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?"

Comments

Re:Accurate?

[LostCluster]

The Spot was one of the first in and first out of the Dot-com era... it was early proof that "Oh, we'll get tons of traffic and then put up ads." business model doesn't always lead to profit.

In fact, I don't quite see where they're going to get funding from this go around either...

Product placement goes "reality show"...

[janbjurstrom]

As if inane, trite blogs/boards/et al., weren't enough - now we're going to get hordes of semi-produced/casted business versions...

I spent all of 5 minutes browsing the spot, and it was blatantly obvoius that most "post" we're little more than product placements. "Amanda" "hears" about how [swedish retailer of semi-disposable furniture]'s got some great(!) stuff - going there now!! The "Kai" character takes up surfing - i.e. goes to a named and praised surf shop (link+logo included of course), the guys at shop X we're awesome!!

So, this is apparantly business' take du jour, on the latest mainstream trends online - we get the likes of the spot and the subservient-chicken. Viral marketing ey? Well, let's start spraying some virus-killing poison then.

I'm so reminded of the ad agency in Gibson's Pattern Recognition it's not even funny.

Wherever and whenever real people try (and do) find each other in - to them - meaningful ways, you can be goddammed sure that advertising leeches will find a way to nestle their way in between them. Gotta get yer earnin' on.