LonelyGirl Jessica Rose Returns

It was Jessica Rose who had the first Internet only video show hit, way back in 2006.

Lonelygirl15, if you'll recall, was the headline-grabbing video diary of a pretty teenager, later exposed by net detectives as a brilliant, CAA-backed fiction. The lonely girl was by no means alone -- she had a team of writers and producers behind her, and though the door was closed on lonelygirl15, the frontier of "webisodic" video was wide open.

The situation with open frontiers is that the people seeking to colonize them, to borrow a quote from Ms. South Carolina, simply "don't have maps." Which is why, almost two years after lonelygirl15, no Web series has established a viable, let alone profitable homestead. However, more wagons are now arriving. Sony Pictures Television just launched C-Spot:

From Crackle: Roadents: Episode 3

an online comedy channel featuring six sharply produced programs with enough short episodes to fill a 13-week season.

And Jessica Rose is planning a comeback too. The almost-21-year-old actress from New Zealand will soon return to the online world as the star of Blood Cell, a new horror-thriller from Web TV studio 60Frames Entertainment, directed by Eduardo Rodriguez. The show, whose trailer is now up on deadcelldeadfriend.com, follows Rose's character, Julia, as she contends with an unseen murderer who will talk to her only via her fancy photo- and video-enabled cellphone. Which hopefully gets good reception because, as the name of the website suggests, if Julia's signal goes dead, a blond somewhere gets dispatched for good. To build their online audience, C-Spot and 60Frames will "syndicate" their shows on Sony's Crackle (see this and my other previous posts), Hulu, and AOL Video; while 60Frames can be seen on Bebo, Blip.tv, iTunes, MySpace and others. And everyone's on YouTube.

Revenue-sharing deals allow the creators to get a piece of the advertising pie no matter where their shows get watched. 60Frames and Sony Pictures hope to find the answer to the overriding question posed by Web-only tv: In an entertainment world dominated by multi-hour, multi-night programs like American Idol, how do you win repeat viewers with three minute webisode.

Even though more of the big name studios are tempted onto the web, the question still hangs in the air: what will it take for large numbers of us (14-year-olds included) to feel like the computer screen with its blinking and ringing distractions is a good place to watch TV?

Cybercast credit: Crackle

Be a TubeMogul for Free!

For about a year now TubeMogul’s beta site has empowered online video publishers, advertisers, and the online video industry with its “Universal Upload” video distribution, publishing, and analytical tools.

While we signed up a good while ago, we have been waiting for them to shed the not-so-distinctive beta status before actually using the service. They seem to be getting close, so here is their pitch, in their own words:





There are a growing number of independent content producers like us, looking to build their brands on the path to stardom. Some you may already now: Average Betty, the comedy chef, magician Brian Brushwood, or Charles Trippy, one of the top video bloggers. Perhaps even more than the internet media companies producing content for the Web, we are hurt by the time spent with day-to-day "technology administration," such as file uploading and viewership measurement. Many of us spend up to 20% of our time in these activities, time away from the creative work needed to produce great content.

So what do you get with a free account?

• One-step upload to a growing number of sites: YouTube, Metacafe, Myspace, Yahoo, Revver, AOL Video, DailyMotion, and Brightcove at present.

• Increased reach: With your videos on more sites at no extra effort, your opportunity to gain viewers multiplies. TubeMogul claims that beta users of Universal Upload have witnessed up to 3x more views per video.

• Track Trends & Buzz: Create groups of videos important to you or your industry and track spikes in viewership to identify trends and monitor the pulse of online video viewers.

• Assess Marketing Efforts - assess the effectiveness of your marketing efforts by analyzing spikes and trends in viewership across any range of time.

• Competitive Intelligence - see what's working for your counterparts and competition and compare and contrast viewership trends with your own.

• Share the Intelligence - send and share data and charts with colleagues or friends.

Cybercast credit: TubeMogul and YouTube

Microsoft Knocks Itself Out Via SearchVideo

This true. I found out yesterday. Double checked today. On PCs with Windows you get to see only the Grey Rotating Arrow of Death, like this one:




for the SearchVideo widget I installed inder the logo in the right column a bare 2 days ago. However, it turns out about 95% of the videos found and served up by this new AOL search engine/service is for XBox 360 games, accompanied by lots of MS ads ;-(

LOL...and don't bother installing the very latest Flash player and browser: IE 7, Firefox 2, Opera 9 either. None works with this SearchVideo widget. Which is for the best, I swear. You can take my rotating arrow for it...if you are one of the lucky Windows users.