Designing for Experience

When I was at WorkshopONE and talking to a fellow participant about the evolution of media and how old media are often driving new media.  This is what I’m talking about: in our house we don’t watch TV but we watch House, Lost, and Smallville online.  While these are old media, we watch them via new media.  In addition each show has it’s own website and of course Lost has a great wikipedia site, and many other fan sites and facebook pages, Smallville has countless sites, and I assume House has a bunch as well, but haven’t sought them out personally.  All these websites and Facebook pages, and blogs are driven by the old media artifact.  Much of the action that happens online is about old media stuff.  Those that own old media have diligently tried (and often failed, but often they are getting better) to increase viewer’s engagement with their shows and brand online, but usually the most engaging things are what the fans themselves are creating.

Then came Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, a three act miniseries, a creation of Joss Whedon and his brother.  It debuted online first, with a really transparent marketing plan and integrated social media efforts that seemed very genuine (or Authentic as Gilmore & Pine would say).  Why is this important? This is new media driving new media, and the real proof of concept and tipping point for what will become an explosion of already established and aspiring content creators going online first or online only.

I’m not saying that Dr. Horrible is the first, but I believe that it has been the most successful to date to start online and make some real money.  How much exactly remains to be seen, but being in the top purchases since it became available on iTunes means some major cash, and DVD sales haven’t even started yet. A cursory search online reveals that there are many people creating a ton of content online like getting lyrics online.  The lyrics phenomenon on that link deserve their own post, if you look a fan simply  posted them as best he or she could, and then as people got on and saw errors they commented, and he responded by taking all the edits.  Great group collaboration, and probably at a faster rate than you would imagine.

I have been interested that  BitTorrent downloads are super fast of Dr. Horrible, both of the videos and the songs.  I think this is because fans love it so much they want to share it.  While this may be at odds with a content creators need to at least pay for costs and ultimately make money, I believe though that if people like it they will pay for it in some form (I fully intend on buying the DVD).

So what will happen from here? We will see more things starting online and and moving to old media, and even better, we will see more high quality online only productions.

I must disclose that I’m now what may be called a fanboy of Dr. Horrible, and that there is a dearth of hard numbers (though you can see some guesses on revenues here and here) on viewership and purchases so at least some of this is speculative and educated guesses. That aside I couldn’t resist writing about this today, haven’t seen it yet? Download it today!

PS The above link is NOT an endorsement of using iTunes store, which I personally detest and have NEVER personally purchased from, though I have benefited from using my wife’s account.  I believe that the manner in which they lock down content is unfriendly at best, and the quality of sounds files is, well… it leaves something to be desired.