Ze Frank

The story starts, as Ze Frank himself tells it, in 2001 when Frank, a failed musician turned web designers, filmed himself dancing to Madonna’s Justify My Love and made a video called How to Dance Properly and e-mailed it to 17 of his closest friends on Thursday. On Monday, over a million people a day were coming to the site. The overage charges from EarthLink added up to $30,000, Frank says. While Frank got out of paying the fee, he didn’t escape Internet fame.

It was in March of 2006 that Frank launched The Show With Ze Frank and combined his collaborative interactive theories with his dry wit and relentless creativity. New episodes appeared every day, Monday through Friday, for a whole year. Frank showed off his musical talents, political commentary and social critiques, but was most interested in the process of collaborative, interactive creativity and forced his viewers, dubbed “sportsracers,” to participate and help him write, shoot and make the show. He created a whole .ORG where sportsracers could meet and work together on whatever projects Ze or they proposed.

The Show proved that regularly created, short-form content could find a very happy audience online and that it didn’t really have to look or act like a show we know from television. Frank was all about testing new ideas and taking advantage of the interactive and participatory elements the web makes available.

“The Show” has been beautifully preserved in an archive and is complete with annotated wiki.