The Spot
The Spot, or thespot.com, was the first episodic online story (1995–1997), and covered bandwidth and production costs by offering paid advertising banners on the web pages and product placement within the journal entries. The site earned one of the original Webby Awards. Overview The Spot was likened to "Melrose Place-on-the-Web" and featured a rotating cast of actors playing trendy and hip twenty somethings who rented rooms in a fabled southern California beach house called “The Spot”, in Santa Monica, California. Some of the actors depicted online were also writers and behind-the-scenes production staffers on the site, while some later appeared in independent films or in broadcast television series as on-screen performers. The characters, called "Spotmates", would keep near-daily online diaries (similar to what later came to be called blogs), respond to emails, and post images of their current activities. In addition the site boasted short videos, as well as photos relating to the diary entries. The fanbase on the site, which called themselves "Spotfans", interacted on a daily basis with the Spotmates and each other, discussing the newsworthy events. The Spot engaged the audience by allowing them to become part of the storyline and give advice to characters—sometimes succeeding in