Heroes in web2.0 generation

Do you remember The Matrix trilogy? I believe it was equivalent to Star War of this generation. Anyway, the point I would like to make here is Animatrix. I remember back in 2003 when I talked to my friends after I watched Matrix Reloaded that I did not understand some part. It felt like something was missing. One of my friends said "Did you watch the Animatrix?" Apparently, it was 8 short online animation that supposed to be a prequel of the movie and the connection between Part 1 and Part 2. I was not really a big geek of The Matrix, so of course I had not heard about it before. There are actually more interactive media related to the film as mentioned in the blog earlier. The point is the production company tried to integrated all sort of media to capture the target audiences by linking the movie to online website.

Now, what does this concept has to do with future of television?

I have watched a Sci-fi drama, Heroes, since I move to Manchester, and this year I find that they began to use web2.0 extensively; from Greg Beeman's (director & producer) weekly blog to Heroes wiki to Create-your-Heroes and many more. Beeman's blogs are posted on a weekly basis on the official website, giving comments on production of the current episode and some spoiler to the upcoming one. Heroes Wiki is a wiki site that contains all the information of Heroes such as characters and their abilities and behind the scene production.

On July 2008, Heroes introduced webisode, the trilogy online series that contains new character that does not yet appear on TV series. And in the beginning of Novermber 2008, the second webisode was released. This time it features a new character, Santiago, who is a product of Heroes' campaign last year - Create Your Hero. The show asks audience to vote on many aspects of the new hero e.g. appearance, background, and ability of a new hero. The vote lasted approximately a year and after more than one million votes were casted, Santiago became . There are many more interactive offers from Heroes that keep the TV show going as well as winning online viewers' heart.

This may be one possibility of the direction of TV in the future. The production house can keep the link between online and TV in order to keep the traffic in both means of media. Heroes certainly keep up with the trend of web2.0 and it seems to pay off well. This concept is used widely on sevelral shows from NBC and expected to be more in the near future.



Reference:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/New-Hero-Chosen-Fans-Create/story.aspx?guid=%7B90D4AB79-B200-4989-BD97-217A90EDFF61%7D

http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/create_your_hero/

http://heroeswiki.com/Create_Your_Hero

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_(TV_series)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Animatrix

http://gregbeeman.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html