inside LG15

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!