The Spot

"For other uses of the term spot, see Spot (disambiguation page)."

The Spot, or thespot.com, was the first episodic fiction website, and pioneered the underwriting of bandwidth and production costs by offering paid advertising banners on the web pages and product placement within the journal entries. The site earned one of the original Webby Awards.

Overview

It was likened to "Melrose Place-on-the-Web" [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.06/updata.html] and featured a rotating cast of attractive actors playing trendy and hip twenty somethings who rented rooms in a fabled southern California beach house called “The Spot”, in Santa Monica, California.

The characters, called "Spotmates", would keep near-daily online diaries (similar to what were later termed blogs), respond to emails and post images of their current activities. In addition the site boasted short multimedia movies, as well as photos relating to the diary entries. The fanbase on the site, which called themselves 'Spotfans', interacted on a daily basis with the Spotmates and each other, discussing the newsworthy events.

"The Spot" engaged the audience by allowing them to become part of the storyline and change how characters responded to the in-story situations. Viewers were encouraged to post on the message boards (the 'Spotboard'), send e-mail to the various characters offering them insight, advice and even arguments to their posted life dilemmas and dramas based on loosely orchestrated story arcs and different character viewpoints of the same storyline. The audience opinion was used by the writers to affect storyline directions, allowing the writing staff a manuveurability not possible in traditional media outlets.

History

The site was started in June 1995 by Scott Zakarin, who at the time was an aspiring filmmaker from New York who had been directing television commercials for advertising agency Fattal and Collins. He convinced his employer to back the idea of an interactive fiction site, and the result was the most successful interactive fiction site to date. According to Zakarin, at its height the site received over 100,000 hits a day, a tremendous response for its time.Fact|date=February 2007

In the spring of 1996, buoyed by intense media interest in the project, Zakarin sold his interest to minority investors, who sought venture capitalist backing to create an online network called American Cybercast, a spin-off from Fattal & Collins.

"The Spot" continued producing original content through the Summer of 1997, when American Cybercast fell into bankruptcy as the site's drawing power was diluted by a wave of imitators and three parallel "online soaps" ("Eon-4", "The Pyramid" and "Quick Fix") introduced by the company to exploit the success of "The Spot".

"The Spot" was brought back to life for a relaunch in 2004 by Stewart St John and Todd Fisher, and was successful in its relaunch and included a wireless aspect that was exclusive to Sprint.

Characters

The characters were chiefly "played" by models, with their diaries written by Zakarin, his assistant Laurie (Shiers) Plaksin, staff writer Dennis Dortch, and staff writer/ombudsman Jeff Gouda and Melanie Hall.
* Tara Hartwick - Laurie Plaksin
* Michelle - Kristin Herold
* Jeff Benton - Tim Abell
* Lon Oliver - Armando Valdes-Kennedy
* Carrie Seaver - Kristen Dolan
* Chase, Becker - Jeff Gouda
* Caldwell, Emily - Melanie Hall
* Wulf - Rich Tackenberg
* Fedex Kim - Lynn Elliot

External links

* [http://www.thespot.com TheSpot.com]

Further reading

* "Digital Babylon: How the Geeks, the Suits, and the Ponytails Fought to Bring Hollywood to the Internet", John Geirland, Eva Sonesh-Keder Roman (Arcade Publishing, 1999. ISBN 1559704837)

References

* [http://news.com.com/The+Spots+stain+spreads/2100-1001_3-261680.html The Spot's stain spreads] , CNET News (January 14, 1997)
* [http://news.com.com/Death+marks+The+Spot/2100-1023_3-201052.html Death marks The Spot] , CNET News (July 1, 1997)
* [http://sideroad.com/gethooked/column10.html] - Webisodics: A Brief History