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]

No thoughts, but it is an interesting subject. The internet is changing a *lot* of things. I met my husband online, and my best friends live in different time zones. *shrug*

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Interesting question and yours is a very good reply. I don't feel that it resembles early TV because that required access to expensive equipment that put it out of reach of all but the few.

I am constantly amazed at all the wonderful stuff the Net throws up. Yes, a lot of the stuff out there is crap, but every so often a gem appears. I also love the way it encourages both individual creativity (blogs, Flickr, cartoons, comic strips, ) and communal efforts, either done by groups of friends, such as Shadow Unit or a new band launching themselves via MySpace or by the contributions of random stranger, eg Lolcats.

And then all this is mixed in with information and entertainment provided by existing big players, such as daily newspapers and the BBC.

I do like living in the future. :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

This is a cool thing--completely at random, the song I was listening to when I came to read your entry was Praan. So you writing your entry and I reading your entry had the same musical experience.

I saw the first episode of Dr. Horrible today. Am I right in understanding it's only like three or four episodes long in total? My daughter broke to me the bad news of the final episode--not sure how I feel about that, but I really enjoyed the first episode.

The Internet still feels like a big adventure to me--worth the dangers for the fun.