New media. Direction?

You guys may remember the blog post I wrote nearly 2 years ago about Dan Brown the vlogger. That was, what he later calls, Dan 2.0, where Dan, after getting millions of views from his rubik’s cube tutorial (which is considered as Dan 1.0), decided to vlog regularly about his life and topics that he was interested in.

Since last August, the show’s evolved to the so-called Dan 3.0, an one-year-long project where his viewers cast votes on tasks (also submitted by viewers) for him to do, and then he’ll carry on doing tasks that have most popularity. The tasks can range from simple silly things around the house (like making cookies), or continuous (like exercising regularly), or a big mission (a road trip, setting a new Guinness record on pogosticking). This format of online show where viewers have almost absolute power on the broadcaster is said to be the first time in media history.

Dan and his viewers weren’t sure where this would go, we can say that it’s like an experiment and they are the pioneers. There have been viewers’ comments about this not being the kind of show they wanted, because most of the time Dan gets silly little tasks with no general direction for his life, and it started to get bored after a while. And today Dan finally put his doubts into words as well, about whether the project should go on, or whether he should go back to vlogging like before, where he could generate debates and had high interaction with his viewers.

This is the thing about new media, and everything that is new actually, that no one is sure of how it would shape, and in which direction. Even the ones making new media do not know. I just think the Dan 3.0 is just a great case study for this. We’ll see.