Online soap operas may be on the decline (witness the recent Chapter 11 filing of The Spot's parent company), but who cares? There's still plenty of real-life drama on the Web. At San Francisco-based PlanetOut (www.planetout.com/), which produces an online service for the gay and lesbian community, the world was spinning faster than ever this winter.
Late in 1996, to the dismay of employees, PlanetOut founder Tom Rielly took a two-month leave of absence amidst reports of clashes with CEO John Huggett. But come the new year, Huggett was out. Rielly came back in triumph and announced that he was buying out venture backer Sequoia Capital and assuming majority control. Executive producer Karen Wickre, slated to work on a new book division, also returned. But not so fast! Within days, Wickre announced that she was unreturning, because "Tom and I could not come to a satisfactory agreement about my role." Meanwhile the two are still having discussions. "I'd like to add my stamp again to PlanetOut," she says. With true Web sagas like these cropping up, it's only a matter of time before producers make reality-based stories - their own - the next hot fad in Net content.
ELECTRIC WORD
As the Web Turns
