1. Invent a bunch of fiction characters. Boys, girls.
2. Set up a location. Could be more than one.
3. Create a story around them – one being friend of the other, dating a girl freshly parted from her boyfriend, being a friend of another and so on. AKA: a script.
4. (up until now – nothing special, right? but her goes:) Make the story unfold using the internet. Books, plays, TV and movies – Out. Internet story-telling – In.

How is that done:

1. Create fake Facebook profiles people can befriend and follow.
2. Create YouTube movies showing parts of the story from different points of view – one character’s friend (both on Facebook) filming another talking about his side of the story (translation: dating and having sex with a new girl).
3. Create Twitter accounts for the whole bunch.
4. Create blogs, each telling the story from the character’s mouth.
5. Create a blog giving a bird’s-view on the tale, excluding the details. Sort of a “Previously on LA Law”.
6. Let people from the outside interact with the story and characters. Make friends with the characters in Facebook, follow Twitter feeds, subscribe to RSS blog feeds and comment to the lot of them.

Sounds interesting? I agree. But it’s not my idea.

Meet Story2Oh!

If you hurry up, you can jump on the wagon, the story just began.

you can have a taste of the tale in the following link (18+ only , taken from one of the “actor’s” blogs, and the following video from YouTube:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The story is very underground. Little traffic is coming to the site, few link and discuss it (Google them and see how little results you get), not many friends are following on Facebook or Twitter. They seem to be just a bunch of people with an idea and with zero PR. It’s a shame if you ask me.Actually, they did get a bit of publicity. Mashable (the only main-stream internet blog that picked the story) wrote about them. Actually, they didn’t “write” about them. They slaughtered them:

Some days we get notified around here of really bad ideas. We give a soft chuckle, toss it on the pile, forget about it and move on. Then we get notices like the one for Story2Oh! that seem so bad, they aspire to be “lame”.

I beg the differ. Big time.

It’s a superb idea. Mashable’s main point against the initiative is the attention span required to follow it. “Mind-bandwidth” if you like. True. It’s time consuming. I personally won’t follow. But I don’t watch TV either. And I don’t read Tom Clancy. They’re all time wasters if you ask me. But people like stories about people, romance, sex. And they follow people sharing that info on the web. They starve for it. Otherwise, tools like twittertale would not have existed.

A smart marketer would take that to mind. Remember everyone talking about web 2.0 marketing? building brands around social networks? opening “fan pages” in Facebook? Now imagine Nike doing this:

1. Create a global spy story (Jason Bourn style) with Nike branded into it.
2. Let people find clues to make the story go (If they see a YouTube movie of someone hiding a clue under a bench in Sydney, they will find that long lost friend in Australia to go fetch it. Did anyone say “Viral”?).
3. As the story unfolds, using the surfers, Nike will give them gifts. Expensive ones (Treasure-hunt style).
4. Enjoy tons of PR. Globally. For novelty and the story.
5. Enjoy people’s envolvment with the brand and other fancy marketing words of the kind.

And how about reality shows? Movie trailers?

A new story-telling media is born. Jason Bourn.

No, I’m not the “I’m a Mac” from the “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” ad. I’m just a Mac. Elad’s Mac.

MacBook to be exact. Black, one and a half years old. 2GB RAM.

See, I’m not the complaining type, actually. I’m a working machine. And I thought to just be quiet and say nothing, but Elad went to sleep, and I was left alone on the kitchen counter (feels nice and cold against my battery, actually). I just couldn’t hold it anymore. Sorry.

It’s been 18 months since I was taken out of the box. Since, I think I was turned off only once, for a three week period when Elad went to India (how do I know? Saw the pictures in my iPhoto, da!). I almost never crash and even when I do it’s his fault with all the software he’s installing and all these silly games he’s trying on me. But hey – I don’t complain, rememeber?

And don’t think I’m not laboring!

Here, take a look at what’s on my menu bar:

And that’s not the end of it. I’m hiding Quicksilver. Oh, and that Plaxo thingie as well!

And what about them Widgets? and iTunes via AirTunes? What do you think, they come from nowhere? From thin air?!

So what’s my problem, you ask?

That’s my bloody problem!

See that little toy on the right?! That’s some spy photo of the so called “new sub-notebook”! (Thank you very much CrunchGear! Hope you burn for this!)

So now I’m going to be tossed aside the second Elad will be able to think of a reason why he just has to have that new shiny, fast, fashionable, hipped piece of junk!

“Multi-touch trackpad” my black ass!

See if he’s going to get any internet out of me on the 15th!

Damn Macworld!

See you in the next life!

They used ASCII art:

If you ask me – plain genius.

Got them 47% increase in clicks.

And Google throwing them down the stairs (for “repetitive punctuation”, which is a known felony).

(Found the story here, they got the word from here and they got from where-else-but Australia (watch the movie). See how I give credit? Ahh…. I’m such a cool blogger….).

This is no a conspiracy theory. I have proof. First, let’s establish the rules for KGB “running” something:

1. Shortage in goods.
2. Long lines.
3. Creation of black-market.

Now that we agree on that, let’s consider the following facts:

Amazon’s Kindle. Upon the issuing of the Good-Mother-Russia-Quality device:

• Ran out of stock within 5.5 hours.
• Created long lines:

• Sells on eBay for 1,500$.

Nintendo’s Wii:

• In short supply for over a year.
• Creates long lines.

• And three (not one) black markets – one within stores (“Better to stock for winter, Boris, da?”), one selling on eBay, and one selling with “old Vodka we have in stock”.

The list goes on:

Guitar hero selling for 9,000$ (90$ retail) on eBay.
Rations on the iPhone.

I would have said what I think of it all, but Big Brother is listening. So I’ll just say: “You deserve it, Capitalist свиньи!”.