AllThingsD » College Humor

Viral Video: OMG Snooki's Pregnant as a Google Commercial

Kara Swisher — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 07:30:22 +0000

Oh, just watch — the pregnancy of the “Jersey Shore” star as seen via Google Chrome commercial — from the funny folks at College Humor.

Now, that’s evil!

CollegeHumor Aims to Grow Up With New Site

Jessica E. Vascellaro — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 06:50:23 +0000

CollegeHumor, a site known for comedy about cute girls and pranks, is trying to grow up.

Its parent company, IAC/InterActiveCorp., is launching a new comedy site, Jest.com, that aims to broaden CollegeHumor’s humor to appeal to 18- to 49-year-olds.

The Jest site will feature some original Web video produced by Jest, which will be added every other day or so. The bulk of it will be tens of thousands of funny videos — including episodes of TV shows like ABC’s “Modern Family” — aggregated from across the Web through partnerships with sites like Hulu LLC and Google Inc.’s YouTube.

Typical of Jest’s humor is an original video about a room at furniture store Ikea where bickering couples can go to break-up, a riff on how stressful furniture shopping can be for couples. The site went live Sunday.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Kickstarter Fesses Up: The Crowdsourced Funding Start-Up Has Funding, Too

Peter Kafka — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 01:47:02 +0000

Kickstarter has all the requisite characteristics for a hot startup: an ah-ha! concept, a growing user base, and great buzz.

The one thing it doesn’t have are stories about investors clamoring to throw money its way. And the three-year-old company has never disclosed a funding round. Is it possible it has never taken in any money?

Nope. It’s not. I hear that Kickstarter, which helps artists and entrepreneurs raise money for their projects via crowd-sourced donation, has itself raised around $10 million in venture backing so far.

Its investors are high-profile, too: Union Square Ventures is the company’s best-known backer, but Kickstarter has also received money from the Betaworks incubator/seed investment fund, along with contributions from well-known entrepreneuer/angels like Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Vimeo co-founder Zach Klein and Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake.

Kickstarter’s public profile has been shooting up, up, up–most recently, as the company that helped fund watches made out of Apple’s iPod nanos — and its backers are a bit of an open secret in tech circles. But for whatever reason the company hasn’t wanted its investors chatting about it.

Union Square, for instance, doesn’t include the company in its public portfolio. [UPDATE: Now they do. "Recently the company has been getting a lot of attention and it has become clear to all of us that the quiet period is over," USV partner Fred Wilson writes in a blog post this morning. "So now we get to add the Kickstarter logo to our investments page and we can talk about the company publicly as much as we talk about it privately.]

That quiet period is over now, though, courtesy of a profile in the new issue of Wired magazine. The story is primarily about the company’s origins and ambitions, but casually mentions Union Square’s backing, and identifies Fake, Klein, Dorsey, Meetup founder Scott Heiferman and comedian David Cross (!) as other investors.

I asked CEO Perry Chen for more details about the company’s funding, but didn’t expect much. And via a pr agency, I ended up with a list of other angels, but nothing else. Here it is, for the record: Josh Stylman; Peter Hershberg; Joi Ito; Chris Sacca; Joshua Schacter; Matt Haughey; Josh & Jared Kushner; Chris Kaskie; “some other friends.”

The Wired issue with the Kickstarter profile is just landing in subscribers’ mailboxes now, and should be on newsstands and iPads next week. If you’re waiting for a free peek, though, you’ll have to be patient–the magazine usually waits a bit before it puts a new issue up on the Web. Meantime, here’s a look at the cover, via the magazine’s Twitter account:

[Kickstarter image credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid]

Bleacher Report's Brian Grey Talks About New Content Biz, as Patrick Keane Joins Board

Kara Swisher — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 19:30:35 +0000

Earlier this week, BoomTown went downtown to the San Francisco HQ of Bleacher Report, one of the many interesting efforts trying to change the way content is made and distributed.

Bleacher Report, no surprise, is focused on sports, and competes with sites such as Yardbarker and SB Nation.

All take different approaches, with Bleacher Report delivering a grassroots platform for both professional and hobbyist writers who want give their take on any topic about college and professional sports, from the latest draft to explaining what’s the deal with “Fear the Beard.”

Bleacher Report vets these writers and does not pay most of them. There are 3,000 contributors, with 750 designated as featured, delivering 500 pieces of content a day.

Bleacher Report also has one million newsletter subscribers across 150 teams.

The writers are presumably attracted to the larger audience–8.8 million unique monthly visitors–they can reach via the site, as well as via newspaper syndication deals.

Think Huffington Post–Bleacher Report’s main business model is advertising too–and you have the right idea.

So far, Bleacher Report has raised $8 million from venture firms, such as Hillsven Capital, and angel investors like Gordon Crawford and Jakob Lodwick, founder of College Humor and Vimeo.

And it recently went out and drafted a pro for a CEO–former Yahoo and News Corp. exec Brian Grey, who focused on online sports content at both those companies.

In addition, it also just added Patrick Keane–former Googler and also former CEO of Associated Content, the social content site recently bought by Yahoo–to its board.

Here’s a video interview I did with Grey–who, full disclosure, was my elder son’s Little League coach for one season (so he does know about baseball, for sure!)–about how the media is morphing, as amateur and professional content is mixed and distributed in new ways:

[ See post to watch video ]

Svpply Is a Social Shopping Site With a Funny Name, Good Buzz and a New Funding Round

Peter Kafka — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:00:21 +0000

One thing the first Web boom got right: Amazon, eBay and the other big e-commerce sites that made it really easy to buy stuff on the Internet.

But those sites are efficient places to get the things you know you want. They’re not good at finding cool stuff you didn’t know you wanted. The way that catalogs used to do, or that your friends still do.

This is the problem that Svpply is supposed to solve: It’s a social, online retail “discovery” site stocked with stuff you and your friends think are cool. Simple, right?

That’s the pitch, at least. And it’s been enough to get the year-old company a $550,000 seed-round investment led by Spark Capital and Founder Collective, along with high-profile angels like Ron Conway, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley and former Myspace co-President Jason Hirschhorn.

One reason the company gets a warm reception: It boasts Founder Collective’s Zach Klein as a co-founder. Klein, who helped start College Humor and later Vimeo, still has a day job as chief product officer at Boxee. But last spring he connected with Ben Pieratt, a Boston-based designer who started Svpply in late 2009.

If you take a look at Svpply (you pronounce it “Supply,” but the V is supposed to make it look Roman and/or cool), you’ll figure it out right away.

But in case you don’t click over: Using a browser-based “bookmarklet” (a la Instapaper), you tag images of stuff you own or like, along with a link that tells people where to buy it. And you look at images that your friends, or people you’d like to be your friends, have tagged, too. Apps for Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform are on the way.

When you do head over to Svpply, you’ll find that both the images and the stuff they depict are probably better-looking than you are. And while the company’s founders won’t come out and say it, that’s sort of intentional. Svpply is supposed to exude the same sort of digital cool, and attract the same kind of early adopters, that social Web hits like Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare did.

And like those networks, Svpply is based around the activity feed/stream concept–you can follow a few people or a lot of people. And if you don’t have anything cool to add yourself, that’s okay too.

The main thing is that everything there is supposed to be interesting and, well, cool. Anyone can set up shop at Svpply and show off their stuff, but if no one likes it, no one likes it. As Pieratt puts it: “People are very sensitive to being sold to.”

Of course, the reason people are funding Svpply is because it has such obvious potential for selling–by designers, by brands, by retailers, etc.

Which may be why it’s not the only start-up taking this approach. Poke around and you’ll see several sites doing something similar: Pinterest, Wanelo, etc.

One particularly notable competitor: Fancy, a project from ThingD, the semi-mysterious “Facebook of Stuff” that has super-high profile backers like Allen & Co. and is generating a lot of attention from Silicon Valley’s deal guys.

More Facebook Fun: "If Other Directors Made 'The Social Network'"

Kara Swisher — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 23:48:41 +0000

The folks over at College Humor have completely nailed this one, in a spoof video titled: “If Other Directors Made ‘The Social Network.’”

In BoomTown’s critical estimation, it is much better than the original movie about the Silicon Valley social networking giant, especially the Christopher Guest version, pictured above.

Enjoy:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

College Humor Gets a New Grown-Up: Time Inc. Digital Dude Paul Greenberg

Peter Kafka — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:44:40 +0000

Here’s the new adult supervisor at College Humor, Barry Diller’s much-smarter-than-you’d-think humor site: Paul Greenberg, who most recently had been running digital operations at Time Inc.’s Lifestyle group.

But only very recently: Greenberg started at Time Warner’s (TWX) publishing unit at the end of February, and resigned yesterday to become CEO at College Humor Media. Prior to Time Inc., he put in time at TV Guide.com, MediaNet and MTV.

Greenberg’s new job is a newly created position, which puts him in charge of the main College Humor site as well as satellites like SportsPickle and Dorkly (that was fun to type!).

College Humor co-founder Josh Abramson will stay in his current position as president; co-founder Ricky Van Veen remains occupied with TV projects at IAC’s Notional. But he had time to send me a note about the new hire:

I couldn’t be more thrilled. We knew instantly upon meeting him that Paul was the right person for the job. Plus, to me the choice was pretty obvious — who wouldn’t want to trade up from a goofy little startup like Time Inc to a more established and venerable institution like CollegeHumor?

I’ve asked Time Inc. if they have a replacement lined up for Greenberg; I’ll update if I hear back.

Video: College Humor's Ricky Van Veen on How to Make Web Stuff That Doesn't Suck

Peter Kafka — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:06:04 +0000

Some of you may have already read Mashable’s summary of the “10 Web Content Urban Legends” presentation that Ricky Van Veen delivered yesterday. But I got to see the College Humor co-founder do this in person, and I can vouch that it’s well worth watching.

Check it out. It’s a very quick 30 minutes–the picture of the Obama inauguration is worth it by itself. But there’s no reason to watch the Q&A that follows, in which Van Veen is queried by a dolt.

Supershort attention span? That’s okay. You’re on the Web! Here’s the “show, not tell” version–the “Font Conference” video Van Veen holds up (correctly) as an example of non=sucky Web content.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Why TV Still Won't Embrace the Web Quite Yet

Peter Kafka — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:30:33 +0000

What’s the future of TV? For the near future, it’s more TV.

So says TV producer Steve Levitan.

Levitan has made a bunch of money working on hit TV shows like “Just Shoot Me,” and he’s likely to make some more with ABC’s “Modern Family.” So it’s not a huge surprise to hear him make a case for the status quo.

But Levitan is also a self-professed nerd who loves technology and has tried hard to figure out how to incorporate it into his TV show. He has played around with Twitter and has created special clips for Web viewers. Problem is, he says, he can’t figure out how Internet eyeballs do him any good. And that includes the two million viewers he believes watch his show every week on Hulu.

One day, that’s going to change, as advertisers start to value Web viewers as much as TV viewers. But they’re not there now. Here’s Levitan explaining the state of the business at the D8 conference last week:

[ See post to watch video ]

Anyone feel differently? Happy to hear from you. And I’ll put the same question to Ricky Van Veen, the College Humor co-founder who is now trying to make TV shows at IAC’s (IACI) Notional. We’re chatting this morning at Mashable’s Media Summit in New York. Here’s a conversation we had on the topic last fall:

Meet Merton, the Chatroulette Piano Guy (Who Isn't Ben Folds)

Peter Kafka — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:14:44 +0000

The intrepid team at Mashable has an excellent get: An interview with “Merton,” the Chatroulette Piano Guy.

The important takeaway, which I’d basically deduced on my own: He’s definitely not Ben Folds.

Merton declines to identify himself for Mashable’s Brenna Ehrlich. Though I gather that once his identity is unmasked, it won’t be anyone you’ve ever heard of anyway.

Ehrlich’s Skype chat with Merton runs 15 minutes, and if you’ve got time, I suggest watching the whole thing, because it’s both fascinating and charming. It also rubs off just a bit of charm from the phenomenon, though. Because the truth is always a bit less fun than the story you cook up in your head.

If you’re time-pressed, here are my notes:

Merton plays piano all the time, though it’s not clear if he’s a professional. He’s not in a band. He primarily does improvisational stuff in the “brooding, introspective” vein of Keith Jarrett and Tori Amos.
He filmed the Chatroulette videos over two nights, in three-hour sessions. He and his pals edited the footage to three five-minute clips.
He put the clips up on YouTube as a lark and initially kept them private. Now they’re approaching five million views, but he says that wasn’t his intent. “i didn’t give it some huge web site like College Humor… i guess that’s why they call it viral.”
He did a new session a few days ago, and not surprisingly “my experience was very different because everyone knew who I was…it’s more fun one way, and a little less fun another way.”
What about all the naked dudes Chatroulette is famous for? “I’m not deeply creeped out by those people.” But he understands why other people might be. “I don’t think there should be any children on Chatroullete ever, for so many different reasons.”
He loves Ben Folds’s tribute, of course. He also understands why casual observers might think the two men were the same person. “We’re both white guys who play the piano.”
Putting the stuff up anonymously “wasn’t really a strategy,” but it was “empowering.” Merton knows this can’t last forever. “Eventually, someone’s going to find me out, and that’s fine…I’m pretty sure that I would have the most fun if i went undetected for as long as possible.”

Not addressed in the interview: How is Merton going to cash in on this? And why did Google (GOOG) force him to take down his clip yesterday?

I think I can answer the latter question. It seems that some of the Chatrouletters in the clip made privacy claims, and you can figure out which ones when you watch the re-edited video.

What Do You Really, Really Want From Your PC?

Peter Kafka — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:00:11 +0000

From the fine young men and women at College Humor, an alternate take on Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 7 ad campaign (which, IMHO, is pretty effective).

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

And here’s the source material. (Really, not bad, right?)

Dude Web Site Publisher Breaks Into Games (Heh heh. Heh heh.)

Peter Kafka — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:59:00 +0000

For the past several years, Keith Richman has run a Web publishing company that specializes in video and stuff for dudes. Which means he ought to be struggling and/or out of business by now–both sectors have had way too many competitors chasing not nearly enough ad dollars.

Not so, says Richman. He won’t divulge numbers, but says his Break Media has seen revenue climb 40 percent in the last year and is sort-of profitable (sort-of technical term: “Ebitda profitable”) to boot.

Break.com and its associated sites (CagePotato.com, HolyTaco, etc.) have plenty of competition from the likes of College Humor and Heavy et al–not to mention Google’s (GOOG) YouTube and Hulu–but they’re holding up quite nicely: ComScore (SCOR) pegs their audience at six million monthly uniques. Just as important: Minority owner Lionsgate Entertainment (LGF), which plunked down $21 million for a 40 percent stake in the company in 2007, doesn’t seem to be demanding a payout anytime soon.

Richman is now tackling another market that already has way too many competitors: Social games, dominated by the likes of Zynga, Electronics Arts (ERTS), and Playfish, etc.

No matter. Richman has hired a staff of 13 to kick off his games effort–you can get a taste of what he’s up to here–and says he’ll have a staff of 30 by March (most of them will be in China). Richman’s idea is simple: These games are hot now, but they’re only going to become bigger, so best to jump in while you still can.

Plus, you can iterate through this stuff pretty quickly–Richman’s team put together a supercrude and pretty popular “Tiger Woods Wife Outrun” game within three days of Woods’s car crash last fall–so the sooner you start, the more you can learn.

We talked about all of this in a brief chat last week in New York:

[ See post to watch video ]

Will a Web Video Star Shine at Sundance?

Peter Kafka — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:55:51 +0000

The next wave of media stars is supposed to rise up from the Web, but so far examples have been few and far between (how’s that Fred movie coming along, by the way?).

But here’s another Internet success trying to make the leap into the big time, which is still, like it or not, defined by traditional media outlets: Bobby Miller, whom some of you may know as the host of Next New Network’s “Reel Good Show,” is going to try to dazzle the judges at Sundance, where he’s gotten a short film he directed into next year’s festival.

Even winning an award at Sundance is no guarantee of anything, but it’s by far the highest-profile festival in the country, so showing up certainly can’t hurt your chances. And getting “TUB” into Sundance is an achievement itself, since only 70 shorts were accepted out of more than 6,000 submissions.

Next New Networks, which is supposed to be both a production house and distribution outlet for cheap, quick video, is also trying to make the leap from money-burning start-up to success story. But that’s a different story, and at some point, maybe not-so-newish CEO Lance Podell and I should chat about that.

In any case, here’s wishing Miller the best of luck. But it will be interesting to see when, if ever, a Web star who’s made it big in cyberspace turns down an opportunity to cross over.

Meantime, here’s an example of what Miller has been up to so far (note that he’s chatting up College Humor’s Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld, who are also working on the Web-to-something else leap)

And here’s a preview of “TUB.” The 23-second trailer has some Kevin Spacey/“American Beauty”/shower scene action, which may or may not be safe for work. Nothing explicit, though:

TUB – TubMovie.com from bobbymiller on Vimeo.

College Humor Dudes Grow Up, Move Into Dad's House

Peter Kafka — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:42:19 +0000

College Humor dude Ricky Van Veen has graduated from his old gig to a new one, running a TV and Web video production company for Barry Diller. But he’s not leaving his old crew behind: They’re about to pack up and follow him to Diller’s IAC headquarters.

I can’t remember the last time I wrote about a corporate real estate move before, but this one strikes me as interesting: Ever since Diller bought up College Humor in 2006, a big part of the site’s identity has been its distance from its corporate masters.

Diller and company worked out of a shiny and imposing new structure designed by Frank Gehry; his new charges got their own play room (one big enough to accommodate a taco truck) across town.

I always thought the College Humor guys got a better deal. The IAC building has great views and a lobby with a trailer-sized video screen, but it’s in a really inaccessible location along the West Side Highway at the edge of Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. College Humor’s real estate didn’t have an architectural pedigree, but its location near Union Square was really easy to get to–and a good place to host a beer pong tourney, if necessary.

Anyway, now you get to pick your metaphor. Either the College Humor guys are growing up and moving into an adult office or they’re boomeranging back to daddy.

Probably some of both. Diller has plenty of cash on hand at IAC (IACI), but there’s no reason to burn it on a lease when he has empty office space to fill.

And College Humor is an increasingly grown-up business. Two of the company’s four co-founders have moved on, and remaining co-founder Josh Abramson, who will continue to oversee his company, has been known to wear a pocket square.

Meanwhile Van Veen is running Notional, a new venture that is supposed to translate College Humor’s acumen at making funny, cheap and popular Web video aimed at twenty-something guys into a production company that makes cheap, popular Web video and TV shows for all sorts of audiences.

Here’s an interview I taped with Van Veen in his new building last month, where he noodles on the future of entertainment and explains how he and former NBC executive Ben Silverman will work together.

[ See post to watch video ]

Sharks, Jets, Page Views: "Web Site Story"

Peter Kafka — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:47:18 +0000

Midsummer, short week, which means things could be slow, newswise. Which means you may be seeing more of this sort of thing for the next few days. Here’s “Web Site Story,” College Humor’s latest.

Pretty self-explanatory, but I do want to commend the gents at IAC’s (IACI) video factory for:

Trying to broaden their demo to include theater people, as well as parents of theater people and parents of College Humor fans. And…
Using some SEO savvy. Name-checking Twitter, Facebook, Evite, eHarmony, Pandora and other Web favorites should help make up some ground this will lose on Digg. Where I assume most users will be bemused, at best.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Viral Video: Next Week on "Entourage"…The Exact Same Plot, Over and Over

Kara Swisher — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:00:20 +0000

Why can’t BoomTown stop watching the dopey machinations of the boys of “Entourage”?

Because, it’s always more of the same on the Time Warner (TWX) cable channel’s HBO show, which is oddly comforting.

And it’s a revelation that College Humor mocks perfectly in a very funny online video called “Every Week on Entourage.”

“So many twists and turns, you’ll forget they’ve been using the same formula for five seasons,” explains the humor site, which is proof that the truth is funnier than fiction.

Here is the video evidence (and don’t miss Vince as a tranny!):

College Humor Dudes' Newest Product: An Amazon.com Prank

Peter Kafka — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:27:23 +0000

The smarter-than-they-look guys at CollegeHumor.com attract some seven million unique visitors a month, are making smart strides in Web video and have their own show on MTV. And when they’re not doing that, they monkey with Amazon.

That’s why this fine Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt, available for as little as $9.78, became one of the online retailer’s most popular items in the last week. Prompted by a link at the IAC (IACI)-owned site, CollegeHumor readers bought up scads of the shirts, and filled Amazon (AMZN) with glowing reviews like these:

Unfortunately I already had this exact picture tattooed on my chest, but this shirt is very useful in colder weather…

This is the only t-shirt Chuck Norris wears. Wolves howl at the moon, and the moon howls at Chuck…

…So I’m looking for threads that say, “Hey baby…I’m real boss!” when I stumble upon this epic creation. The wolves spoke to me in a language all their own; it was like German, Mongol, and Bitchin all mixed together. I mean, one wolf howlin at the moon is major…but three???

Why bother? If you have to ask, you’re probably never going to get the joke. More info via the Washington Post, including the most pertinent detail: As clever as the CollegeHumor dudes are, they neglected to actually figure out how to profit from the stunt themselves.

Why Online Video Ads Still Don't Work

Peter Kafka — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:12:03 +0000

From the funny-and-true! department: A biting clip from the dudes at College Humor satirizing the lousy ad options and mind-numbing ad jargon that dominate the online video business.

And a good reminder that even though Google’s (GOOG) YouTube generates more than five billion streams a month and Hulu has grown 490 percent in the last year, no one has really figured out a good way to turn all those eyeballs into dollars. Yet.

A short cheat sheet: The guys on the left side of the table are College Humor co-founders Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen, who sold their company to IAC (IACI) in 2006, yet remain employed by Barry Diller. They’re also pretty sharp business guys, it turns out. The guys on the right side are Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld, College Humor employees who have had a long-running series of clips on the site. Dina Kaplan, who gets name-checked several times, is COO of New York-based video site Blip.tv, which happens to be the distributor of this clip.

Boxee CEO Avner Ronen Gets a Crash Course in the TV Business

Peter Kafka — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:00:50 +0000

When I first met Avner Ronen in January, the Boxee CEO was beaming. His Web video company was one of the breakout hits at the Consumer Electronics Show.

But when I had lunch with Ronen yesterday, he was much more subdued. Going head-to-head against the TV establishment can take the wind out of you.

In the span of two months, Boxee has gone from obscure start-up to an irritant or worse for the TV business.

That’s because Boxee, which makes it easy to sort and play video you grab from the Web, symbolizes a real threat for the established players: That one day, many consumers will consume most of their TV via video they find on the Web. And then they’ll cut TV networks and cable operators out of the picture.

That’s a long way from happening, but just the notion of it seemed to be enough for GE’s (GE) NBC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, which apparently forced their Hulu joint venture to stop working with Boxee last month.

Now Hulu and Boxee are in a cat-and-mouse game, whereby Boxee’s engineers try to find ways to get Hulu’s stuff onto their browsers and the Hulu guys try to stop them. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

Ronen isn’t optimistic that this is going to change anytime soon. He also says the past few months have taught him how little he knew about the media business prior to starting Boxee in 2007. Had he known how entrenched and complicated the relationships between broadcasters, programmers, cable networks and cable operators are, he says, he might never have tried to get the company going.

But Ronen still figures he’ll thrive in the long run. He notes that some big media companies that aren’t NBC and Fox–Netflix (NFLX) and Disney’s (DIS) ABC, for instance–have been happy to work with Boxee, or at least not to complain about the service.

I’ll let him explain why, and lay out Boxee’s future plans (which included a beta launch this summer and Boxee-enabled devices next year) in this video interview.

And if, like me, you’re going to be in Austin for South By Southwest on Saturday, you can ask him yourself, at a panel discussion where he’ll share the stage with College Humor’s Ricky Van Veen and B.J. Novak of “The Office.”

[ See post to watch video ]

A Taco Truck in the Office and a Dude in a Cage: Behind the Scenes at College Humor's New MTV Show

Peter Kafka — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:04:09 +0000

What do you do after launching your own comedy Web site, selling it to Barry Diller–and then, just as impressively, managing to stay employed by Barry Diller? You get your own TV show, of course.

Also, did I mention that Ricky Van Veen and Josh Abramson are still in their 20s? They are. But the College Humor co-founders are remarkably level-headed given their well-chronicled success so far.

That’s likely how they’ve survived multiple management shake-ups at Diller’s IAC/Interactive Corp. (IACI). And it seems to be why they can handle their day jobs while simultaneously producing a new TV show–which is shooting in their office.

The show is scheduled to start airing on MTV in February; Viacom’s (VIA) cable network has bought six episodes, but the boys are hopeful this will turn into a longer engagement. They gave me a brief tour of the office/set and talked to me about the show and the business in general yesterday. The upshot: Making content is hard. Also, you need to dress up if you’re going to the IAC Christmas party.

Note to demanding video viewers: Per your request, I’m trying to shorten these things up, but this is still a whopping six minutes long. So if you want to jump around: The dude in the cage is around the 1:30 mark, and the taco truck appears about two minutes in. Ricky says something off-color around 2:50, and Josh appears shortly after that.

[ See post to watch video ]

Here’s a College Humor best-of video announcing the MTV show:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

But here’s a clip that’s much more representative of what the site’s up to:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

How to Make a Viral Video: HBO Asks YouTube Users to Promote "Flight of the Conchords"

Peter Kafka — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:12:44 +0000

Viral videos–you-gotta-see-this clips Web surfers pass along to each other without any prompting–are every marketer’s dream. Except that making them is easier said than done, for obvious reasons.

Here’s HBO’s clever attempt: Use an existing video that’s already popular on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube and try to piggyback off of that.

Time Warner’s (TWX) pay cable channel’s “Flight Of The Conchords,” its comedy series about two Kiwi slacker/musicians trying to make it in New York, is already a YouTube sensation. So no need to reinvent the wheel: To promote the new season of the show, the channel is asking the site’s users to lip-synch their own versions of one of the show’s most popular clips.

The carrot: The best versions, collected here, will get mashed into a best-of compilation clip that will air after one of the new shows next year. To get things moving, Deep Focus, the interactive ad agency running the campaign for HBO, bought ads on a handful of video Web sites that specialize in comedy clips. And those sites in turn created their own versions, using sort-of-well-known folks like Andy Dick and College Humor’s Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld.

The promotion just kicked off last week, so it’s too early to tell whether any of the new clips will take off–and more important, bring HBO more viewers and/or subscribers. But at least give the channel credit for trying to harness the audience that YouTube and others have aggregated.

Here’s the original version:

And here are some pre-seeded takes…
College Humor (note the MTV crew in the background):

Funny Or Die:

Andy Dick’s Flight of the Conchords Lip Dub–watch more funny videos

My Damn Channel:

More Media Layoff/Shutdown Roundup: Time Inc., Forbes, NBC Universal, IAC

Peter Kafka — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:17:05 +0000

If you had any romantic notion that the beginning of holiday season meant an end to media layoff season, think again. In addition to the 850 Viacom (VIA) workers who are getting pink-slipped, this looks to be a particularly bad few days at Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc., where many of the titles that asked workers to quit last month will now be firing them instead.

The New York Post’s Keith Kelly has already reported that layoffs are in motion at People, Time and Sports Illustrated over the next few days; I am told that cuts are also coming to Fortune magazine today or tomorrow. Here’s a Sports Illustrated employee’s take on the situation there:

We are all expecting the hatchet Thursday or Friday. Morale is dismal. One colleague of mine, uber golf writer John Garrity, told several of us that he’s taking the package but will continue on for a while as a special contributor. We expect two or three photo editors to go, and two or three members of the Sport’s Illustrated Latino staff (the Spanish language SI publication, which posted a net profit of approx. one million in ’07 and broke even in ’08, was inexplicably shuttered). Also photographers are rumored to be being cut to half time service and members of our copy desk have been asked to take up to a 30% pay reduction for which they will work fewer hours. Charlie Leerhsen, one of our two executive editors, told a few staff members that he was going to be leaving.”

In other layoff/shutdown news:

I am told that Forbes (where I worked for many years), is in the final stages of planning cuts as it prepares to merge the editorial operations of its magazine and Web site units. Last month the company began integrating its business groups and laid off about three dozen people in the process.
GE’s (GE) NBC Universal has laid off at least 30 people in its sales group, reports AdAge. The cuts are part of a previously reported mandate from NBC CEO Jeff Zucker to cut three percent of the company’s budget. The Post says another 80 people could be fired at CNBC.
Barry Diller’s IAC (IACI) is breaking up its programming group, which includes ventures like College Humor, 236.com and Tina Brown’s DailyBeast.com. Some but not all of the sites will be closed down or sold off. PaidContent has details.

As always, I value reader input: You can reach me directly at peter@allthingsd.com. If you want to be completely anonymous, you can use the blind tip box here.