Tubefilter News

Jon Chu’s epic dance saga, The LXD, has officially launched in Australia on the revamped Joost website after a successful run on Hulu in the U.S. earlier this year.

Paramount Digital Entertainment partnered with RedLever’s Sydney office to bring Sprite on board as the show’s sole sponsor. Joost, which was purchased by RedLever’s parent company Adconion earlier this year, will distribute all 10 episodes of the first season through its destination video website (yes, another one) as well as through custom iPad and iPhone apps.

Additionally, episodes will be distributed through Adconion’s advertising delivery network which boasts 310 million global impressions daily, according to its website. The ad delivery network was previously reserved for the display of static banner ads, but now houses rich media widgets which expand upon mouse roll-over to display videos – a method described by RedLever as “push” distribution.

The launch of The LXD in Australia represents a model that RedLever will hope to repeat. Managing director Sam Smith says, “With its enormous success in the US and passionate fan base, The LXD also offers a great platform for forward thinking brand Sprite to reach a highly engaged audience.”

RedLever, which describes itself as “a state-of-the-art creative production house specializing in high-quality, branded online content…and targeted distribution,” is currently preparing to target advertisers in the new year with the launch its first slate of local Australian series catering for a range of demographics. Its position as part of the Adconion Media Group means it will continue to leverage off of the Adconion ad network as well as Joost for content distribution.

On the Christmas episode of Glee, the McKinley High Glee Club went to extraordinary lengths to protect Brittany S. Pierce’s (Heather Morris) belief in Santa Claus, going so far as to convince the football coach (Dot-Marie Jones) to break into her house in full St. Nick regalia.

While their efforts were ultimately successful, they could have saved some trouble, although, at the expense of some wacky high school high-jinks, if they had simply paid a visit to the Portable North Pole.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and this year you can receive a personalized message from him. The Portable North Pole is a website that, with just a little user input, creates a customized video message from Santa Claus, which can be shared with any number of recipients. There are numerous scenarios to choose from, including a visit to Santa’s reindeer training center or a stroll through the Elves’ secret ice hall. The result is a video clever enough to amaze or impress both young and old alike.

The level of customization is impressive. Users begin by selecting the appropriate age or relationship with the intended recipient. This allows one to send messages that are appropriate for either a child or one’s business partner. Once selected, one simply needs to fill out a few questions. There is even an option to choose how naughty or nice the person has been. Lastly, to further enhance the experience, pictures of the recipient may be added along with messages about various events throughout the year. The whole process takes less than a few minutes.

Youtube may not be the internet’s social network with the most sophisticated commenters, but it’s commenters are certainly the most active.

The Top Ten Most Discussed YouTube videos of 2010 elicited more than 1,486,000 critiques, constructive criticisms, racial slurs, repeated lines of dialogue, LOLs, emoticons, and other textual observations left by viewers so moved by what they say they had to leave a remark.

Two of the Top 10 Most Viewed YouTube Videos of 2010 made the Most Discussed list (Bed Intruder Song and Double Rainbow), showing that you need something more than a catchy pop song, hit web show, or highly anticipated movie trailer to incite feedback and review. Unless of course the catchy pop sing is sung by a 13-year-old Texan (#2 Most Discussed at 177,000 comments), the hit web show stars Ryan Higa (#3 at 171,000), and the move trailer is part of the Harry Potter franchise (#10 at 87,000).

If topping the YouTube’s Most Discussed charts in 2011 is part of your New Year’s resolution, take a play out of CopperCab’s playbook. Start watching South Park. Find a minority group that’s the main object of derision in an episode. Make sure you’re a member of said minority group. Record an impassioned, semi-hysterical plea, stating why whatever South Park said about your minority group is wrong. Watch the comments come in. Repeat.

Ok, ok, settle down web video fans, “Quick Clicks” is back by popular demand. (Who knew, you fine readers actually prefer reading fewer words per story..)

Ryan Higa, aka nigahiga, the number 1 most subscribed channel on YouTube officially cracked the 3 million subscriber mark, making his the first ever channel to do so. It comes just a year after taking over the top spot from longtime topper Fred. Could it be Higa’s starring role in WongFu’s YouTube 35-minute film Agents of Secret Stuff that put him over the edge? Naturally, he made a video to commemorate. [nigahiga on YouTube]

The Guild: Season 4 hits Amazon and iTunes today just in time (we think) for the holidays. It might be too late for free shipping, but for true Guild fans this may be worth the extra loot since it won’t hit retail stores until February 22. Bonus features on the $10.99 DVD include the “Game On” Music Video, The Making of the “Game On” Music Video, Back to Cheesybeards featurette, Oh Mommy! featurette focusing on Avinashi (Zaboo’s Mom), the Cheesybeards commercial and more. [The Guild on Amazon]

It began as something akin to flash mob of web video stars on YouTube. A hack. It was pure grassroots—based on the idea that a concerted, coordinated effort to make—and then promote—videos around a single topic all in the name of charity. But since its humble beginnings in 2007 in the YouTube underground, the annual charity fundraiser known as Project for Awesome started by The Vlog Brothers—Hank and John Green—caught the attention of YouTube itself and raised over $140,000 this year for dozens of charities.

“In 2007 a group of people got together and we hacked YouTube,” said Hank Green. “There’s a lot of ways to put it but I think that’s the simplest. We used all the tricks we had learned as YouTubers to help our videos get more views. And we used those tricks more than we would have ever used those tricks normally. And while this would have felt underhanded and maybe a little bit dirty if we were just doing it to grow our video views—instead it felt awesome, because we were doing it for charity.”

Now in its fourth year, Project for Awesome isn’t quite as subversive as the brothers went right to YouTube corporate to enlist their help in broadening its reach. Anyone can create a video, and pick their own charity to support amongst the diverse set of worthy orgs in on the action like Water.org, Toys for Tots, Save the Children, Make A Wish, The Open University and Beat Bullying.

Single Serving Films, the group behind the humorous music video “Drop The The” (The Social Network Song) poking fun at ex-Facebook President Sean Parker (which has been gaining momentum since it was recently featured on TechCrunch), has released a new daily series, 60 Second Movie Ideas.

The delightful series, hosted by Single Serving Films’ Dan Hernandez & Benji Samit, is a vlog-style series in which the duo sit on a couch and pitch a different movie idea to “Hollywood” every day. The production value is minimal—they are clearly recording from their apartment—but the pair’s rapport and pacing is captivating. The way they sell their movie ideas, with alternating enthusiasm and nonchalance, just works. And at 60 seconds, the videos are hard to resist.

The format of the program is as follows: after a brief introduction, the two finish each other’s sentences as they describe the plot, leading into a conflict. After the resolution is explained, they pitch the project as the combination of two real movies, building up to the final moment in which they reveal the movie’s title. All the while imaginative, colorful sound effects and score accompany the pitch.

For example, the duo pitch a movie about an injured racehorse who is rehabilitated by the owner’s young daughter through competitive ballroom dance: “We think of it as Seabiscuit meets Step Up 2: The Streets. We call it: Hoofin’ It.”

60 Second Movie Ideas comes out every day.

Delicious may still survive, but user generated content on Yahoo Video will not.

Yahoo announced last week, amidst a flurry of press related to the internet and online services conglomerate cutting and merging some of its major products, it will no longer allow users to upload content to its video site. And, come March 14, 2011, it will completely remove all UGC from Yahoo Video. Here’s the official notice:

On December 15, 2010 the functionality to upload a video to Yahoo! Video was removed and a download utility, available through March 14, 2011, was added to users’ video profiles to allow retrieval of content. The user-generated content will be removed from Yahoo! Video on March 15, 2011. We apologize if this causes you any inconvenience.

At one point in time, Yahoo put up a decent fight against YouTube for supremacy in the realm of user-generated content, but it’s long since settled into a distance second place on the US Online Video Rankings charts. Yahoo, no doubt, is hoping Flickr video will capture some of its lost Yahoo Video market share, but I also think the company is happy to be done with UGC, especially since its professionally-produced video content is doing so well.

As we close out 2010, AOL has been busier than Congress this month with a flurry of new deals for us to chew on before New Year’s. The latest is a key talent hire in bringing on Amber J. Lawson as the company’s new Head of Video Programming. Lawson will oversee AOL Studios, AOL Video hub, AOL.com and deals with 3rd party production companies making original content for the network. More specifically, she’ll now have about 566 million video streams a month to look after.

The hire takes Lawson from her post at online network Babelgum where she was the Comedy Publisher, growing the site’s comedy channel into a respected curation of comedic shorts and series. Notable pickups include Streamy Award-winner Kevin Pollak’s Vamped Out and the popular Kids Reenact series from Landline TV.

Much of AOL’s new focus on original web video can be tracked to David Eun, the new president of AOL’s media and studios division, who came on board after leading global content partnerships for Google/YouTube. With a user base of over 100 million uniques in the U.S. and close to 250 million globally, Eun’s new strategy for AOL is to slim down the 80-plus AOL sites into 17 advertiser-friendly verticals dubbed “super networks,” running across just 30 sites.