Abstract
abstract: This article examines the history of the web soap, serialized, fictional programming distributed online and associated with the US daytime television soap opera. I locate its origins in the mid-1990s and document its development in three subsequent periods: the convergence of soaps and the internet between 2000 and 2007, the web soap's expansion between 2008 and 2013, and the marginalization of soaps post-2013. The web soap helped to shape the economic and narrative possibilities for streaming TV but has been supplanted by the higher-profile fare it helped make possible, repeating gendered patterns of cultural value that have long accompanied television.
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