Tubefilter News

Popular tech demo and review series Soldier Knows Best popped up on Revision3 today, as a part of the network’s continuing strategy to cherry pick top YouTube channels like Epic Meal Time and Dan 3.0.

The long-running series (since 2008) boasts over 200,000 subscribers and nearly 50 million views on its YouTube page. Mark Watson, the series creator (and an actual Army reservist), hosts a fast paced show covering gadget news, unboxings, and gear reviews. His straightforward, no b.s. approach to product reviews has earned him a reputation as a trusted expert that is both knowledgeable and unintimidating.

“I first met Mark at CES this year, though I’d been a fan of his channel for quite a while,” said Ryan Vance, VP Programming and Production for Revision3. “He’s a great guy and I’m extremely excited to officially welcome him to the Revision3 family of shows!”

In the latest episode of Soldier Knows Best, which premiered on Revision3 today, Watson reviews the 2011 Astro A40 wireless gaming headset. New episodes air Tuesdays and

Weeks of prep, including beat by beat rehearsals for the multi-camera setup in their newly built Hollywood studio still can’t quite match the thrill of the first time. Today at 10 AM (PT) / 1:00 PM (ET), CBS News’ new weekly internet news show What’s Trending fires up its cameras for its big debut.

Host and EP Shira Lazar told us in our recent interview with her about the new that the high rigor her team is putting into getting it right is by design. “We wanted to do something that wasn’t just putting on a web cam or an unproduced live stream,” said Lazar. “We wanted to raise the bar and create a broadcast quality show online with the authenticity and interactivity of the web.”

The debut today of the half-hour series will feature actress and Dancing With the Stars contestant Chelsea Kane and Streamy-nominated political commentator Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks in the studio taking viewer questions—via Twitter, Facebook and the chat room—on the most talked about stories of the week so far. Like say, Newt Gingrich announcing he’s running for president, on Twitter no less. Also on the first show, via video chat, will be NPR’s senior strategist Andy Carvin and political strategist Joe Trippi will also be joining us on video chat to lend their expertise.

Its website has never been one of blip.tv’s strong suits.

The online video hosting, distribution, and advertising network of choice for thousands of creators of online original series has done a lot of things very well since its launch way back in 2005 – including helping to create an online video ecosystem that has the ability to elevate independent content creators from the level of amateur to professional, splitting video advertising revenue 50/50 with those content creators resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars paid out to them and their web series every quarter, and raising upwards of $18.3 million in funding – but creating an intuitive, easily navigable destination site that showcases all of blip’s excellent programming hasn’t been one of them.

That changes today. Blip.tv just debuted a new blip.tv that aims to be a discovery tool for the “best in original web series.” It sure is pretty. And it looks and feels a lot like a Hulu for online original programming, but there’s more to it than that.

Research and Testing Provides Cures for Paralysis of Choice

Blip spent the better part of last six years positioning itself as a resource and home for independent content creators. Because of that, the company’s accumulated a helluva lot of content, the quality of which has only increased over time. But blip wasn’t doing as good a job as it could at showcasing that content. The traffic at the site is substantial, but the powers that be thought it could be much better if more viewers had easier access to blip’s high quality programming.

The company knew it needed a new website, but it also knew in order to create the best website possible it needed to understand its current and potential audience.

So, what do you do when you’ve received over $18.3 million in funding and you want to conduct market research? You go to the best communication strategy firm in the business, Maslansky Luntz + Partners (the same guys and gals that coined the term “climate change” and work with international corporations like these ones).

Blip worked with Maslansky Luntz to identify the entertainment likes, wants, and needs of current and potential online video viewers. The results directly influenced the design of the new blip.tv. For one, the phrase “original web series” resonated better with all demographics than any other descriptive term tested for the type of content you’d find on blip (and that’s why you see it used around the site). And for two, the research gave a strong indication of what current and potential consumers of original web series are looking for.

“We asked people how they discover content,” Mike Hudack, CEO of blip.tv explained, “And what we found out was chaos and algorithms don’t work very well. People want a curated experience. Their perception of web video is there’s a ton of it and they don’t know how to find the good stuff. The people we surveyed don’t want to be spoon fed their choices, but they want to be told what’s good.”

Basically, individuals suffer from a paralysis of choice. So, blip is trying to make those choices easier.

Editorial Decisions Make Viewers Hit Play

Hudack and blip.tv COO Dina Kaplan told me content creators have uploaded roughly 50,000 original web series to blip. Of those 50,000, only 1,800 or so are currently featured on the company’s new destination site. (You can still reach the blip pages of those other 48,200 shows through direct links, but you won’t be able to find them by going to blip.tv.)

“It’s the difference between the Android Market and Apple’s App Store,” Hudack told me. “Sure, you can find great stuff in the Android Market, but not all of it’s going to work.”

Blip’s editorial staff of eight employees and growing makes sure all the web series on the new blip.tv work, but how does it decide? What does it take for your web series to get noticed from blip’s content curation team and receive their blessing to be placed on the site? A few things.

Great production values.
Consistent release schedule.
A cohesive brand.
Blip.tv isn’t only curating content for the new blip.tv, it’s doing its best to makes sure the medium is perceived as professional. The new site was designed to be aspirational for content creators as much as it was made to be a discovery and viewing platform for viewers. That’s why only great looking shows, conceived with some thought behind them, and released on a regular basis will be featured.

Have you ever wanted to take snaps on the same football field where Friday Night Lights’ Dillon Panthers used to toss the pigskin? What about stumble down the stairs from Exorcist? How about eat at that pizza joint from the opening credits of the Sopranos? (By the way, RIP Al Pawlowicz, aka the kindest purveyor of pizza ever). Or are you the pop culture equivalent of whatever you call those baseball fanatics who make a pilgrimages to every MLB stadium? If you answered yes to any and/or all of the ab0ve, The Onion’s A.V. Club has the online original travel series for you.

Pop Pilgrims is what Remote Control would look like if it was produced by Rotten Tomatoes and made for Travel Channel. Uber-geeks and cinephiles Dan Telfer and Brian Berrebbi share hosting duties as they travel in a pint-sized Fiat (which is also the show’s main sponsor) to 11 disclosed and one-fan decided metropolitan area. The two shoot three episodes in each city highlighting landmarks recognizable from the silver screen.

Their first stop is Die Hard’s Nakatomi Plaza (the building pwned by John McClane), which Los Angelinos also know as Fox Plaza. The Pop Pilgrims pick up film critic James Rocchi who drops some serious yippee ki-yay knowledge about Nakatomi and also provides enough Die Hard context and commentary to make you believe the flick could be in the running as a dark horse candidate for most classic LA film of all time. If you subscribe to Cinematical, you’ll dig it.

Ashton Kutcher is a man full of ideas—and to that, he also knows a good one when he see it. Back in February, the actor and entrepreneur dropped by the LA edition of Startup Weekend, a 54-hour no-sleep grindfest of tech entrepreneurs tasked with taking an idea from concept to launched startup in just one weekend. Out of it came some pretty clever products, like Zaarly, that Kutcher himself backed along with other investors.

That got Kutcher and partner Jason Goldberg and their team at Katalyst thinking. Could this same format be done with online video content ideas? That’s when they looped in a major sponsor, Intel, and came up with IdeaJam, a 48-hour event held April 1-3 with 48 digital filmmakers forming six teams tasked with pitching, creating, adapting, building, devising, and editing their ideas under the over-arching “What Inspires You?” theme. Now video from the event, shot documentary style, is released on IdeaJam’s YouTube channel showcasing how these teams pulled together some pretty captivating work.

Many of the participants are known to Tubefilter readers for their work in online video, like Rob Polonsky of ChadMattandRob, Leyna Weber and Annie Lukowski of Working Bug and Japhy Grant of Foodies.

We’re only two days away from Tubefilter’s second quarter meetup, The Digitour Debriefed! RSVP here right now.

The Digitour 2011, a 27-city national tour of top web stars with over one billion combined views and more than six million subscribers on YouTube, is finishing its six week tour, and its last stop will be the Tubefilter Meetup.

The Digitour reveals a new way for online talent to connect with, engage, and monetize fans—and proves that web celebrity translates to live audiences, just as “real” Hollywood stars and musicians do. The success of The Digitour may indicate the beginning of something big—really big—a major paradigm shift in the way studios, advertisers, networks, and investors will regard the online video industry.

Come join us as we get the download from the producers and top performers on The Digitour. Is this sustainable? Is there real money to be made here? How did the tickets sales go? How did they pull this off? Find out this Wednesday, May 18, at the Tubefilter Meetup.

Sponsored by Openfilm’s Are You The Next Web Celeb? contest, which launches May 18 from the Tubefilter Meetup.

Panelists:

Sarah Evershed
Executive Producer of The Digitour and President of The Cloud Media

Dave Days
#1 Most Subscribed of All Time – Musicians on YouTube
266,385,550 Views

DeStorm
#10 Most Subscribed of All Time – Musicians on YouTube
80,668,257 Views

MysteryGuitarMan
#8 Most Subscribed of All Time on YouTube
251,313,815 Views

The 64th installment of the Cannes Film Festival commenced on May 11, 2011 and concludes on May 22, 2011. Between those dates, President of the Festvial Jury, Robert De Niro and his fellow jurors (who make all the decisions on which films will and won’t screen in Southern France’s resort town) will preside over the festival’s glitz, glamour and screenings and award one director the prestigious Palme d’Or.

You can catch trailers from the flicks and HP-sponsored snippets of the festivities at the Festival de Cannes website, but you can’t watch a whole lot else. Apparently, whatever online video experience Robert De Niro’s developed over a few years of collaboration between his own Tribeca Film Festival and YouTube was lost in translation when he accepted the Jury President position at Cannes. You can watch some official selections from the festival on the web, just not a lot.

The National Film Board of Canada partnered with the Short Film Corrner at Cannes for its 7th Annual Online Film Competition. The NFB selected its top 10 Short Film Corner favorite to screen on its YouTube channel. Viewers are encouraged to watch and vote for their top choices with a thumbs up. The winner with the most thumbs pointed skyward will be announced on the channel and at Cannes on May 19.

My award for Best Use of YouTube by an Institution that Houses and Cares for a Collection of Artifacts doesn’t go to an internationally renowned depository of art showcased in a structure that’s equally as famous as the masterpieces on its walls. It goes to a museum that’s a little something special that exists under the umbrella of the oldest private medial society in the United States

The Mütter Museum (which was established in 1858 by Thomas Dent Mütter for the purposes of medial education and research) at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (which was established in 1787 by a group of Philadelphia physicians “to advance the Science of Medicine”) is home to a collection of diseased organs and genetic monsters (including President Grover Cleveland’s malignant tumor, wax castings of conjoined twins, and preserved fetal specimens), some of which, the strong stomached curators highlight on videos on YouTube.

Director of the Mütter Museum, Robert Hicks and Mütter Museum Curator, Anna Dhody both recently launched regularly scheduled online original series showing off intriguing items from their museum’s collections.

Hicks takes 60 seconds a week in his Mütter Minute to tease viewers with top billing items like a formaldehyded piece of John Wilkes Booth and fun museum fillers like an 18th century leech carrying case.

Dhody debuted a disturbing program last week that instructs viewers to Guess What’s on the Curator’s Desk. The premiere features a dull, elongated corkscrew intended for use on females only. Dhosdy displays the item and then asks you to leave your best ideas of WTF it is in the comments. She’ll give you the answer in next week’s installment, though I’m not sure if I want to know.