Greetings fellow web-video watchers!

Another year has come and gone and much has happened in the web series world during 2009. In January most of us never even heard of the Streamies, and now by December we’re arguing over who should enter and who shouldn’t. Web shows have been exploding onto the Internets like viruses, giving the term ‘viral’ a new meaning. As always it was the indie scene that first saw the potential of online video and corporations have been trying to play catch-up ever since.

No doubt, they will continue to do so in 2010. The only thing holding them back from fully monopolizing the net is the lack of potential revenues. The internet is by definition a no-profit place and everyone, from a web series creator to a lowly web designer or blog writer is struggling to make ends meet and generate some form of cash flow.

And maybe that’s where most of our problems lie. Most of us run around with the words What’s In It For Me? etched onto our foreheads, hoping cash will drop into our hats so we can pay our rent, pay the groceries or possibly afford that high-def flatscreen and/or next year’s SUV. In any case, due to living in a society hell-bent on making money we become frustrated when faced with the WWW, where money is secondary.

Maybe our new-years resolution should be less focus on money and more on the arts. I know, I know, that sounds a bit unreasonable and unrealistic, but hear me out.

Most of the people who made any form of headway in the web series world did not intend to do so. They were in it for the art, the fun, or the exposure. Felicia Day started The Guild because she never seemed to get that crucial audition and nobody would have her (hard to imagine, right?).

So she sat down and wrote her own stuff, pouring her heart into the scripts and the production, despite a budget of nearly zero and a chance of possible revenues at about the same. Now she raked in Streamies, DVD sales are on the rise and sponsors are eager to open doors and even knock on hers. Did she hope for success? Certainly. Did she expect it? Probably not. At the most she hoped to be discovered by some director who would cast her in The Next Big Thing. But is she becoming an internet millionaire? Absolutely not. To misquote Spiderman: with great success comes great responsibility. Her troubles have only just begun, what with suddenly having to pay her crew and actors, etc.

But the lesson we learn from her success — and that from similar stories that happened throughout 2009 — is that art comes first, money be danged. At least in the beginning. If a writer/director/actor is good at what he does, is passionate about the story he is trying to tell and loves his audience, not because they give him ad-clicks or donations, but because they love what he loves, isn’t that revenue enough?

Well, maybe in an ideal world. We still have to pay our bills and drop cash down some blackhole. But if we take a step back and remember that art has always been about art and not money, maybe we can control our obsession a bit and enjoy the moment — those precious few minutes when a great story or hilarious comedy is unfolding before our eyes on that tiny screen. Networks will never be able to do that, and so in that sense the indie web series world will always be better and maintain a type of moral integrity.

The crucial word here is LOVE. Love for the arts, love for the viewer, love for the story, love for love’s sake. Do it because you love to do it. Don’t think with your wallet, but with your heart and your passion. To misquote JFK: Don’t ask what the internet can do for you, ask what you can do for the internet.

So let’s show some love. Be it at the Streamies or just to your fellow human being. It’s something the world is in dire need of.

Signing off for the year,

Jack

(as transcribed and translated by Alec)

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PS: We would like to thank all of you for a great three months. VisiowebTV came online in mid-September and has been growing in readers and viewers on a daily basis. Where we had dozens, we now have hundreds, and where we had hundreds we now have thousands. It is interesting to note that 95% of traffic on VisiowebTV originates from Twitter, and we’d like to thank all of you for your RT and clicks. It shows the incredible power of the Twitter community.

Special thanks go out to people who’ve given some great and much-needed support and encouragement to the site and inspired me to partake in this fascinating new web series world in the first place. Among others, there are Tom Konkle, who brought in so much traffic with his tweets he single-handedly managed to crash the site in October , and Kevin Christensen whom I met at a tweedup in LA along with the awesome crew of Cataclysmo, Catalyst, Black Dawn and Trunk, and showed me how cool web shows and the people behind them can be and by extension inspired me to create this site.

We have much planed for the next year, including one none-fiction and one fiction web series of our own, as well as some more expansions and additions, but we want to always remain a site of integrity, fun and great web shows, easy to navigate and family friendly.

Eternal web series love to you all,

Alec