Bebo launches interactive soap 'Sofia's Diary'

The latest vid series from AOL's newly acquired third-place social net Bebo, Sofia's Diary  -- originally a Portuguese mobile show from 2004 -- is a new, interactive teen soap-o-drama co-produced by Sony Pictures Television and Campbell Ryan.

The deets: 17-year-old Sofia, having caught her boyfriend smooching another gal, "blows up" the chemistry lab and is shipped by mom to London to live with dad, his wife, and their toddler son. Sofia consequently has a new school/new friends/new job, and she huffs herself between them powered by the limitless internal combustion flames of teen aggravation, her only expression a woe-is-me bershon.

"Diary" -- like Bebo series "Kate Modern," and the YouTube phenom lonelygirl15 which inspired them both -- works via fan interaction. When an episode's posted, a viewer poll asks multiple choice questions to determine what direction the show'll go next. I've only seen rough cuts of episodes one and four, which may suggest that the producers established set waypoints to guide the main action, and left the intervals up to choose your adventure-type choice.

Unlike its interactive reality show predecessors, "Diary" isn't filmed via handcam. The action's steady and shot prettily, and even when Sofia looks directly at the viewer and talks to the video recorder in her room, the film quality doesn't change. That's an interesting departure from form, suggesting that viewers have become accustomed enough to being spoken to / included in the action (to being the 4th wall, or to the 4th wall no existing) that they no longer need visual cues, e.g., the fish-eye lensing of a webcam.

Sofia's Diary | originally based on a Portuguese mobile show from 2004 | More on Bebo's tie-ups with Sony, Endemol