Tuesday, March 20, 2007

The lawyer, the trainee plastic surgeon and the imaginary girl

Interesting interview describing the creation of a fictitious teenage videoblogger called Bree, who generated humongous traffic, got exposed as a spoof and still milked the fan base turning a niche idea into a viable YouTube offshoot business model.

Rocketboom field correspondent Chuck Olsen interviews 'medical dropout' Miles Beckett and ex-attorney Greg Goodfried the creators of lonelygirl15.

Despite the international exposé between June and August 2006, the lonelygirl15 phenomenon shows no sign of flagging. They have a partnership with video revenue sharing site Revver,'spin-off shows in foreign territories' in development, plus 'branding and integration deals for long term success'.

There are currently 88,000 lonelygirl15 subscribers on YouTube; lonelygirl15.com gets 25 to 30,000 unique vistors a day, and about 150,000 unique vistors over a month. The five videos a week generate about 1.5 million weekly views.

To sustain and increase interest levels, there is plenty of interaction available for fans to comment and interact with eachother on the lg15 forums.

Jessica Lee Rose who plays Bree was voted the top web celeb by Forbes.com and after a bit part with Lindsay Lohan in 'I Know Who Killed Me', she now has a 'movie deal'. Touchingly, Jessica also recorded a United Nations anti-poverty commercial since her career went stratospheric.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

map messaging


Instead of passé email, combine a smoke signal or crop circle message with a location via http://www.mapmsg.com