My Space and former Walt Disney chief executive Michael Eisner have announced a partnership to premier “Prom Queen” on MySpace, an original mystery series produced by Eisner’s production studio Vuguru.
The show will accessible exclusively on MySpace twelve hours before being released on any other site.
“Prom Queen has the potential to be a break-out hit on MySpace,” said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace. “Video is a cultural cornerstone for the MySpace community – it’s a huge part of how our users express themselves and discover pop culture.
“We have become a primary destination for online viewers and with exclusive content like Prom Queen, more and more eyeballs are coming to MySpace Video.”
Prom Queen takes place over the last two months of the high school year. The series will have 80 episodes that will be 90 seconds long. The MySpace Video channel and show profile page will have series content that includes character profiles, behind the scenes video footage, character diaries and storyline secrets.
While MySpace’s bread and butter has been their social networking, the site is currently the second most popular online video destination, trailing only YouTube.
“With this partnership, the future of on-line story telling is now,” said Michael Eisner. “MySpace offers the Prom Queen audience a complete experience by giving them the ability to stay connected to the show, the characters and other Prom Queen fans in a way that no other on-line drama has ever done before.”
Not everyone is impressed with the MySpace/Eisner partnership. In a forum post Joe Bretz wrote,” Does it REALLY matter where this show is “””””AIRED”””” ? ? CONTENT is CONTENT and the key is GOOD CONTENT.”
“Sure a Billion eyes will view the front page placement for the show – why not just do a buy? Then put up a regular MySpace page like everyone else?? Does it really matter??”
While I would agree that quality content is key to driving traffic having a big name like MySpace or YouTube to host your content will only increase the chances of a Web series success. In the competitive video market it very much matters where content is hosted.
The old clichéd saying “location, location, location” holds true even in the online video world.
