What Are Your Thoughts About How the Internet is Creating New Media Options?

[pameladlloyd]

Today on LinkedIn, Ralph Lagnado, who identifies himself as a "Senior Planner, International Digital Media at Woo Agency," posted the following question:

Are we resurrecting online the branded entertainment methods of the early television industry?

We've all seen great examples of that.

Take that Youtube phenomenon Fred. With nearly 250,000 subscribers, Fred's YouTube channel is the fourth most subscribed in the site's history. One of his most successful videos "Fred on Valentine's Day" is a piece of entertainment that perfectly aligns with brand ZipIt, an instant messaging product.

I had the temerity to post the following answer:

There's a lot of creative activity online these days. Some of it is created by amateurs such as the YouTube series, Fred, that you mention, or by apparent amateurs such as “Where the H*ll is Matt?”, in which a young man has received sponsorship for a YouTube series that features him dancing in various locations around the world. But, I’ve also recently encountered experiments by professional writers who’ve banded together to create series of stories that corresponds to a TV serial (Shadow Unit) and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog,” a video production created by Joss Whedon, along with numerous others. The Shadow Unit production includes “extras” that use multiple Internet resources to create an imaginary world bigger than the stories themselves, with a Wiki about the “show,” a forum, and LiveJournal pages for some of the characters which extends the imaginary world of the show into a “real-world” contemporary space. Alternatively, the Dr. Horrible production has an online comic book on Dark Horse Comics and multiple social networking sites (MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, and Digg) and is being spread by “word of blog” on LiveJournal (and possibly other blogging sites).

Much of this recent creative activity wouldn’t have been possible even a few years ago and is a result of the greater bandwidth and improved Internet technologies now available. But, I’m not sure the best comparison is really early television. In many ways, this suggests to me the explosion of pulp fiction of the 1930s and 40s, or the early silent film industry; both of which were widely diverse and experimental approaches to our changing world.

I also included the following related links:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY (for "Where in the Hell is Matt?")
http://shadowunit.org/index.html
http://www.drhorrible.com/

If you're on LinkedIn, you can see my answer, along with the answers of any others.

I'd be interested to know what you think about all this.

Comments

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

We met through a chatroom roleplaying story-type characters. We started talking like real people, started talking on the phone a LOT (thank goodness for free long distance on cell phones), and a few months later, he flew down to Texas. We drove up to VA and got married not long after. :)

It's definitely interesting, having all your people living in the computer. I'm less shy online than I should be, I think. Your way is probably better. Safer, too.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm shy up to a point, having more to do with the initial "introduction," but as you've probably noticed, I'm not terribly shy about what I say in my journal or in my posts. I try to stay reasonable and aware that this is a very public forum (I've compared this to being at a party that's being televised), but I also try to be comfortable and natural.

But, in many ways, it's all like going down the rabbit hole. Once you've started, you're not sure where you're going to wind up. 8-O