She is a smart teenager with parental issues who confides her thoughts via a video blog. But will Kate Modern replicate the success of an American web diary which turned its narrator into a Hollywood star?

Britain is to get its own version of LonelyGirl15, the video diary of a Californian teenager which became a YouTube phenomenon, generating 50 million views.

The short films were apparently posted by Bree, a literate 16-year-old girl brought up by religious parents, who was struggling against unseen supernatural forces.

Word spread and the mysterious clips became the most watched and talked about on the web. But LonelyGirl was exposed as a fake.

Bree was actually Jessica Lee Rose, a struggling New Zealand-born actress, and her diaries were scripted by a trainee doctor and a lawyer seeking to break into the film business.

Despite this revelation, LonelyGirl’s audience continued to soar. Ms Rose landed a starring role in the next Lindsay Lohan film, became a United Nations ambassador and was named by Forbes business magazine as the biggest celebrity on the internet.

Now LonelyGirl’s creators have agreed to launch a British “spin-off” through Bebo, the social networking website that has become an obsession with schoolchildren.

The search has begun to find a young British actress whose life, loves and teenage angst will be broadcast daily to Bebo’s global network of 31 million users. But this time they have come clean.

Miles Beckett, a San Diego medical studies drop-out who co-created Bree, told The Times: “Kate Modern is a 19-year-old university student in London. She wants to fit in with her friends and has problems with her parents — but yes, Kate is fictional and will be played by an actress.”

LonelyGirl began as an experiment, but with teenagers rejecting television for the internet, the video diary is now a lucrative business proposition.

Mr Beckett said: “This is the way young people want their entertainment. The clips are entertaining, easy to consume and viewers interact with the characters in a way which is impossible with television.”

Kate Modern’s friends will be encouraged to link their own video diaries and photos to the character’s Bebo “profile”. They can even influence the story by advising Kate what decisions to make.

The scenario echoes the American series, in which Bree, a naive girl after a sheltered upbringing, realises that her family belongs to a sinister cult.

However, the innocence of LonelyGirl has been replaced by hard-nosed commerce. Joanna Shields, Bebo’s international president, said: “Kate Modern is a great proposition for advertisers and brands. Bebo users average 41 minutes per session and that can’t be ignored.”

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