A couple of months ago, one YouTube user hit the headlines in a major way. Using the moniker “lonelygirl15″, she posted videos about her overprotective parents, her best friend Daniel, and her toy animals. Fellow YouTubers watched and subscribed in their thousands, drawn in by her pretty face and the soap opera style narrative.

But the real reason she got so much publicity was that it soon became clear she was a fraud. Lonely girl Bree wasn’t a sad 16 year old at all - she was a 19 year old actress called Jessica Rose. Her loyal fans and friends had been tricked; but at the height of the controversy, her videos were getting around 600,000 views a pop. The videos soon moved from YouTube onto another video-hosting site, Revver, and a website - www.lonelygirl15.com - was set up, complete with a forum and a wiki (the “LGpedia”). Once all the media attention had died down, the videos continued - there are now in the region of 150 of them, with a fan-created ARG (alternate reality game) running alongside it. Hundreds of people post their theories on the message board; dozens of parodies and response videos turn up, including three starring Carmen Electra as part of an ad campaign for Epic Movie.

And yet the creators of the series haven’t yet figured out any real way of making revenue from the project. Belatedly, they set up a merchandise store flogging LG15-branded t-shirts, and the Revver-hosted videos have adverts tagged onto them, but it’s not enough. Weirdly, this should be the easy bit: they’ve got the attention, they’ve got loyal fans who keep coming back and coming back for more, but there’s nothing to sell them. Speculation was rife, at one point, that perhaps the videos were trailers for a film, but so far that doesn’t seem to be the case.

The problem is, it’s hard to see what they could realistically do about it. Charging for the videos doesn’t look like a valid option; the series started on YouTube, and subscribers would probably not be happy about suddenly having to pay to watch it. Plus there’s a distinct possibility someone would upload each new instalment to YouTube within minutes of it being released, anyway. Adverts are all well and good, but they tend to feel like afterthoughts and aren’t particularly well-targeted. To make matters worse, the creators’ lack of money is affecting the series; the actors want to go off and do other projects while they’re still recognisable faces, the locations more often than not are all too clearly just someone’s back room (which, given the conceit of the series, wouldn’t have been a problem if they hadn’t claimed one of the teenaged characters lived in a mansion) and it’s starting to feel like they’ve run out of steam. It’s still possible the writers know exactly what they’re doing, but the current run of cutesy videos, devoid of any action or plot points, is turning people off in their droves.

Personally, if I were in their shoes, I’d be looking to wrap up the story with a stunning finale and then whack it on DVD as fast as I could while I still had the audience on my side. A Bree action figure to go with it might not be a bad idea. But if they don’t sort their act out, this is going to turn into one enormous missed opportunity - as well as a stunning example of how not to use new media for storytelling.

At least you know where you are with a 90-minute movie you’ve had to pay the price of admission for.