AllThingsD » Josh Abramson

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.

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 ]

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.

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.