Bebo's web-based soaps have proved hugely popular ... The cast of KateModern on webcam. Photograph: Ben Smith / Rex Features
Some things just make you feel old. Take Sofia's Diary, a webcast series that is now making the transition from Bebo to Fiver. Eh?
Let's start from the top, shall we? Bebo, you'll hopefully be aware, is the UK's number one social networking website. Fiver is the new snappy name for Channel Five's freeview station Five Life. That's the easy bit out of the way. Sofia's Diary is an interactive drama told via a series of webcam diaries posted online, in the vein of their previous hit, KateModern. As well as blurring the line between drama and online forums, it provides opportunities for multi-platform marketing (The Ting Tings have already performed on the show, for instance). There's no doubting its success: Sofia's Diary has hit viewing figures of five million, which naturally has prompted TV programmers to watch it with green eyes. Obviously Fiver want a piece of it. And no doubt Bebo get an improved bank balance out of the deal. But why should the core teen-to-twentysomething audience care? Why should they want to tune in to a daily three-minute episode on TV when they can see it whenever they like online? The overriding impression is that, much like the interactive element to Channel 4's Skins, everybody realises that the future of youth programming involves some sort of amalgam between the web and TV; but no one's quite worked out what it is yet. It's already developing into a live action Choose Your Own Adventure book with added drug and relationship problems. But however it turns out, don't expect anyone over the age of 30 to understand it for a second.
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