SXSW Keynoter Felicia Day is a post-modern day success story. After feeling frustrated with mainstream media’s lack of enthusiasm for stories about gamers, she took her idea for a series based around a MMORPG video game to YouTube. After being fan-supported for season one, the half-hour web series The Guild was eventually sponsored by Microsoft and Sprint and released on Xbox. In its fourth season, the series has an impressive 100 million views across all episodes.
Day took the time to talk to TCTV about web series, online identity and how to create content for niche but massively growing online audiences.
Key takeaway:
“[Don't] think of the web as a backdoor way to get into mainstream, although that might be successful. It’s very hard to market content that mainstream people would like on the web … The web is a place where niche audiences drive success, because it’s so hard to please everyone. You have to be targeted and know where your audience is going to be.”
Day, who attended UT Austin, was actually a volunteer at SXSW in 1998-1999. Life’s cool like that some times.
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