Take This Lollipop 10/10/12

Creepy Facebook app Take This Lollipop took the world by storm and brought interactive evil to the masses.

It’s been almost a year since Jason Zada‘s groundbreaking Facebook app Take This Lollipop personalized the horror genre.

Using the Facebook Connect API, it pulls messages and pictures from viewers’ Facebook profiles and intersperses them into a pre-produced short film – in real time.

Given the near-universal acclaim this project received, you’d think there would be a flood of interactive videos on the web.

Think again.

The highly anticipated sequel apparently missed its Kickstarter fundraising goal by a wide margin. This is despite Zada’s involvement in a similar and more mainstream effort in the spring of this year.

Zada co-directed the highly praised music video for Lost in the Echo by Linkin Park which also pulls images from viewers’ Facebook profiles. When you read the behind-the-scenes article, however, you start to get an idea of the technological and ideological challenges he and other collaborators faced.

In addition to the massive amount of data-wrangling they had to do, they also found themselves butting heads with bandmates and label execs at Warner Bros. who just didn’t “get it.”

As usual, there is a mismatch between the speed of technological advances and our ability to process them. They often disrupt our established systems before they improve them.

But Zada and other trailblazers can’t drag us kicking and screaming into the future alone. In order for interactive storytelling to mature, we need more of these kinds of collaborations between video producers, programmers, and other kindred spirits.

Take the lollipop and take up the torch.