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"As social networking matures we're seeing a wider variety of themes or interests represented with their own websites and social networking tools.  We're starting to see networks that are devoted to people who have been bitten by the creative bug.  Communities are forming for people who want to create the next Halo, Star Trek, Star Wars, Terminator, or Batman.  In this post we're going to take a look at Zeros2Heroes and see what they offer for the amateur who'd like to become a pro.\nZeros2Heroes Media, a Vancouver, BC company, calls itself \"the people's publisher.\"  Its website, Zeros2Heroes.com, bills itself as \"a thriving social network that connects thousands of creators, producers and fans of comics in a collaborative and creative environment.\"  \nThe site is in Beta, but the company itself has been around since June 2006.  Zeroes2Heroes Media is a small company and it seems to be hosting a \"by amateurs, for amateurs\" community.  However, it's worth noting that there are several experienced industry players on the company's board of directors, including Paul Gertz (formerly of Lucasfilm and Hanna-Barbera, now of Rainmaker Animation); Paul Dini (veteran comic book writer and producer/writer of popular animated cartoon series based on Superman and Batman, as well as Lost); and Dr. Greg Zeschuk (Bioware/Electronic Arts).\n\n\n\nZeros2Heroes aims to support a community of writers, artists, and fans of modern pop culture who are interested creating and publishing content.  Zeros2Heroes also caters to people who are interested in breaking into the video gaming industry.  The website provides Web-based tools to help creators go from unpublished, unknown creators (i.e.  zeros) to published (i.e. heroes).  One recent Zeros2Heroes success is shepherding three new movies based on the Reboot cartoon series to development and production; the movies were written and created by Zeros2Heroes members.  The Reboot initiative is one of several contests that have been held on Zeros2Heroes to help new creators get published.\nThe heart of this social network is the ability to submit work for criticism and voting by the community's members.  Once a member has submitted their work (pitches, story ideas, or artwork) to Zeros2Heroes, it can be viewed and reviewed by other members.  The submissions can be viewed in a page by page or comic book panel format.  Each page or panel can be rated, scored, and critiqued using the reviewing system.  This system can show feature script pages, artwork, or some combination of the two.  The entire pitch or story can be rated as well, both in terms of quality and also in terms of suitability for audiences (e.g. E for Everyone).\n\n\n\nThe Zeros2Heroes community appears to have several thousand members and it has some significant and regular activity.  Considering that comic book writers and artists aren't as common as, say, bloggers, it's hard to imagine that this could be a huge community, but it will definitely appeal to a number of creative types.\nFrom a social media and social networking perspective, Zeros2Heroes does not use groundbreaking functionality.  It could probably benefit from incorporating tools to automate submissions to social news sites like Digg or Reddit, as an example.  Another useful addition, seen on many other Web 2.0 sites, would be to allow users to include profile information from other social media websites, like IM addresses, Twitter username, Facebook username, and so on.\nZeros2Heroes uses a number of tried and true functions like forums and blogs to create a simple social networking environment.  The focus of the website is clearly on the content review application.  It won't replace Facebook, but it's not meant to.  Overall it looks like a decent way to introduce the creative processes to a new generation of fans and creators while making good use of Web 2.0 functionality."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/09/29/zeros2heroes/>