Pottermore research

Harry Potter Research

Harry Potter is one of the biggest and well known books worldwide. This research will take a look into how much author J K Rowling wants to maintain control of the world, story and characters she created here and how much she wants her fans to engage and get involved with the material she created, wether she appreciates or begrudges the fans expanding on the information she has given them and using their own creativity and imagination to bring the story to life.

Pottermore:

What IS Pottermore?It is an online tool made to be used as an enriching accompaniment to reading the books. It extends from the information given in the book and allows us some insight into other characters for instance. We are given extra knowledge and the opportunity to explore the world at our leisure in addition to being able to make our own mark on the interactive pottermore world. We can play in House competitions, duel with other students, brew potions and buy things within the 'play' world.

This was largely a secret project designed so that only devout Harry Potter fans would be the first to hear of it, this was done by releasing geographical co-ordinates onto different Harry Potter fan sites over two days that led to 'magical letters' scattered around the world. Fans would enter these codes into the website www.secretstreetview.com which would lead them the area where the letters were. Fans then had to unscramble the letters they collected, the two combinations were 'more potter' or 'potter more'.

Geographical Codes in order from the first released, these were found on different Harry Potter fan-sites from around the world:

 Leaky Cauldron: 42.523356,-70.890698
2. 
 MuggleNet: 51.530377,-0.123259
3. 
 Harry Potter Xperts:-34.410362,-150.900671
4. 
 HPANA: -29.239004,-24.507602
5. 
 UniversHarryPotter: 29.952313,-90.067849
6.
 SnitchSeeker: 51.781383,-2.56844
7. 
 Portkey: 43.640408,-79.388795
8.
 BlogHogwarts: 34.730748,-137.383786
9.
 ClubeDoSlugue: -23.547149,-46.520266
10.
 Pottermore: 53.476311,-2.22971

After the last code was released and fans had the two word combinations J K Rowling, on a custom Youtube page posted a video announcing the beginning of Pottermore. Although this was only for the first one million fans as the site was in its beta phase, this began on the 31^st july 2011 and became open to the public (later than expected) on 14^th April 2012.

However Pottermore doesn't give the audience a lot of control or freedom within the world created, we have to follow the set storyline and have no opportunity to add our own flavour.(Yet Pottermore does have a Facebook page where users can answer quiz questions, polls and upload fan art)