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.

map messaging

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

Ning, the social network from Andreessen

Way back in October 2005, Ning launched with an intent to let anyone create social networks without programming skills, for free.

Ning is backed by Marc Andreessen, the 'wunderkind' of the Internet bubble generation and has Gina Bianchini as CEO.

After an several kickings from TechCrunch they at last appear to have ironed out the usabilty issues that got them the earlier bad press with Ning version 2, released on 27th Feb '07.

It was good to see Andreessen and Bianchini interacting with every pertinent comment asked on TechCrunch (161 so far) and being so open. Andreessen was happy to talk about what was happening under the hood and said amongst much other detailed answering that Ning was 90% built in Java. He stresses that Ning is designed to let people customise any aspect of their social network either in the Ning environment or outside using Ning's API's.

Scalablity is often an issue when apps get the TechCrunch spike and aim to go mainstream. Despite a few instances of recently being swamped the concensus is that Ning is coping well and the majority of the feedback is positive.

In my experience it took less than 20 minutes to set up a test social network using Ning without a single glitch. So top marks there for usability. See below, Gina Bianchini giving an impressive demo of Ning, filmed by Robert Scoble.


The Ning business model allows free usage being supported by ads with plenty of premium services available where there is demand.

Arrington calls for the BBC to be dissolved

Via Ian Forrester at Cubicgarden

Yesterday (21st Feb) at the future of webapps there was a Panel Debate about what Europe could learn from American in regards to the startup culture. We captured the whole debate on a small camcorder. Including the part where one of the most prolific voices of the valley, Michael Arrington from TechCrunch.com showed his true feelings for the BBC's efforts online. He added... "The BBC should be dissolved"

Click To Play

Future of Web Apps heats up London

Via Suw Charman and Carson Systems at Future of Web Apps; Sam Sethi at Vecosys, Robert Andrews at Wired and Tara Hunt at Horsepigcow.

Originally uploaded by Tech Paparazzi.

Chelsea FC on YouTube

Via Reuters : Chelsea have signed a deal to show archive footage and daily news on the popular video-sharing site YouTube, becoming the first Premier League club to do so.

Under the deal, Chelsea will have a branded channel on the site, showing daily updates and other content. It will not show live footage due to restrictions under Premier League rules.

"We are delighted to work with YouTube," Chelsea Chief Executive Peter Kenyon said in a statement on Friday. "Chelsea is the first football club to move into what is clearly one of the fastest growing new media platforms."

MusicStation takes on the iPhone

UK dotcom tycoons take on Apple with iPhone competitor