LonelyGirl Jessica Rose Returns

It was Jessica Rose who had the first Internet only video show hit, way back in 2006.

Lonelygirl15, if you'll recall, was the headline-grabbing video diary of a pretty teenager, later exposed by net detectives as a brilliant, CAA-backed fiction. The lonely girl was by no means alone -- she had a team of writers and producers behind her, and though the door was closed on lonelygirl15, the frontier of "webisodic" video was wide open.

The situation with open frontiers is that the people seeking to colonize them, to borrow a quote from Ms. South Carolina, simply "don't have maps." Which is why, almost two years after lonelygirl15, no Web series has established a viable, let alone profitable homestead. However, more wagons are now arriving. Sony Pictures Television just launched C-Spot:

From Crackle: Roadents: Episode 3

an online comedy channel featuring six sharply produced programs with enough short episodes to fill a 13-week season.

And Jessica Rose is planning a comeback too. The almost-21-year-old actress from New Zealand will soon return to the online world as the star of Blood Cell, a new horror-thriller from Web TV studio 60Frames Entertainment, directed by Eduardo Rodriguez. The show, whose trailer is now up on deadcelldeadfriend.com, follows Rose's character, Julia, as she contends with an unseen murderer who will talk to her only via her fancy photo- and video-enabled cellphone. Which hopefully gets good reception because, as the name of the website suggests, if Julia's signal goes dead, a blond somewhere gets dispatched for good. To build their online audience, C-Spot and 60Frames will "syndicate" their shows on Sony's Crackle (see this and my other previous posts), Hulu, and AOL Video; while 60Frames can be seen on Bebo, Blip.tv, iTunes, MySpace and others. And everyone's on YouTube.

Revenue-sharing deals allow the creators to get a piece of the advertising pie no matter where their shows get watched. 60Frames and Sony Pictures hope to find the answer to the overriding question posed by Web-only tv: In an entertainment world dominated by multi-hour, multi-night programs like American Idol, how do you win repeat viewers with three minute webisode.

Even though more of the big name studios are tempted onto the web, the question still hangs in the air: what will it take for large numbers of us (14-year-olds included) to feel like the computer screen with its blinking and ringing distractions is a good place to watch TV?

Cybercast credit: Crackle

Bebo for Open Media?

Bebo, a large social network that is especially opular in the UK, has launched a sevice dubbed "Open Media" for media companies (that's you and me too, if you create some spiffy videos) to deliver their content directly within the site.

Do you want "The Truth?" Looks like Bebo users do ... at least the U.K. media outfit by that name. I'm not surprised! Here is a VERY original piece from the, appropriately titled "Melting Moms." These people have social conscience.



They allow media companies to use their own video player technology to present videos to Bebo's millions of users, AND let them keep all the revenue from ads within their videos. COOL!

Open Media includes a recommendation feature that shows users what videos their friends like. It also has "channels" where companies can offer only their own videos, with forums, blogs, photos and other features for Bebo users to talk about what they're watching. It already offers a book authors section and a music section.

Video syndication brings in lots of compelling material that keeps people on the site, letting them sell ads that are relevant to what people are already interacting with see.

Bebo claims to have more than 40 million users worldwide, although nobody knows how many of them are active per month. Users spend 40 minutes on the site each day, according to Comscore.

The San Francisco-based company has already signed up a long list of big name partners, including MTV, ESPN, BBC, CBS, Yahoo! and others as well as startup video sites such as Crackle and Ustream.

Notably, Bebo, along with Myspace and many other social networks is a member of the Google-led Open Social project, lets developers build applications that can be implemented easily across social networks. This means video applications for OpenSocial may be introduced to the site which compete with the media companies that are offering videos through Open Media.

Media partners can join Open Media on their own. For partners that don't have a video player or video advertising sales team, Bebo offers its own services.

Cybercast credit: Bebo