Lonelygirl15 creators readying for round two

Less than two years ago, Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried were headed for careers in medicine and law respectively. Today, Beckett, and Goodfried, along with friend Ramesh Flinders and Greg's wife, Amanda Goodfried, are getting ready to launch another interactive Web drama as follow-up to their lonelygirl15 series, one of the most talked-about online serials ever.The upcoming "Lonelygirl15 Presents... KateModern" will be told in the same short "homemade" video clips used in lonelygirl15. It will focus on a 19-year old British college student and involve the same sort of dark forces seen in lonelygirl's adventures. The series will be shot and produced in the UK and will debut on Bebo.com, a popular social networking site with 31 million users, in July.At a recent visit to Toronto for the 2007 Flash in the Can (FITC) Design and Technology Festival, Beckett said their business model "will be 99% advertising," but added that Bebo is "helping us financially and working with advertisers and sponsors." That's more help than they had when lonelygirl15 first launched last June.After recruiting film student Jessica Lee Rose to play the part of Bree, a fictional 15 year-old girl trying to escape a religious cult, they produced their first story for approximately $130."I spent a lot of time on YouTube watching videos and after awhile it became clear that they were going to become the leader," Beckett explains off-stage. "I decided to upload something there, rather than try to get people to come to our site."With some considerable time spent - but little financial investment - their videos climbed the ranks of YouTube's most-watched clips. "Within three weeks our video posts were getting up to 500,000 views each," says Goodfried. Eager to take advantage of the web's interactive nature, they posted comments as Bree and eventually created a MySpace account for the fictional girl. From the beginning, "interactivity was very much a part of it," says Beckett.Their website, A Tribute to Lonelygirl15, is simple in construction but difficult to navigate, with three separate logins. It features videos uploaded by fans and the lonelygirl15 team as well as a chat room where fans can interact with "Bree" (as played by one of the lonelygirl15 team members). A Wikipedia-style lonelygirl encyclopedia, created by a fan, has more than 3,000 articles covering the show's content. The site gets about 200,000 unique visits a month and there are more than 306,000 articles in the forum. "We read the posts everyday and it does influence the plot," says Goodfried. The momentum they built around Bree threatened to collapse when, last September, fans started to unravel Bree's "fictional" status. Instead, the show's popularity exploded. The creators came clean and announced that Bree would be making a live appearance in the site's chat room. "35,000 fans came to the chat room knowing it was a fictional show," says Beckett.They continue to draw six-digit audiences on YouTube and won kudos as "Big Web Hit of the Year" at US music channel VH1's Big in ‘06 awards, but they were still broke."In January we got an angel investor. Until then we were living off our personal savings, credit cards and some of the money Miles' parents invested in us. In December it was dire and terrifying for all of us," says Goodfried.The team started using Revver - a video uploading service that provides users with advertising-generated revenue. Their website hawks merchandise and features a PayPal donation option, but producing four to five shows a week is time-consuming and costly. Last March, they were approached by The Hershey Co.'s advertising agency for a product-placement deal. Concerned their fans would rebel, they brought up the topic in the forum."Our fans knew our financial situation, they knew we were hurting," says Goodfried. They posted a poll, and while only 200 people responded, they were overwhelmingly in favour of the one-time deal. They won't disclose details of the agreement, but the influx of cash helped keep them going."The goal of the business model is brand integration and sponsorships, kind of like the reality TV model. We're talking to a few (mobile) carriers about a mobile application for lonelygirl," says Goodfried. "The goal is to sync the mobisodes up with the website." Big plans for the future, considering less than a year ago, Goodfried was skeptical about lonelygirl15's potential."Miles said we're going to do this for a few months and then we'll be on the cover of magazines, and I said you're crazy."

Lonelygirl15 creators readying for round two

News | 05/07/2007 2:22 pm EDT

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