Slashdot Mirror
Cyber-Soap Returns From The Dead
An anonymous reader submits "Back in 1995, an experimental "cyber-soap" had a wildly successful launch. With over a million page hits a day (an almost unheard-of amount of traffic at the time), The Spot was named "Cool Site of the Year" in 1995, and by all appearances was a huge success.
As was the case for many projects of the time, though, by 1997 The Spot was gone, another victim of the dot-com bust. However, unlike other dot-com projects, The Spot has been given new life, un der new ownership, and was relaunched in March. Can the Spot, a unique blend of soap opera, blog, and reality show, survive this time around, or is it doomed to end up back in the graveyard of failed websites in which it was first buried seven years ago?"
The way Americans love their reality entertainment, it'll soar in theory. However, I doubt it goes far for one simple reason: nobody will have heard of it. Can't beat American Idol if nobody knows about it.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
I think it's pretty obvious why this site died a few years back. Just remember that history is destined to repeat itself.
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by 1997 The Spot was gone, another victim of the dot-com bust.
The dot-com bust in 1997? Huh?
Love them hype-journalism phrases. "Dot-com bubble" and "dot-com bust" are used to explain every negative event in technology.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Let's face it, with the explosion of blogs on the web these days... people seem to love reading about people they barely know.
So, take beautiful actors and inject scripted situations... and away they go. I'm sure this'll spin into something this go around. 1995 was just a little too early.
Particularly poor idea. My good friend is a program exec at NBC, and they're considering dropping soaps all together (not in the least due to they're only averaging 2.5 Nielsen points a week for all their soaps).
In addition, soap opera viewership is 89% female. American females average 24 minutes a day online, men average 42. Essentially, they're transferring a female product to a male medium.
Dotcom Bust in 1997? Even the Boom was just getting started. Find another copout for failure, instead of inventing fantasy macroeconomics.
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make install -not war
Just because the kind of people who like that sort of thing would rather watch a reality soap on TV than read a webpage.
Soap operas and "reality" tv are the most worthless forms of entertainment. People should spend their time one anything else at all IMHO. Atleast with IRC and D&D you are interacting with other people.
When they go write stuff such as "OMG! I was actually recognized by a Spot fan at work yesterday! It was so surreal and uber awesome" or "Anyway, gotta hit the bucks right now for a Tazo Chai latte! Make it a super day!". Puhleaze, real people (it's supposed to be a reality soap, right?) to whom we are supposed to relate do not talk like a textwriter trying to emulate the way people who are like 20 years younger are talking. And the acting shown in the "Spot Moments" is just awful. I want no part of this crap.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
...I come to Slashdot. It's like a soap opera without the soap.
Well, i wouldnt mind if Sarah Michelle Gellar was in my somewhat geeky soap-opera...
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
Tell the truth, this could probably be successful. It's an extension of a traditional idea that has been moved to a medium which is actually superior for delivering that kind of content.
People already lap up blogs and celebrity websites, and watch webcams with frightening regularity, and soap fans already have a large stream of spolier mags and dedicated websites. Now that the dotcom boom has passed, it's more likely that someone will actually generate a decent way to generate money from the system rather than think "it's on the intarweb! It must be profitable".
The only real issue I see with this is there is real competition with actual weblogs and "legitimate" celebrity webpages, where the content is free and more "true to life".
The reason the Spot was interesting at all when it began was that it was not labelled for what it was (a corporate sham), and at the time, it seemed amazing that anyone would post anything of a intimate nature on the web.
I remember a friend mocking me at the time for thinking anyone would post such stuff for real. But now, with a million blogs/webcams where people post insanely personal information/images for no financial gain, I feel somewhat vindicated...
Back in 1995, the Internet was young, and many of us weren't sure whether The Spot was for real or not. Lots of people I knew thought it might be real people living in a real house. Today we all know instantly that it's a fake, and the spell is broken.
It won't work this time round. I'll watch The O.C.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
Wow... Though this whole thing probably sounds very unlike Slashdot to report on in the first place, I do remember "The Spot" and how it was a pretty fresh, original idea at the time.
If I recall correctly though, one of the things that detracted from it was when it became pretty much public knowledge that the whole thing was fictional. Part of the early fascination of "The Spot" was the belief that you were actually reading about the daily lives and adventures of real individuals (hence, the "reality TV" type concept, long before it existed on TV!).
I seem to remember the advertising agency running it really wanting to remain hidden as long as possible, to keep readers believing they really were reading a site hosted by the 20-somethings writing their life stories online. When the truth came out (partly due to magazines like Wired spilling the beans), it just failed to interest me any more.