The Office invades the internet.

 
By Stacy March 20, 2006

"The Office blog: funny, but one missing piece
Stephen Baker
Dwight Schrute, the assistant TO the regional manager in NBC's The Office, has a blog. It will likely draw lots of fans and enhance the franchise. But I would take the concept one big step further. As I wrote a few months ago, I think the studios should let the characters develop alternate story lines on the blogs. And (I say this as a consumer, not a journalist) they should interact with the rest of our blogs, linking,
commenting, in short, participating. Who knows what stories could develop?"

This quote is from the February 10 Bussinessweek Online Blogspotting.

I argree with Mr.Baker, it would be great to have the characters interact more. As I discovered this is happing on Myspace.com. MySpace.com is a hugely popular social network of, I believe, real people. And Dwight, Pam, and Angela from The Office. While, and I stress, these are NOT real people, they have pages just like any other MySpace member complete with likes/ dislikes and blogs. And other MySpace users interact with them and send them messages just as they would real people. Dwight, for example, has many friends who speak directly to him. These real people are not friends of the actor Rainn Wilson, but of Dwight, a fictional character. One of these friends, however, is B.J. Novak who plays Ryan the Temp on the same show. Under Dwight's friend list, B.J. appears under his real name alongside the fictional characters Pam (Jenna Fischer) and Angela (Angela Kinsey). These three are mixed in among the real people. Dwight's space is absent because it was up at the time of writing. I don't know what's up with that.
Here are just a few to check out:
http://www.myspace.com/theoffice
http://www.myspace.com/pambeesley
www.myspace.com/bjnovak
www.myspace.com/accountinglady

Is this simply a low level marketing move or is it just funny? What role does MySpace play? And will this be the beginning of a trend?

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