By Casey Muller
Attic TV appears to be a general provider of interactive programming
for a variety of platforms. What makes it relevant to our topic this
week is its attempts at viral marketing. Attic appears to specifically
create content that can be easily forwarded to friends. Their plan
seems to be to create interesting enough content that people forward
it to all their friends as 'cool'. An attached advertisement will
then travel with it, and reach lots of people for free.
This is an interesting strategy, and good for a number of reasons.
It's very 'permissive' advertising, since to see it, a friend had
to see it and really like it. Advertising as an enjoyable medium is
always nicer than as an intrusive things.
Nonetheless, there are a few problems. The first is the quality level
is very difficult to achieve and maintain. This is one reason these
sorts of things are not as widespread- because everyone has seen them.
The other problem is more technical in nature- much of the viral content
on Attic TV is in the form of executables. This is extremely unsafe,
as someone of middling technical sophistication can easily modify
an executable to give them total remote control of your computer.
Attic TV does not appear to be deploying any sort of viral marketing
in a very useful way. Nonetheless, some of the interactive content
on their site is quite fun, and no doubt they will continue to get
better and may become more popular. The concept is an interesting
one that will continue to be explored.