It's been about five months since web-video phenom lonelygirl15 got hit with a massive rush of media attention, culminating in the reveal that (duh) it wasn't real. Since then, things have and haven't changed for lonelygirl. New episodes are released regularly on the show's own site and on YouTube, where the channel is the all-time most-subscribed to. ETP checked in with Gregory Goodfried and Miles Beckett, two of the men behind the girl, to find out what's up.
And here is what is up: Lonelygirl chugs along, with a paid cast and crew of nine people producing several webisodes per week out of Santa Monica. With the 'is she real' question no longer providing the show's dramatic tension, it's gotten a bit more conventional thriller-y in its storytelling. But the conceit remains the same: each episode is supposedly created and uploaded to the site by one of the characters.
And though the media attention has evaporated, the show still gets pretty impressive numbers, by web standards. According to the creators, lg15.com gets about 20,000 unique viewers each day. The videos are still cross-posted on YouTube, lonelygirl's ancestral home, where in total, they get about 1.5 million views weekly.
These numbers sound monetizable, and sure enough, producer Goodfried claims various deals are imminent: a cell-phone platform and product and brand integrations (which would earn the show money for YouTube views as well as those on lg15.com, of course).
Meanwhile, judging from the site's comment and forum boards, there still seem to be a lot of people emotionally invested in the show, even though nobody thinks it's real, or has the emotional wiggle room to pretend to think it's real to maximize its entertainment value.
With several new and soon-to-launch conglomerate-y ventures like Bud.tv, the online video entertainment world is about to transform. Pretty soon, lonelygirl won't just be competing with other YouTubers for eyeballs, but with well-funded corporations. Will she thrive? Will she monetize? Or is this kind of the Prague Spring of internet video, right before the big-money tanks roll in? We'll find out in the next year or so.
