have a few chapters in progress.

Patrick is working on a chapter trying to suss out the idea of the Internet Haiku, using Advice Dog as the central media specimen. He is also working on a chapter which tackles the idea of reaction faces, and the way the media related to them and other facial expression memes can be used as a kind of para-language.

Steve is working on a comprehensive introduction chapter which covers all the ground work for understanding what a meme is, how they operate, where you can find them, why we think they're important and the million other things which fit in at the ground floor of this book.

I'm working on a chapter relating the study of internet memes to the collection of folk songs, and setting up the idea of Internet Folklorism based upon some ideas I co-presented with the former Know Your Meme crew at Web 2.0 in San Francisco this year. I'm also working on a chapter which asks more questions than it is seeming to answer about the nature of media "ownership" on the internet.

STEVE GREW A BOOK BEARD

But then he shaved'ed it. Too hot for book beards!

Holy moly, this was a huge update! Hopefully there will be more, smaller ones in the future. For anyone who is interested in keeping up with us on a day to day basis, you can follow us on twitter at @MemeFactory or individually at @mikerugnetta, @patrickdavison and @str1cken

And once again, thank you all so much for your support! Without you guys none of this would be possible. 1,000,000x <3 and Thank You!