There's a lot of buzz about celebrities being born from blogs and web videos at this week's South by Southwest interactive conference. Strangely, the idea of breaking-out without any help from a major studio or corporation seems to appeal to a crowd of struggling filmmakers.
And break-out some have. Case in point: Lonelygirl15, which continues to get bigger and bigger. It now has something like 88,000 subscribers on its YouTube channel -- which is over double what it had when the LA Times first pointed out that the whole thing is, you know, fake. And that's just YouTube. Most of the action comes directly from the Lonely Girl site. The videos now get millions of views.
At a panel, the show’s creators (sorry everyone: just the guys behind the camera — no Bree) talked about the unique obsessiveness of their fans. These users give the show multiple dimensions: there's the plotline of the show itself (which has morphed from early-year 90210 angst to a confusing poor-mans alias); there’s the codes hidden in the show that let die-hards play alternate reality games (games where users have to find something in the real world, or call a telephone number to be let in on a secret plot point); there's a section of the site where fans can upload their own videos (complete with their own games); and finally there are the comments, where all of this gets discussed. Every show gets thousands of comments.
To demonstrate the power of comments, the Lonelygirl team uploaded an episode during the panel. Episodes are uploaded almost 5 days a week, but never at a specified time. We in the audience watched as the loading wheel turned, and then creator Miles Beckett clicked "View Website." By the time the page loaded there were already two comments. He hit refresh. 9 comments.
Ok, most of these simply said "Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiirsssssst!!!!!" or somesuch nonsense, but still, these poor kids are living on the LG15 site. That’s dedication. Now the Lonely Girl guys just have to figure out how to make money off that. Clearly Lonelygirl will (and does) host ads, but they are looking for other ideas, which so far boils down to product placement. The ideal situation, they say, would be things that can be worked into the show. So, for example, Bree could FedEx another character a package, and if the show had a deal with FedEx, fans could figure out the tracking number and see where the package was headed. Maybe even intercept it. Pretty cool.
It’s worth rooting for. Lonelygirl may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it really is a new type of show/interaction that could only work on the Net, and stands a real chance of success. The bigger it gets, the more it will pave the way for other intrepid online storytellers. I went in skeptical, but I’m now ready to root for these guys (and Bree — The Order is up to no good!).
Lost? Wired got an inside look at Lonelygirl15 a few months back. Check it out.
