Ficly (formerly “Ficlets”) is one of the best sites for writers and readers alike that I have ever come across.
I wouldn’t have used this description over a year ago, but Ficly is like Twitter for fiction writers. And like Twitter, there is great freedom in restraint.
A long time ago, I followed a link recommendation from Wil Wheaton, which brought me to the most wonderful, awesome site for writers I’ve ever known: Ficlets.com (I won’t link because that site is now dead.) Ficlets restricted your story to 1,024 characters, or a few brief paragraphs.
Some of the things you could do with it included prequel or sequel any author’s story and hopefully get a chain of different authors adding to one story; issue writing challenges; write your own little series; comment/rate stories (leading to one of the most instructive, constructive feedback sites I’ve ever used); use creative commons pictures from Flickr as inspiration for a story; or use quotes or starters as inspiration. Most of these wonderful features are back on the new incarnation.