Lonelygirl15 Case Study

This session was a behind-the-scenes look at lonelygirl15.com story. If you’re not familiar, lonelygirl15 is an online video series following the life of Bree, a fictional teenage girl in the format of a personal video blog. When the site first came about the community wasn’t aware that the girl was fictitious and she developed quite a following. These guys got a ton of press last year when it was discovered that she was an actress and the series was a scripted, serial drama. For the full history of the series, check out this article by Wired. The session was with Miles Beckett, Mesh Finders, & Greg Goodfried the guys behind the series.

Quick facts/observations from the session:

• They average 300,000 views per episode
• Some episodes have topped 600,000 views
• They produce 5, 2-minute episodes a week
• The series has transformed in format from a videoblog format to a more produced, serial, soap-opera
• in its new format each scene is shot by a character and edited by that character
• The site has a community of about 30,000 regular contributors
• An element of the concept is that the fan base interacts with and effects the series via email, blogging and uploading videos of their own
  • An example of this is that in the series they may create a puzzle that the character must solve to progress in the storyline. Then the fanbase solves the puzzle and emails the character to help out
• No surprise, but the business model behind the series is advertising, and more specifically, brand integration (product placement)
• They’re using the concept to get themselves into the industry. They’re writing, directing and producing a seperate movie, creating a lonelygirl15 movie
• The entire site runs off wordpress.
• They posted a video live during the session. Before they could click back to the site to see the new video they had 6 comments. People literally live on the site waiting for new videos. There’s no schedule that they release to and people sit on the site all day/night waiting for a new vid.

In a word: fascinating. These guys created a truly innovative concept that leverages the best of the Internet and they’ve built an impressive community around what they’ve built.