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As The WEBTurns'Cybersoaps' gain fans on the Internetby Harley Jebens.Austin American-Statesman StaffIt al1 started on June 7, 1995, with a message flashing across a computer screen." 'No box is big enough to contain our imaginations.' "The message continued, "I'm Tara Hartwick. I'm a 23-year-old graduate film student trying to make it as adirector."With that, the Spot was born. The account of young and beautiful twentysomethings living in a California beachhouse and searching for fame, fortune and romance (or at least the occasional tryst), the Spot often is compared tosuch TV dramas as Fox's "Melrose Place" and MTV's "The Real World." The difference is it's not a televisionnetwork that brings viewers the Spot, it's the World Wide Web.Six months after making its debut on the Internet, the Spot won the first "Cool Site of the Year" award, whichwas sort of like taking home the Academy Award for Web sites.The Spot may be the most famous, but it's not the only "cybersoap" staking a claim on the Internet and appearingdaily on computers across the countryFire up the software that lets you explore those flashy Internet documents collectively known as the World WideWeb and you'll find cybersoaps or cybersoap-like entities boasting names such as "Fern dale," "Gay Daze," "VirtualDorm'' and "Letters from ABroad"— even a Spot parody called "the Squat." And more are on the wayAll of these sites have similarities to the time-hardened genre of the soap opera, detailing the daily triumphs andtravails of a regular cast, their friends and their enemies. But the Web is a different medium than TV, so these"cyberserials" are different animals than "Days of Our Lives," "Melrose Place" and their distant television relatives.For one thing, video transmission is by no means instantaneous over the Internet. It can take minutesto download a film clip of 30 ,seconds from a Web site to yourSee Cybersoaps, Back pageFollow the lives and loves of New York resident Eve and her 'topical East Village issues' such as 'alien abduction~friends at the East Village site. The cybersoap hinges on card marriage and amnesia.'Cybersoaps foam onthe Internetcontinued from F1computer; so, almost by default the written word is the primary mode of expression.Most of these photos as well as sound files sprinkled throughout them.Chat with the charactersThe Web, being an interactive medium in a way that television is not, dictates otherdifferences between cyberserials and their brethren. Visitors to the Spot e-mail messagesto beach house's residents (or as they are called), and receive e-mail replies in return.Ferrndale has invested heavily in chat (real time, on-line discussionss) featuring dailyconversational sessions between characters and the soap and people logging in from the"real world." Internet soaps are distinct in other ways as well. The Spot and the rest of thesecyberspace archives of past episodes that visitors can peruse at their leisure, so thatvisitors on Tuesday can look at Monday's or last week's, or last June’s.I dont’ watch any (TV) sitcoms one visitor to the Spot, using the handle "Darth" on-line. Because you have pretty much watch them every day you miss the continuity. Withthe Spott you can turn the PC ,watch at your leisure ... not the television time slots. Andif you don’t visit the Spot for several weeks, you can go back and watch what you mayhave missed the month of December; for example, on the Spot you would have to catchup on adultery, dogs, disappearing actors, mysterious mansion-owners, propositionedprofessors, tension-filled Christmans parties and meetings with Howard Stern.The East Village, a cyberserial which made its debut on Feb. 20 , promises to deal with"topical East Village issues" such as "alien abductions green card marriage andamnesia. Storylines like these have made the Spot and the "cyberserial" conceptpopular enough to attract the attention of a Hollywood talent agency. Creative Artistsformed a partnership with Fattal & Collins as American Cybercast. (Fattal & Collins isan advertising firm in interactive media.) The internet network has three shows indevelopment; its first new series—a science fiction serial, is set to debut soon.Cyberserials haven't proved to profitable—yet.Collins has spent more than $1 million producing the Spot and has begun to take onadvertisers. Hugo Boss, Honda and K Swiss are paying the agency for ads placed on theSpot's,Web site or to have their products mentioned in storylines. The Spot is the onlycyberserial that takes advertising.Still, everyone involved in these projects is betting the Web will become more andmore popular and that their sites will become profitable.For some, the investment is paying off. The actress who plays Michelle on the Spotwas tagged by People magazine as one of the most intriguing individuals of 1995 andnow is fielding offers for modeling and acting work because of her role.Ferndale's ''net therapy'America Online has cast its dollars behind what is perhaps one of the strangest ofthese new cybersoaps. Ferndale chronicles the adventures in recovery of residents at apyschiatric retreat where the doctor has prescibed a form of "net therapy" that dictatesthe residents go on-line each day and seek advice from "real life" correspondents. Theresulting antics come off as something like "Soap" meets "Twin Peaks."Ferndale is the brainchild of Tom Arriola, who created another story on the Web, theCrime Scene Evidence File, which detailed the progress of an ongoing (albeit fictional)murder investigation."I had just finished graduate school," Arriola says, "and couldn't get a job ininteractive TV or the computer game business. So I decided to do something by myself."So Arriola created a fictional murder case, using police and coroner reports gatheredfrom his local authorities to add authenticity to his site.It was so authentic, in fact, that the Prodigy on-line service pointed to Arriola's site asa real murder investigation.Arriola's work brought him to the attention of Dale Dougherty, who had created theGlobal Network Navigator Web index, a program that aids in finding documents andsites on the World Wide Web. Dougherty was working on developing interactive contentfor the Web and America Online.Arriola moved from Oxford, Miss., to California to work on the idea that


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