The Funny or Die Landlord

What took YouTube to do in six months, Funny or Die did in six days. Its traffic exploded after the release of its first 2-minute clip,





The Landlord, starring Will Ferrell. The video drew almost 24 million views. This would be in YouTube’s top three of all time.

So what is Funny or Die you ask? (In beta, which seems to be another way of saying we are not responsible for either our success or worse....) Imagine a site just like YouTube, except that the people posting videos are successful comedians and actors. Specifically, Will Ferrell and writers Adam McKay (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby), and Chris Henchy (Entourage) to start with.

Their take is that there are only so many stupid human tricks people will watch and the future of online video isn’t clips of TV shows or movies. It is talented writers and well known actors producing videos for the online environment. Audiences will flock to their content and sites versus the vast majority of what's endearingly known as "long tail plays" on YouTube. So far they are right on the money. Literally. Comments, anyone?

P.S. Their videos are NOT embeddable. A drag and stupid too, in my view.