Fourth Story Media

Spectrum has a great write-up of the Internet Week panel Beyond Facebook: How Today’s Students Will Use the Web of Tomorrow, which Fourth Story’s Ariel Aberg-Riger sat on last week.

The challenge, and perhaps opportunity, which Michael Staton noted, is to engage site visitors and charge for content. However, the key is not to sell content, but rather to sell a community’s trust.

While we have already seen this idea in practice with the likes of Yelp and Wikipedia, FSM took the concept to an entirely new level by using the Internet and new forms of technology to enable girls (ages 13 and up) to submit their own story lines to The Amanda Project. The premise behind The Amanda Project’s concept is to create online niche communities not only centered around a brand or product, but also around feelings and beliefs. The idea is for this to maximize user participation and partnership.

The article goes on to discuss The Amanda Project, and why one “former Hollywood film producer” thinks it “has the potential to be the most successful out of all the start-up ideas we heard from.”

Read the whole piece here!

UPDATE: Read more about the panel on Orient Lodge, PepsiCo’s Internet Week coverage, and Destination CRM.

UPDATE: Ariel has uploaded her slides from the panel, and findingDulcinea has uploaded videos of the panel.

With early June bringing both Book Expo America (BEA) and Internet Week to the fine city of New York, Fourth Story Media was recently invited to speak on a few panels.

As part of School Library Journal’s Day of Dialog during BEA, Lisa Holton, FSM’s CEO & Founder, sat on the panel The Multiplatform Novel: From Print to Web to Social Networks. Moderated by librarian extraordinaire Lisa Von Drasek (who raved about how she couldn’t put down Invisible I), other panelists included Scholastic’s David Levithan, 39 Clues author Peter Lerangis, and Jennifer Cowan, author of Earthgirl. The conversation ranged from the process and challenges involved in creating multimedia series to the fundamental importance of strong narrative.

And, over Internet Week, Ariel Aberg-Riger, FSM’s Creative Development & Marketing Manager, spoke on the panel Beyond Facebook: How Will Today’s Students Use the Web of Tomorrow? Hosted by “the librarian of the internet” Finding Dulcinea, panelists included Unigo’s Jordan Goldman, Kate Hillis of Next Next Entertainment and Qwidget, James Rohrbach of Gulliver Go, and Inigral’s Michael Stanton. Focusing on ways to encourage user participation and user generated content, panelists discussed their start-ups and predicted how students will expect to interact with content, brands, and companies in the future.

For coverage of the panels, check out our press section.