Fans Into Friends: How the Relationship with Story Might Evolve

In an August 8th, 2013 post, Ben Woods examines recent "research" that points to a changing relationship between users and story.

While academics, like me, might question the use of the term "research" to describe the (scripted?) video above and the numbers below might not have been gathered using the best social sciences practices - the ideas expressed about the future of online storytelling are heuristic and worthy of further analysis...

The "study" by Latitude - published this week under the title The Future of Storytelling - purports to investigate "opportunities for second screen and other next-gen media experiences—providing insights for content creators and marketers, including how to best engage key audience targets."

Key findings?

"78 percent of people want to “friend” a character digitally – meaning they would receive updates via platforms like Facebook or via SMS – and would like to be able to sway the outcome of a particular decision, as they would with real friends."

"41 percent of people use a second screen at least once per week while watching TV."

"67 percent say that using a second screen to interact with TV content would increase their overall TV viewing. The most popular second screen activities while watching TV tended to be goal-oriented, such as earning rewards (80% interested), voting to decide a show’s outcome (79%), or making a purchase (76%)."