Work It, Widget: Grapple Entertainment Fuses Hollywood and Web 2.0 via Widgets
August 1, 2008
Imagine reality shows that are not the property of big television channels but broadcast online by independent producers. Not only that, but imagine a “widget,” or a small web application, that allows people to watch reality shows from your Facebook or MySpace page.
Grapple Entertainment, a new digital content publisher of digital comics, short independent films and episodic video programming, has made these both a reality. With a unique combination that bridges Hollywood and Web 2.0, Grapple is the first company to distribute its digital content through widgets on social networks.
A widget is “a mini website that you install in your own website,” explains Ludon Lee, founder and CEO of Grapple Entertainment. He anticipates that social networks will be the next platform for entertainment because 80 percent of the internet audience is logged into a social network, according to Lee.
Many independent producers have high hopes for web broadcasting, which can better serve niche audiences. For example, Grapple Entertainment launched on July 31 the first online reality show about pageantry, focusing on the Miss Asian America Pageant. The company is also distributing “Cryptific World of Horror,” the first widget for horror film shorts produced by independent filmmakers.
The company’s executive team, including Lee, Sonny Tomada and Billy Chan, are eager to cater to Asian American web audiences. Not only have they acquired broadcasting rights for the 23rd Miss Asian American Pageant, but they also plan to work with top Asian filmmakers to produce new original horror movies based on digital comics as well as distributing their short films on the Internet.
Rose Chung, president and founder of the Miss Asian America Pageant, said she expected a potentially large increase in viewers from broadcasting the pageant on Grapple Entertainment’s widget. Originally, the pageant was to be broadcasted only in the Bay Area; now, potentially hundreds of thousands will view the program.
“[It’s] an exciting opportunity that Ludon has provided our pageant,” Chung said. “I think it will be very interesting to provide a glimpse of the young ladies participating. It’s also an opportunity for the ladies to get more exposure and develop their public persona.”
The company has also partnered with AsianWeek to distribute Grapple’s digital comics through a downloadable widget on AsianWeek’s website.
“The addition of Grapple Entertainment’s widget is a step in the right direction for the AsianWeek website,” said AsianWeek’s website manager Peter J. Swing. “As a new popular trend in creative web technology, the widget application will encourage a diverse and large viewership to visit an already growing website.”
Grapple Entertainment also prides itself on giving back to the community. The first product the company launched featured the book Super Stories by 7-year-old boy Zach Thoma, who lives with lymphoma, and 10-year old Adrianna Tucker, who has leukemia. Grapple Entertainment published the book to help raise fun—ds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Part of Grapple’s profits also go to the Space Burrito Foundation, which provides women and children with programs on healthy living.
Check out video at asianweek.com: Miss Asian America at San Diego Comic Con!
What’s a Widget?
A widget is anything that can be embedded within a page of HTML (i.e. a webpage). A widget adds content to that page that is not static. Widgets, which are mostly created by third parties, are also known as modules, snippets or plug-ins.
It could be said that the original web widgets were the link counters and advertising banners that grew up alongside the early web. Ad and affiliate networks later used code widgets for distribution purposes.
Widgets are now commonplace and used by bloggers, social network users, auction sites and personal websites. They exist on homepage sites such as iGoogle, Netvibes or Pageflakes. Media and entertainment companies are increasingly using widgets to run ad campaigns.
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Web 2.0 Is Like Pornography
Like so many tech articles posted since Tim O’Reilly coined the term in 2004, this one references “Web 2.0″ as if it were something tangible–or at least a concept with clear, concise definition. It is not. In 2006, Web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee sagely observed that “nobody knows what it means”:
http://tinyurl.com/y6ewzy
And now in 2008, the most honest thing we can say is that “Web 2.0″ means whatever the techno-marketeer (ab)using it wants it to mean. Otherwise, why would intelligent people like Isaac O’Bannon still be writing articles asking “What is Web 2.0″:
http://tinyurl.com/5solok
And, why would McKinsey’s just-released best-of-breed report entitled “Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise” …
http://tinyurl.com/6sxls7
… include no attempt at defining the term other than to list the “Web 2.0 Tools” that comprise or enable it? And even there, the chief ingredient is identified only as “Web Services”, adding more mystery to the mix as one ethereal term is offered up to explain another.
As originated in an Onstartups.com posting that no longer exists…
http://tinyurl.com/57a2u4
… “Web 2.0″ is like pornography: Nobody has defined it, but you know it when you see it.
Bruce Arnold, Web Designer
PervasivePersuasion.com, Miami Florida
OMG!
Arguing about the definition of web 2.0 is like “who shot first? Han or Greedo?”
Get a life!
Louise Wu is Miss Asian America