Information AboutThe Spot |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT THE SPOT | |
| 1995 establishments | |
| defunct websites | |
| interactive fiction | |
| internet culture | |
| internet soap operas | |
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The Spot (1995-97) was the first episodic web site to add photographs and graphic content, and pioneered the underwriting of bandwidth and production costs by offering paid advertising banners on the web pages and product placement within the blog entries. It established a model for many Internet businesses a full four years before the Dot Com boom. The site was nominated for the one of the original Webby awards, which it won. ''The Spot'' expanded on some of the traditions of the first episodic online story, The '' QuantumLink Serial '' by Tracy Reed on AOL (also known as the '' PC-Link Serial '' and the '' AppleLink Serial '' before all three services were unified when Quantum changed its name to AOL). Unlike the ad-supported ''Spot'', the ''The Quantumlink Serial'' was included in the price of a monthly subscription to AOL. 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. At its height the site received over 100,000 hits a day, a tremendous response for its time. It was likened to " 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 Blogs ), respond to emails and post images of their current activities. In addition the site boasted short multimedia movies, shockwave as well as photos relating to the diary entries. The fanbase on the site interacted on a daily basis with the Spotmates and each other, discussing the newsworthy events, movies, television etc. Like ''The Quantumlink Serial'', ''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, 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. In the Spring of 1996 Zakarin sold his interest in the project, which became part of a Venture Capitalist backed 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 briefly brought back to life for a relaunch in 2004, but was unsuccessful in attracting advertisers and has since gone dead again. A ''Spot'' community can still be found online at Elgonquin.com EXTERNAL LINKS
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