Participation has been a prominent theme in Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005). It is the back and forth interaction in online communities. It is the act of contributing content and interacting with service features and other users in a community. Indeed, a majority of Web 2.0 services are participatory in nature, such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. These services thrive on content contribution and user interactions. While participation is encouraged, it is still voluntary and participation in some aspects of a service can be limited. As such, the lack of user participation could see some projects fail. This paper argues that the rise of Dr. Horrible can be attributed to the participation of its fans in their promotional efforts, and the fall of Facebook’s Beacon to the result of a lack of community participation in the decision making process. In other words, user participation can determine the success or failure of a project.

What follows will be a discussion on participation with Dr. Horrible and Facebook Beacon as principle examples. This paper will begin with an overview of convergence culture and participatory culture, which will pave the way for examples of participatory culture on the web. The discussion will then focus on the participation of fans in the promotion of Dr. Horrible and its subsequent success, and the negative reactions of Facebook users to Beacon, as a result of a lack of participation. The paper ends with an emphasis on the power of participation: how it can determine the success or failure of a project.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the forty two minute brain child of science fiction producer, Joss Whedon, premiered on computer screens everywhere in 2008. Dr. Horrible, the mini-series’ protagonist, is depicted as a lovable mad scientist supervillain who aspires to be recruited into the Evil League of Evil. However, his attempts to prove himself to the league always end with him getting beat up by his arch nemesis, Captain Hammer, a self-centred and narcissistic superhero. When not hatching plans to rule the world, Dr. Horrible’s alter-ego, Billy, attempts to confess his love to Penny, a sweet and generous girl whom he met at the local launderette. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog became a viral sensation with a little over two million views in its first week, reaching number one on iTunes for five weeks in a row (Vary, 2008), made a profit through DVD sales and, even won a Primetime Emmy award (61st Primetime Emmy Awards Winners Press Release, 2009). Not bad for an internet project.

On the other hand, Beacon was Facebook’s advertising system that fed users’ activities on participating third party sites into their news feeds for friends to see (Chew, Balfanz & Laurie, 2008). By default, user preferences allowed Beacon to collect information from all participating websites until they were individually disabled. The opting-out process was not user-friendly and it created uproar. What resonated amongst the cries were user privacy violation issues which prompted a class-action lawsuit against Facebook and ultimately, Beacon was shut down for good in September 2009 (Perez, 2009).

Before discussing user participation in the context of Dr. Horrible and Beacon, we have to first understand convergence and participatory culture. The convergence of media production and consumption is seen by Jenkins (2006) as being increasingly participatory and interactive. Audiences are taking an interest in learning how they can use media content to interact with other audiences, as well as in gaining some form of control over the production process. Media audiences today represent a shift in power dynamics because as consumers, they are now also content producers. These ‘prosumers’, as termed by Toffler (1980), previously did not have access to distribution channels like studios had; although they were still able to create their own media content (Riley, 2008). Now, they have the freedom of adopting and publishing differing subject positions to what commercial media producers have traditionally presented them with (Horton, 1999). They have a wide array of tools, such as blogs and social network sites, that help them to produce and disseminate their opinions and ideas to the rest of the world. Media audiences today are empowered, breaking free from the top-to-bottom approach to media production, traditionally used by commercial media producers.

Closely linked to the convergence of media production and consumption is participatory culture. In the context of the web, it is a culture with lowered barriers of expression, where collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and information is encouraged, and it also creates an environment where members feel appreciated for their contributions (Jenkins et al., 2009). Web users respond to societal events through the creation of mash-ups, remixes and internet memes. Mash-ups and remixes are conglomerations of clips from other videos that are edited to tell a story, while internet memes are cultural ideas on the internet that replicates itself through the act of sharing and participating on popular websites like social networking sites and social bookmarking sites (Dawkins, 1989). User generated content like these usually sustain a social media site, especially when the community revolves around the content that is available on the site, such as YouTube. One such example would be a subtitle remix called Hitler’s Downfall. Using a scene from the German film, Downfall, where Hitler receives news of the encirclement of Berlin, YouTube users attached alternative subtitles to his German dialogue, drastically changing the subject matter, often, to comedic results. Hitler has since “reacted” negatively to sporting, technological and entertainment events. These videos have encouraged others to create their own version of Hitler’s Downfall and has since spawned more than one hundred and fifty satires (Rees, 2008). Although not intentional, the act of contributing their own videos successfully made this an internet meme that until today, is still ongoing.

Aside from content contribution, user interaction is also a form of participation. Web services require users to interact with the service, as well as with one another. Through users’ interactions with the system and processes, developers can measure user participation with satisfaction, and thus, are able to collect feedback to improve services (McKeen, Guimaraes & Wetherbe, 1994; Lohmann & Rashid, 2008). These interactions are often vital in beta releases of software and websites. Google Wave, released as a public beta in 2009, receives feedback from its users through its forums (Help forum: Google Wave, n.d.). Participation and interaction from its users provides valuable feedback which can be used for service improvement. Participation and interaction from web users are valuable, in the sense that they wield the support needed by a project to be successful.

The discussion above shows how users and producers are becoming one and the same and how content on the web can gain popularity amongst users through participation. As more users share the same content with others, its reach and popularity increases. In fact, this was what made Dr. Horrible the viral sensation that it is. What is special about this production is that it was first distributed through the internet, rather than through mainstream distribution channels like cinemas and television. It was written and produced, quickly and cheaply, during the 2007 to 2008 Writers’ Guild of America Strike, as a sign of rebellion against studios (Whedon, 2008). The whole idea behind the production was that the Dr. Horrible team wanted to prove that quality entertainment can be made with less funding and meddling from studios (Whedon, 2008). Without the promotional funding of corporate studios, they had to rely on what was affordable and at their disposal. They created an official website (DrHorrible.com), created a Twitter account (@drhorrible), and created a Facebook Fan Page. They also released a trailer, three weeks before the premiere, to build excitement (Sarno, 2008a). What made it even better is that the creator, Joss Whedon, had a cult following, amassed from the days of television’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and the short lived, Firefly, and has considerable leverage in this respect, in contrast with an unknown independent web producer. The team exploited this, using Whedon’s fan base to promote the show. An official fan site (doctorhorrible.net) was created, fans talked about it in their blogs and other people’s blogs, they posted widgets and badges on their Facebook pages and on the web, encouraging people to watch the show (Viveiros, 2008). In addition to what seemed like an entertaining and quality production based on the trailer, the participation of the online community in promoting the show crashed the Dr. Horrible and Hulu website due to overwhelming response (Sarno, 2008b). In fact, this positive feedback has encouraged the creators to work on a sequel (Rudolph, 2009). Despite it being a low budget production and not having a promotional budget, Dr. Horrible managed to reach a global audience with the help of the online community, illustrating the power of community participation.

On the other hand, Facebook’s Beacon was a massive failure in that it had gotten Facebook users riled up over privacy violations and was eventually shut down, in order to settle a class-action lawsuit against Facebook (Perez, 2009). Beacon was an advertising system that used information collected from partner websites like Zappos.com, STA Travel, LiveJournal, Vox, Blockbuster, et cetera, to build a database of users’ activities outside of Facebook as a means of providing more targeted advertising for advertisers (Malik, 2007). Armed with information of users’ activities outside of Facebook, Beacon, by default, published that information onto users’ news feeds. For example, “Emma rented Alice in Wonderland on Blockbuster”. This was particularly upsetting for users who did not want to have every aspect of their lives exposed like that as most of them were unaware of this new addition to Facebook’s advertising. After being at the receiving end of a public backlash, Facebook released a Beacon update which required a user’s consent before any activities were published (Farber, 2007). By allowing the system to publish users’ activities without their explicit permissions, Facebook destroyed the sense of privacy that users had, as well as the trust they had in Facebook to respect their information.

The lack of participation from users in the beginning served as the catalyst that brought the onslaught and eventual demise of Beacon. Not forgetting that Beacon was turned on for everyone by default, users were also unable to opt-out of the program entirely, seeing that it was designed for the benefit of advertisers (Catone, 2007). Facebook users could only opt-out of individual partner sites after visiting the site and having data collected. Research has shown that the complexity of using a system strongly relates to the strength of user participation and satisfaction levels (McKeen, Guimaraes & Wetherbe, 1994). In other words, the more complex a system is to use and, the less user participation there is, the less satisfaction there will be. The complexity of opting out and the lack of transparency made Beacon untrustworthy. The sense of privacy that Facebook users once had were now vulnerable. One Facebook user recounted:

I would really like to have some things I do on third party sites to conveniently appear in [Facebook’s] Newsfeed… so that my friends know about them… . But I need to be in control and not get blindsided as I did [referring to Beacon’s unauthorized publication of her purchase activities] (Li, 2007).

By designing Beacon in a way that limited user participation, (i.e. the lack of communication with and, permission from Facebook users on a system that explicitly involved them), Beacon effectively shut out their core market, Facebook users.

This paper contrasts both Dr. Horrible and Beacon from the perspective of user participation, or lack thereof. Dr. Horrible became a viral sensation as a result of community participation that was put into promotional efforts. By embracing their fans, the Dr. Horrible team not only managed to make a profit from a small production, but have garnered enough support and positive reaction to the first series that it has encouraged a sequel. On the other hand, Facebook’s Beacon was poorly received because of the relative loss of control users felt over their privacy. By not being able to participate in the process of implementing Beacon in their use of Facebook (i.e. giving Facebook permission to publish their activities from third party sites), it threatened users’ privacies, making Beacon seem untrustworthy. These examples illustrate the relative importance of user participation in the design process and thus, their attempt to support this paper’s argument that participation can determine the success or failure of a project.

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The Power of Participation: How Dr. Horrible Succeeded and Facebook Beacon Failed by Chea Hwey Yea is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.