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The Internet Entertainment

Cyber-Soap Returns From The Dead 156

Posted by timothy from the shoot-me-now dept.
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?"
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Cyber-Soap Returns From The Dead More

Cyber-Soap Returns From The Dead

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  • Hit or miss.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DakotaK ( 727197 ) * on Saturday May 08, 2004 @05:40PM (#9096180)
    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.

    • Re:Hit or miss.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) *
      Yes, but how did American Idol, or anything else, go from zero to hit anyway?

      Promotion is everything in media these days. The So, the real question: Will The Spot have enough of an ad budget to get some TV ads to announce the project?
    • I'm glad that no one knows about it -- as if we need yet another reality show.

      Except now, the reality show has infected our beloved internet. Well, looks like the Intarweb has now also gone down the shitter along with TV and radio. It was nice while it lasted, guys... Perhaps now I'll have to... go... outside? (The Horror!)

    • This thing is so stupid I am offended. Its just pointless drivel that isnt interesting and is just begging for attention. Essentially, the only thing that this site has to offer is that other people are reading it, and it is quite dubious whether anyone actually is.

      It appears that this stupid site is based on journals that people write daily or something like that. We get involved by reading them. Heres today's :

      OMG! I was actually recognized by a Spot fan at work yesterday! It was so surreal and uber aw

  • Died for a reason (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jmusits ( 727995 ) on Saturday May 08, 2004 @05:41PM (#9096185) Homepage
    I think it's pretty obvious why this site died a few years back. Just remember that history is destined to repeat itself.

  • Accurate? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Saturday May 08, 2004 @05:41PM (#9096186)
    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.

    • Re:Accurate? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Saturday May 08, 2004 @05:48PM (#9096237)
      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...
      • Alas (as I loathe this type of marketing-created 'reality' shit), perhaps with close to no budget.

        With the ever-growing number of media wannabe's itching for attention out there and in search of a "platform".. they might pay/hustle to get on a 'show' like this.
      • Yes I agree.

        i just want funding to support an operation to keep the sight offline. i find it offensive.

      • FIFO (Score:3, Funny)

        by cwernli ( 18353 )

        The Spot was one of the first in and first out of the Dot-com era...

        Must've been exactly that, since I've never heard of it before.

        Then again, I was only a baby then.

      • Re:Accurate? (Score:1, Redundant)

        by Galvatron ( 115029 )
        That still doesn't make it a "victim of the dot com bust." A victim would be a company with an otherwise viable business model that got nailed by, for example, the sudden collapse of online ad rates, or the unwillingness of investors to fund any online enterprise. It was merely a victim of it's own stupidity.

    • Re:Accurate? (Score:2, Informative)

      by jsvesnik ( 553230 )
      If you trust the Wayback Machine, The Spot was up until at least 1999.

  • This is how far I got (Score:5, Funny)

    by Borg453b ( 746808 ) on Saturday May 08, 2004 @05:41PM (#9096187) Homepage Journal
    "..By reading these words, you are already part of the story. How involved you want to become is completely up to you...

    Yep. *Closes browser*

  • Simply ahead of its time... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Saturday May 08, 2004 @05:42PM (#9096190)
    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.
    • Actually, all the explosion of blogs mean is that people love to write about their mundane lives. Whether or not anybody actually reads them is another question altogether.
      • Actually, all the explosion of blogs mean is that people love to write about their mundane lives. Whether or not anybody actually reads them is another question altogether.
        Most blogs aren't written for the universe-at-large. They are written for the writer's own personal circle.


    • I remember reading The Spot when it first came out. We were all fascinated by it, even though we could tell it was a little bit unreal.

      The reason it failed was that it was a complete set-up. None of the characters existed, not even in the sense of an actor/author playing the part. One person wrote all the various blogs; he and a couple other people plotted out the storylines in advance.

      Once that broke, interest in the site dropped like a rock.

  • Message to 1995 (Score:5, Funny)

    by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Saturday May 08, 2004 @05:42PM (#9096192)
    Dear 1995,

    We do not want this. Please take it back. We have enough reality TV shows as it is, who in the HELL would want them on the internet???
    Signed,
    Conserned Slashdotter.

    PS, please tell Al Gore "Thanks for your brilliant contributions".
  • I knew with Google, they'd try to resussicate the entire kit and kaboodle again -- people are dumb enough to buy anything twice.

    Excuse me while I get my Marimba Castinet push technology and I'll pay for it with my Flooz.

  • revisionist history (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday May 08, 2004 @05:43PM (#9096203) Homepage Journal
    Dotcom Bust in 1997? Even the Boom was just getting started. Find another copout for failure, instead of inventing fantasy macroeconomics.
  • Just because the kind of people who like that sort of thing would rather watch a reality soap on TV than read a webpage.

  • the truth (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.
  • I must not be much into TV. I immediately thought about bars of soap (you know, the stuff you wash with?) with embedded microchips.
  • Contents of a normal soap-opera:

    1. relationships are formed
    2. couples break up
    3. people start to hate eachother
    4. people start to love eachother
    5. someone dies
    6. someone are born

    contents of the soap-opera i want to see:


    1. Operating systems are installed
    2. Operating systems are removed
    3. Some company sues another company
    4. Some company donates money to another company
    5. Software is abandoned
    6. New software projects are started.

    Why cant anyone make something like this?

  • Will it survive? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No, because it's a soap. People who watch soaps are spods that shouldn't be using the internet. They really need to get a life and stop immersing themselves in alternative realities.

    Sorry it's a short post, I have to get back to Everquest.

  • It'll die again (Score:3, Insightful)

    by InternationalCow ( 681980 ) <mauricevansteens ... IScom minus city> on Saturday May 08, 2004 @05:48PM (#9096240) Journal
    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.
    • I got as far as "Hey dawgs! A major shout out to ZJ Boarding House where owner Mikke (with two k's!) and manager Matt hooked us Spotmates up with some 411..." before I hit the back button. I'm a sucker for cute models, but if there's anything I find more annoying than reading paid endorsements, it's reading paid endorsements delivered in contrived 2-hip-4-da-joint slang. I wish I could predict with confidence that there's no audience for this, but I don't have that much faith in the standards of The Masse
    • Puhleaze, real people ... 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

      That's true. They don't. So puhleaze stop doing it yourself.

  • When I want an on-line soap opera… (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 08, 2004 @05:48PM (#9096242)
    ...I come to Slashdot. It's like a soap opera without the soap.

  • dot-com bust in 1997? (Score:2, Informative)

    by diesel66 ( 254283 )
    In 1997 we were still flying high (I was anyway). Easy to find jobs that paid scads of money.

    I thought the bust was more like 2000-2002. I was laid off in from my comfy biotech position in mid 2001, when the only aspect of the company that had any remote potential was eaten by a bigger fish. Something like 85% of the employees laid off.

    Does this anonymous poster have a short-term memory?
  • I don't know what format they are in, but the work without a hitch in FireFox. I'm glad they're not going with some evil format like WMV.

    As for the actual content...
    Well it's nothing unusual compared to what I have seen in my own blogging experience [xanga.com]. I don't know why I'd bother with this site, there are other sites with more people and more interesting people [xanga.com] out there.

    • Well, from the web page's source... Quicktime (*.mov).

      <EMBED SRC="reed050304x.mov" WIDTH="231" HEIGHT="162" ALIGN="BOTTOM" autostart="false" kioskmode="true">

      Personally, I checked the site out and watched 30 second of one video and I've had enough. All the people on it are obvious wanna-be actors... It's like any other reality TV show... I can't stand all the actors already.

      Truthfully though, I can see it do well, but only if they put TONS of money in marketing.

      -B

  • Quick, you guys! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Saturday May 08, 2004 @05:53PM (#9096271) Homepage
    Let's Slashdot this thing before it has a chance to take off!

    All together now...

    *click* *click* *click* *click* *click*
  • The Squat [thesquat.com]...

  • It'll Probably Succeed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by erikharrison ( 633719 ) on Saturday May 08, 2004 @06:03PM (#9096329)
    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".
    • Yeah I kind of think the market is right again for something like this. The world is addicted to reality television.

      I'm pretty sure that CBS' "Big Brother" TV show gets enough viewers to have it running 4 years in a row (BB5 is coming soon). I also believe that its online subscription service, where you can watch the Big Brother contestants 24/7 uncut/uncensored also gets enough subscribers to be profitable.

      MTV's "The Real World" has been running 13 years and sees no signs of stopping. Shows like the "New
  • That's cyber-soap? Here's cyber-soap [thinkgeek.com] !!!

  • Product placement goes "reality show"... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by janbjurstrom ( 652025 ) <inoneear@gma i l . com> on Saturday May 08, 2004 @06:11PM (#9096372)
    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 [williamgibsonbooks.com] 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.
  • Full story at JobCzar.US [jobczar.us]

    Excerpt:

    [The Opportunity Services Group]'s internships for 1.0ers will be set at our online social networking service, code-named Go_Ogle.

    The earliest internships will focus on Go_Ogle's leading-edge technology for searching social networks, which is also a 'must-use' in corporate turnarounds.

    We will market our interns, suppliers, intern employers, Go_Ogle and OSG through profitable comedy programming, online and on television. The initial television program -- The Secret Lif

  • Is Value America (www.va.com) a proud sponsor of The Spot? Or just the closed captioning?
  • hopefully this will give some of the trolls something else to do.

    but, to remain on topic, it doesnt even seem much of a question of whether or not the show will succeed, its more of the same question every other "Reality Show" faces:

    who REALLY gives a shit?

  • Why the Spot was Interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cowboy junkie ( 35926 ) on Saturday May 08, 2004 @06:18PM (#9096405) Homepage
    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...
    • This is so true. Half the fun of checking out the Spot was hanging out in the message boards and arguing over whether it was real or not.

      At the beginning, it was well-done enough that it really was not a slam-dunk either way. It was only in the last 6-9 months or so when it started REALLY coming out that it was an advertising experiment that people lost interest.

      For those who weren't active at the time, the best analogy would be the Blair Witch Project, back when it was still a bit "underground". It was j
    • It didn't become a corperate sham till AMCY bought it out. The original crew did it as an experiment, and a labor of love.

  • date correction (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ShadowRage ( 678728 ) on Saturday May 08, 2004 @06:25PM (#9096440) Homepage Journal
    it died in '99
    I think that's why they said .com bust

    http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.thespot.com

  • This isn't 1995 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by peeping_Thomist ( 66678 ) * on Saturday May 08, 2004 @06:30PM (#9096479)
    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.
  • Just curious, exactly which Slashdot readers is this catering too? Even our female /dotters have shown themselves to be relatively immune from tripe like this.

    It's not even Sunday yet.

    God, I can't wait to see what's left over for tommorow.

    /plurvert
  • Anybody remember 'Romp'?
  • I misread thespot for thespark and thought, "YES, Stinky Meat Project [thespark.com] is back! Wooo!"

    Oops. :)
  • "Calculon? I thought you were in a coma!"
    "That's what I wanted you to think with your soft, human brain."
  • "Hey dawgs! A major shout out to ZJ Boarding House where owner Mikke (with two k's!) and manager Matt hooked us Spotmates up with some 411 on buying the "right" surf boards. (See my video!) Yep, I've decided to take up surfing, and heard word on the street that ZJ Boarding House was the place to go!! They were awesome. I love it here on Main Street!

    Yo, Matt - man, thank you so much for the help. Reed and I are gonna seriously take you up on lessons, dude. And PS: we wanna hear some of your tunes!

    Lates,

    Ka
  • I used to read the Spot religiously at work back when it first popped up. Dare I say I actually had the hots for one of the characters, and that I was seriously upset when she "died?" It wasn't that well done, as I recall, but then it was breaking new ground, so it didn't really have to be that well done to be effective. I'll probably give this a few looks, but I suspect it'll take too much effort to get involved a 2nd time.
    • Agreed. The thing is...with the ORIGINAL writing team...we CARED what happened. When AMCY bought them out, the writing went downhill, and never recovered. Pity. It was done well enough for me, and it was fresh and new at the time. The Spot begat Grapejam, which begat Entertainment Asylum, which begat Creative Light. At this point The Spot is cold (perhaps even frozen) pizza. Fortunately, i'm still friends with some of the original crew.
  • This article brought back fond memories. The Spot was one of the first websites I ever visited on a daily or more basis. I had escaped the Compuserve prison and was out on the wild, wild web for the first time. I enjoyed it then. I don't think I want to go see it again, somethings are better kept in the past.
  • I used to love reading about real caffeine fiends in my neighborhood (Noe Valley, San Francisco), writing and acting out a soap online. sfblend.com went offline back in '97, but the old episodes appear to be archived at http://kenlaws.tv/sfblend/ [kenlaws.tv]. (Thanks, google.)

  • I was a huge fan of the Spot back in '95 and '96. Got really tired of it by the time it was killed off. Loved the dog, but not the too sexy for the dot com bubble silly Cyberian adjective.

    If memory serves, when it was thankfully put to sleep, it was because the production company was bought out by AOL which consolidated staff. AOL was heading in an entirely different direction.

    The Spot is probably why I can't abide shows like Survivor, The Bachelor, etc. I burned out hard on this stuff.

    I checked out the

    • NOPE...you ARE thinking of Entertainment Asylem, a project that started as a AOL R&D type project, which AOL the took over and ruined. The present Spot suffers from the same stuff as the old post AMCY Spot...
  • NOPE. The writing isn't there (again), and there is some revisionist history going on. The ORIGINAL Spot was one of the first things i got to point a browser at...and it was great till the REAL dot commers (american cybercast) bought them out, then it went downhill. This is just a rehash of the AMCY days. Some of the ORIGINAL people can be found at www.crlight.com . "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
  • typing with one hand is a lot slower than i thought...

    =^)
  • As was the case for many projects of the time, though, by 1997 The Spot was gone, another victim of the dot-com bust.

    The 'dot.com' bust occured several years after 1997. It sounds like the site was devoured in the dot.com boom, instead. Was it taken over by a conglomerate, similar to the way a number of good independent sites and companies were 'taken over', i.e. the handover.net thing?

  • Remembering "The Spot" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Saturday May 08, 2004 @10:41PM (#9097710) Journal
    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.
  • At least I'm pretty sure it is. "Net Slaves" by Bill Lessard and Steve Baldwin chronicles some of the many people who were burned by the Internet and technological boom days - you remember, back when it was the best thing since sliced bread, everyone wanted a part of it and HTML "programmers" could earn $US85/hour?

    Basically it's divided into chapters based on sterotype - Garbagemen (support techs, low-level coders etc), Cops & Streetwalks, Social Workers (think AOL chatroom moderaters, online chat h
  • Blatant karma whoring ahead. See what The Spot was like Wayback When [archive.org].

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