Remember Urbis? This time we find it’s no longer alone. A Techcrunch plug the other day alerted me to the presence of Portrayl … and Ficlets.

Portrayl allows users to write stories chapter by chapter, or collaborate on stories that a user has started. In theory it sounds wonderful, but in reality it resembles Penguin’s group wiki novel experiment … an experiment that ultimately failed. Would anyone really want to browse through a novel with alternate endings, disparate writing styles and inconsistent characterization? I don’t think so.

On the other hand I find Ficlets to be a refreshing take on Internet prose. It allows users to write short stories, and then frees the piece to the community to write prequels and sequels to those stories. Comments and ratings feature heavily throughout the site, as does RSS (used to keep track of all the aforementioned prequels and sequels). See this example for a feel of what the site’s about.