Lonelygirl15 is not so lonely after all

Filed in archive Business Trends on September 24, 2006

I've been meaning to comment on the LonelyGirl15 saga that has received much press; gaining unprecedented media coverage for YouTube in the process. Instead of pointing you to another article (and there are many!), I'll briefly bring people up to speed and make some observations.

Lonelygirl15 is a nearly four-month-old Internet drama. It entails the cryptic video musings of a fresh-faced teenager and became the obsession of millions of devotees.

It presented itself as the video postings of a 15-year-old girl named Bree; home-schooled by parents who are super-strict and very religious about whatever it is they believe in. While the clips purported to be real, their high quality and the seemingly made-for-TV plot lines spurred fans and the media to investigate whether Bree was actually a creation of scriptwriters.

The whole project appeared to be the early serialized version of what would eventually become a movie. The creators have quashed rumors that lonelygirl15 is a Hollywood marketing campaign - the entire budget, they say, was $130 for the webcam. The story appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the NY Times, on many of the major US TV stations and in the international press - including an interview on MTV today and an appearance on Leno.

Over a week ago, the creators of LonelyGirl15 said that they were leaving YouTube for Revver, the video-sharing site that splits ad revenue 50-50 with the content owners.

Well, one conclusion we can draw is that digital media when combined with video file sharing means that anyone can become a production company. Indeed, the show's creators characterized the clips as a "new art form." It reminds me of the time when a Star Wars fan created his own movie (I think it was called Revelations) and used the Internet to distribute his work. Is there really anything to stop you from making your own version of a Survivor reality contest and putting it up on YouTube?

Another thing of interest to me is how even regular people can receive advertising money. Rocketboom, in its heyday, was a testament to that. So is Google's Adsense program. Even this blog hopes that you will occasionally click on an ad so that the costs of producing these reports can be partially covered.

So it comes down to this: what is the value of a traditional television network in the distant future? One advantage that it has is higher-quality productions (although many may dispute that!). Another advantage is that mass audiences know to "tune" into that network for new material and they will promote new shows (but that too can be tipped on its head). In the end, perhaps the best thing that they have going for them is good old inertia - that is, people don't necessarily like to change.