inside LG15

I’ve been looking forward to the Streamy’s for the past few months.  It’s absolutely incredible to see how quickly things have progressed since 2006 when Greg, Mesh, Amanda and I created lonelygirl15.  Back then almost no one had ever heard of a web series before and there definitely wasn’t a professional society or an awards show.  It was a time of breathless excitement and unbounded potential.  Video podcasts like Ask A Ninja, Ze Frank, and Rocketboom were truly groundbreaking, mixing video with interactivity in ways that were previously impossible in the old mediums of television and film.  These guys (and gals!) didn’t follow any rules.  They were experimenting with the interactive nature of the internet and learning as they went.  Shooting things quickly, putting them online, listening to the community, processing their input, and publishing something new that could only exist because that community chose to respond.  This was not television.  It wasn’t film.  This was something new.

Unfortunately, the art preceded the business models and a lot of those pioneers left for the (dubiously) greener pastures of traditional media, or they were forced to focus on the business side of the equation, pulling them away from their art.  This has been a difficult decision tree for me over the years and I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for others who had offers from traditional media at a time when producing online video meant writing checks out of your own bank account.  Maybe I’m dating myself, and I’m sorry if I sound like a disgruntled grandpa, but I think that we’ve lost our way.  Our trailblazers have left us, and we’re wandering aimlessly in our covered wagons.  I’ll be the first to admit my own culpability in this regard.  In building EQAL Greg and I have focused 100% on the business side of the equation, and I’ve been so busy working to build a sustainable business that I’ve shirked my responsibility to lead the way creatively and provide guidance to a new generation of creators and to the IAWTV and Streamys.  I’m not suggesting that I have all the answers or that I’m even right, I’m just saying that I haven’t made an effort to be part of the conversation.  Frankly, I do my talking much better behind the camera or the desk.  I’ve never liked being in the spotlight.  However, after last night’s debacle, I feel like I need to speak up.

The Streamys let me down.  The Streamys let us all down.

Before I continue this post, I need to make it clear that I am in awe of how hard Brady, Marc, Drew, Josh, and everyone at Tubefilter and the IAWTV are working to elevate this medium.  I know that it’s a thankless job that most people wouldn’t have the guts or wherewithal to undertake, and I have HUGE respect for them and everyone who busted their asses to put on the Streamys.  So, I’m not hating, I’m just trying to get at the core of the problem and provide constructive feedback.  Most importantly, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is by getting more involved with the IAWTV to help make sure this doesn’t happen again next year.

I’m not going to go into a detailed review of last night’s show; many other people have already done that.  Suffice it to say that the Streamys were simultaneously funny, over-the-top, crass, inspiring, crude, silly, wonderful, immature, awkward, and surreal.  But most of all, they were confused.  And I think that’s the problem.  This new medium is facing an identity crisis, and it’s this identity crisis that underlies the problems faced by the Streamys last night.  Hell, this medium doesn’t even have a name!  Webisodes?  Blech, so 1998.  Web Series?  What if it isn’t serialized…  Web Shows?  But, you can watch via mobile and download.  Are we talking about video only?  How about multimedia?  Vloggers?  Dramas?  Comedies?  Reality?  What the hell is this new medium all about?

Just like blogging, it’s going to take some time for the medium to hit its stride, and I think it’s the responsibility of the creators, the financiers, and the professional societies and award shows to steer us in the right direction.  Without guidance our industry will become just another evolutionary dead-end like the CD-ROM publishing industry.  When was the last time you played Myst?  The first step is understanding what this medium is about, naming it, and honing in on that core identity, because until we know what we are talking about we can’t give out awards for the best “whatever this thing is that we are talking about.”  Quality is relative.  Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

So that’s what I want to do right here.  Figure out the defining features of our medium.  But, this isn’t about me.  This is about all of us.  So, this is an open thread.  A dialogue.  Let me know in comments below what you think defines this new medium.  My goal is to find a few core principles and a name to describe our art that we can use over the next year to guide us.

Here are my core principles.  These are the tenets that guide every show that EQAL has produced from lonelygirl15 to KateModern to Harpers Globe to the Real Women of Philadelphia.

1. A Home – The show needs a home for the community.  Typically this is a website dedicated to the show and the community that incorporates a variety of social and publishing features.  We use Umbrella, but this could be WordPress, Ning, Tumblr or other platforms.  It could be an iPhone or Android app (I’m a huge proponent of the web as the ultimate application platform and agree with Mark Suster’s assessment that “app is crap” but that’s a post for another day).
2. Video and More – The show needs to incorporate video.  Otherwise, it’s a blog.  But, it can’t just incorporate video.  It should make full use of the rich media publishing capabilities of the web, leveraging photos, text, and even audio to create the experience.
3. Interactive and “real-time” – This is the most important tenet and it’s an absolute requirement.  The show must be interactive and it should be produced and distributed in such a way that it feels like it is responding to the audience in real-time.  We call it a “call-to-action loop” where the show calls out to the community to perform some action, the community acts, and the show is somehow influenced by the actions of that community.

What’s even more important is what I left out.  The show doesn’t need to be scripted.  The show doesn’t need to be a specific genre.  The show doesn’t need to be serialized.  The show doesn’t need famous actors. The show doesn’t need a beginning, middle, or end.  The show doesn’t need a huge budget or a huge crew.  Let me say that again, the production values don’t matter.  This might sound sacrilege, but “premium content” doesn’t require a “premium” budget, it just needs passionate talent driving the experience, and the scope of production should match the budget and show aesthetic.  The most popular channels on YouTube are still shot with consumer equipment.  ‘Nuff said.

Now, for the name.  Greg and I like “social shows.”  We debated internally for months and discussed a ton of different variations, but ultimately we liked this because it’s short and sweet and not too limiting.  It’s a show that’s social.  Simple as that.  The word “show” implies “entertainment” and “performance,” and the word “social” gets to the interactive and real-time nature of the art form.  We think it differentiates “these things” from blogs, and properly aligns them with their historical connection to television, film, and theater.  In keeping with the theme, we call our medium social entertainment.  So, social shows and social entertainment.

Like I said, this is a conversation.  This is how I feel and these are the principles that guide EQAL, but I want to know what you think should guide this community over the next year.  Let me know in comments.  Thanks for listening.

UPDATE: Great apology from Brady on NewTeeVee.

I hope you are all as excited as I am about the launch of LG15: The Last!  The trailer looked awesome and the first episode was really great.  The team in Australia is working hard to produce an amazing show for the LG15 community to enjoy so we hope you will all show your support by watching it and rooting them on.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but Greg and I and the entire team at EQAL have been super busy gearing up for the launch of some exciting new projects.  As you all know, we’re rapidly approaching the launch of Harper’s Globe, which will run in conjunction with CBS’s new show, Harper’s Island.  HarpersGlobe.com will be hosted on the latest iteration of our software and will offer a ton of new features that I think you’re all going to be very excited about.  The show page, profile pages, and forums have a received a MAJOR overhaul and will make it much easier for you to enjoy the show and discuss with your friends.

Despite this, we haven’t forgotten about the LG15 community.  We can’t “flip a switch” and upgrade LG15.com, but we’ll be working rapidly to upgrade the database schema to match the new framework and re-launch LG15.com with the new features.  That’s right, all the features you see on HarpersGlobe.com will make their way to LG15.com in the near future.  Finally, I know that it’s been tough for Zoey to run the LGPedia without a lot of help, and it’s particularly frustrating for me because I love using it as a resource.  We don’t have someone inside the company dedicated to the job, but we’re very fortunate to now have user “FH14″ (Andrew IRL) who will work with Zoey as an admin on the LGPedia.  We’ve spent some time thinking about the best way to run the LGPedia and have prepared a mission statement to guide admins and community editors to make it the best resource for all members of the LG15 community:

“The goal of the LGPedia is to compile the most accurate and thorough knowledge base of everything in the LG15 Universe.  It is a community-editable wiki and will contain both official information and photos released by the LG15 team and other material created and edited by the community.  At times, we may need to lock pages and/or make “official” edits in order to correct mis-information or protect the privacy of members of the various productions.  We’ll work with the community to keep the LGPedia branding consistent with the LG15 Universe and various productions.  This may mean providing official photos for actors and crew, official logos, and other elements that will improve the information offered in the LGPedia.  Although we’re big fans of every great web series out there, because the LGPedia is dedicated to the LG15 Universe, it should only include information about shows in the LG15 Universe or featured on LG15.com.  For instance, “Harper’s Globe” will have it’s own wiki on HarpersGlobe.com where you can compile information relevant to the Harper’s Island/Globe Universe.  If unrelated shows are included in the LGPedia, it should only be as a reference or link to the appropriate external website (e.g. to reference other productions LG15 cast/crew are a part of).  Thanks for working with us to make the LGPedia the best resource for members of the LG15 community around the world.”

Thanks everyone and enjoy both LG15: The Last and Harper’s Globe.

Miles

Hey everyone, I just want to personally address the whole “Mark Burnett” rumor. Chris Albrecht accurately reported on NewTeeVee that contrary to a post on Anchor Cove, lonelygirl15 is NOT funded by Mark Burnett Productions. Greg and I want to let everyone know that not only have we never received funding from MBP, we’ve also never had the pleasure of meeting Mark. In the fall of 2006, Greg and I were trying desperately to keep this company afloat and to continue producing lonelygirl15. In the aftermath of all our initial publicity, we had offers for overall deals at major Hollywood studios, but we didn’t want to sign a contract that would not fully support our commitment to creating entertainment to be consumed online. This new medium is amazing and we are very fortunate to be a part of its emergence and growth. So, we did what all startups do… took out “loans” from VISA and Mastercard. We racked up considerable debt between the two of us so that we could continue paying the actors and production team working on the show at the time. Fortunately, we were introduced to a new media enthusiast through a friend and he helped us weather the tough times, let us squat in his office, and enabled lonelygirl15 to continue to grow. His investment gave us the time to forge a business model for online shows. Remember, this was back before the YouTube partner program, before advertising on MySpaceTV, and before we had figured out how to best use product and brand integration within the show to monetize the production (and before we asked for your opinion on this). We’ve worked liked maniacs to produce great shows, and to find advertisers and promotional partners to make these shows a reality. We’ve managed to cover our costs over the past year by cutting innovative deals with advertisers like Hershey’s, Neutrogena, and Fox. It’s been a challenge because for most of these advertisers lonelygirl15 was the first online entertainment brand that they contributed advertising dollars to. We are a new media studio built on sweat and passion, and any success we’ve had is because of the dedicated community that’s formed around both lonelygirl15 and KateModern (that’s all of you!). Anyway, I wanted you to hear it from me. We have a lot of exciting things coming up in the near term so stay tuned!

I missed writing a post earlier this week because Greg and I have been traveling. We were in Poland for some meetings and then London to check in with the KateModern production team. You’ve already seen some photos from our karaoke extravaganza (um, yeah :).

Things are going great out here and the London team is doing a fantastic job producing KM. In between meetings on Friday, news broke that Microsoft is attempting a “semi-hostile” takeover of Yahoo! by announcing a bid to purchase the public company for $44.6 billion. Wow. The story has been covered all over the internet (here, here, and here) and we won’t know the outcome for awhile since Yahoo!’s board of directors will need to take some time to make a decision. Regardless, everyone’s been having a good time debating about what it means for the internet and for technology in general. So, I figured I’d weigh in on what this means for online entertainment.

Yahoo! has been a major player in the online entertainment industry for awhile and they’ve made several attempts to bring “TV-style” entertainment to the internet. Probably their most successful attempt is “The 9,” a daily internet gossip and news webcast. It’s okay, but I never got hooked the way I did with Rocketboom back in the Amanda Congdon glory days. Could a combined Yahoo!/Microsoft present a serious challenge to online content creators, or would they help facilitate the distribution of even more high quality shows from independent producers? I think it’s probably the latter. Neither Microsoft nor Yahoo! have expertise producing online content, and although Yahoo owns a vast network of content-centric websites, they generally function as an aggregator rather than a producer of original content. Actually, Microsoft has a lot of cool internet technology that combined with Yahoo!’s reach could result in some very cool web applications (Silverlight anybody?).

Hopefully, a combined Yahoo!/Microsoft can prevent Google from taking over the planet… which would be good for everyone. It’s funny, I’ve always been such a Google fanboy, but over the last year I’ve found myself coming to hate Google… crazy. It seems like they’ve done more lately to stifle competition rather than foster innovation. Microsoft is making a play to compete with Google in search advertising, but maybe they can use their organizational expertise to re-structure Yahoo! and enable it to finally integrate and take advantage of all the cool Web 2.0 companies they’ve purchased. I’d like to see the Yahoo! portal function more like a personalized aggregator of content with more integration with Flickr, del.icio.us, and other properties… and don’t forget their minority stake in Facebook. Could Yahoo!/Microsoft actually usher in the Web 3.0 revolution?

In the meantime I’m watching from the sidelines, and for the first time in my life… rooting for Microsoft. How about you?

Amanda has asked me to write a weekly entry on Inside LG15. She had to prod me a few times, but here’s my first post. Look for a new one each Wednesday. I’m going to focus on internet technology and how it relates to the LG15 Universe and our company. So… today I just want to put out there that LG15 is more than simply a couple of web serials (lonelygirl15 and KateModern), it’s a community. The LG15 Universe extends beyond the shows that we produce and includes every member of the community on LG15, Bebo, Facebook, LG15 Today, and many other websites. We’ve been inching along at making the LG15 website more robust, but as you know it’s taken some time. Nonetheless a vibrant community has formed around a show that began with a girl who made video blogs in her bedroom.

What makes a community? There’s the technology (profile pages, messaging, chat, forums, etc.), but most importantly it’s the collection of people that share similar interests. In the case of LG15, all of you share an interest in lonelygirl15 and/or KateModern, but you also share a lot of other interests. As LG15 evolves and we add new features to the website, this will become a place for you to interact with your friends and interact with the shows. So, don’t just sit back and click the play button… sign up for a profile, comment on the videos, talk in the forums, join the chat, and contribute to growing database of everything LG15 in the LGPedia. LG15 is a community and we want you to be part of the fun. Oh… most importantly check out the live event coming up in San Francisco. W00T!