Tubefilter News

ady, Set, HBO Go! Time Warner’s HBO network is one of the first pay subscription channels out of the gate to make (some) of their content available to HBO subscribers online. Time Warner, along with Comcast, are proponents of TV Everywhere, which aims to offer cable subscribers access to their shows online as well as via their TVs. [Mashable]

Google Buzz Update: Privacy Concerns, New Fixes and a Few Law Suits Too. Since Google’s new social network, Google Buzz launched last week, its engineers and PR team have been busy addressing privacy issues. These concerns stem from Google’s naïve assumptions that high-frequency contact between Gmail users means that users want these folks in their personal social network and also want them publicly acknowledged as a connection. This is an unusual example of Google being out of touch with consumers. [SFGate, Silicon Alley Insider, Google blog]

Free mobile digital TV is on the way. So far, 30 local TV stations have invested in new technology that lets them tap into the digital broadcast spectrum to push their local news, weather and sports to viewers who have new TV-DVD mobile devices, which will be available starting in April. [New York Times]

Heard of Coke Zero? Here comes Facebook Zero. This week at the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, industry executives met to discuss all things mobile and announce new products. It was here that Facebook announced a new text-only Facebook mobile site that will be formally introduced over the next few weeks. [Inside Facebook]

Amazon and Apple are gearing up to battle for e-reader market share. Don’t want to splurge for an Apple iPad or Amazon Kindle to read electronic versions of your favorite books? Then check out Amazon’s free new Kindle app for BlackBerry users. [Associated Press]

Attending SXSW Interactive next month? You can keep track of your friends onsite by using mobile apps such as Foursquare and GoWalla. But if you want to know precisely where they are sitting in a conference session, check out SitBy.US. [ReadWriteWeb]

Gaming consoles begin original programming. Sony announced their first interactive episodic Web show, First Play, for gamers using PlayStation 3 consoles connected to the PlayStation Network. First Play episodes will be available to UK gamers every week from March onwards, followed by a roll-out across Europe. The show will contain previews of the latest games and access to exclusive downloadable content. No word on whether or not a US roll-out is planned. [MediaWeek]

When HBO first threw some cash—a few million—into Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and and Chris Henchy’s web comedy upstart Funny or Die back in mid 2008, the signs of something more than Landlord re-runs and user-submitted prank videos were in store. The seedlings of a broader comedy enterprise were sown, one that attracted that unique alchemy of Silicon Valley—blue-chip VC firm Sequoia Captial is their primary investor—and the Hollywood entertainment establishment in a way no other web video startup has managed to mimic.

Now the fruit HBO deal is finally starting to appear. This Friday (February 19) at Midnight marks the debut of the 12-episode half-hour comedy series Funny or Die Presents on HBO. The series itself is a series of web series—re-shot for television—in individual segments ranging from 1 to 15 minutes a piece. Many of those segments are well known by web series junkies, with shows like Derek Waters’ Drunk History and 60Frames’ Carpet Brothers dusted off for a TV close-up.

Each episode opens with host Ed Haligan (played by Safety Geeks’ Steve Tom), the conspicuously titled “Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Funny Or Die,” welcoming viewers from a retro computer lab filled with buzzing mainframes and bombshell operators. Naturally, the show is laden with comedy celebs, many of them regulars on Funny or Die—Don Cheadle, Fred Willard, John C. Reilly, David Spade, and Between Two Ferns star Zach Galifianakis, along with up-and-comers on the comedy scene.

HBO actually let us make the show we wanted to make,” said Adam McKay about the project. The roots of the team behind this one point that it won’t just be paying lip service to what’s made waves from internet viewers. The show’s producer, Jonathan Stern, is himself a Streamy-nominated web veteran for shows like Horrible People, Wainy Days and Childrens’ Hospital, and has carved out one of the web’s most impressive track records.

Funny or Die’s CEO Dick Glover said at a recent event hosted by the The Paley Center that he really is building a multiplatform content studio, where the destination site itself (FunnyorDie.com) is just one piece. There’s even a feature film in production in the company’s pipeline, that still rests without any formal distribution deals. Glover noted at the event that they are exploring a pay-per-download system on Funny or Die where viewers can pay $5 to watch the entire film.

One of the things that initially fascinated me with storytelling on the web was that it had no rules. Who knew a girl talking to a web cam would engage thousands to try to come to her aid? Or that French maids explaining how to change the oil in a car could grow into one of the most successful examples of product integration? As the community of web creators continues to grow and try to find the key to financial success, the internet space has become littered with series with similar formats, plotlines, and integration attempts and the margin for originality has become smaller and harder to find.

HBO, following up on its acclaimed “HBO Voyeur” project, has decided to push that envelope…not only that, it’s attempting to create an entirely new type of envelope. Like a space-age teleporting envelop that doesn’t even need to be pushed…

To become a part of this unique new form of storytelling, start by visiting HBOimagine.com. There you will be introduced to the HBO Cube. According to an HBO press release, “The HBO Cube … offers four different perspectives on the same scene, simultaneously. In telling the same story from four distinct points of view, each side of the cube stands alone as an engaging film, and as one piece of a larger puzzle. As viewers move around the cube, they watch the story unfold from different perspectives, forming different perceptions, and often misperceptions, of the characters and plot. Only by watching the story unfold from multiple sides of the cube can we begin to see the bigger picture.” A giant 4-sided version of The Cube was even on display in New York, DC and Philadelphia, with scenes directed by Noam Murro.

This unfolding story contains two of these “Cubes”, each 2:00 minutes in length. They each play twice successively, and you can rotate the cube to see each angle of the story at your discretion. One cube titled “The Affair” centers around a husband, wife, maid, and a mysterious half-naked man and the other, simply called “Heist” shows the execution of a meticulously organized crime. The cubes are connected by an additional 41 pieces of content that include both short- and long- form video, news stories, images, and audio files. As you navigate the content, a status bar tracks your progress and once every piece of content is unlocked, you are taken to a new page that contains a final video that connects the pieces together in a more traditional, linear fashion.

Rumors are circling the web television and online video scene that HBO’s Runaway Box, the online comedy production outfit known for Elevator, Man in the Box and YouTube celeb-laden Hooking Up along with other web series, has been acquired. Sources close to the situation confirm that an acquisition has gone forward, with March 1st being the official transition date. The buyer is said to be a well known company in the web video community.

The move follows what we’ve heard to be a shift towards higher-end digital content for HBO, keeping with the network’s strategy as a premium entertainment brand. The comedy veterans, led by Woody Tondorf, Andrew Zilch and Mike Polk at Runaway Box were quick to find a new home however especially after netting an impressive 25 million views for their series, according to video analytics firm TubeMogul. It’s not known whether HBOlab director Danila Koverman will be heading out with the Runaway Box team.

Will Ferrell’s online comedy vid site Funny or Die received a $3 million gift from an undisclosed single benefactor for “in-kind contributions for marketing, publicity and promotional support for programing,” according to a regulatory filing reported by Reuters (thanks for the tip Perez Hilton).

Especially given today’s recessive economic climate, this news certainly indicates that web entertainment is here to stay. Earlier this year Portfolio Magazine reported $15 million investment into the site. Funny Or Die recently sold a small equity stake to HBO in June, with the intention to develop a “more-traditional-type sitcom,” Ferrell told Daily Variety. Perhaps we’ll see more Streamys worthy web series coming from the mostly one-off vid site.

According to an official post yesterday on the Flight of the Conchords page on Funny Or Die, the first episode of Season 2 of the quirky HBO comedy will premiere on the humor site on December 17th, almost a full month ahead of its network launch in January 2009. HBO had announced a second season for Flight of the Conchords in August 2007 with a premiere set for 2008, but then delayed the launch sometime in 2009.

The Emmy-nominated television series about a pair of hipster Kiwi musicians trying to make it big in New York found a strong cult following on the tube and online, but never achieved mass scale audience.

We attended the AFI Digifest yesterday, where HBOlab gave us a preview of their season finale cliff hanger of Hooking Up. I smell second season. A few hints: Meg (Jessica Rose) may be facing a big break-up, but she’s not going to end up lonely.

If you’ve been deeply following the show (i.e. you’re friends with Hooking Up on Facebook or better yet the show’s own social network: Baskbook) you know about the character of Dylan’s hidden plot line, or in TV-speak, the show’s b-story. Dylan met Meg at freshman orientation, they hooked up, and he’s been trying to get her attention every since. If there is a second season of Hooking Up it’s safe to say Dyan’s day is coming.

But perhaps the bigger question is, has Hooking Up been a successful experiment? It’s safe to say that so far HBOlab has ventured into the land of web television somewhat cautiously. Speaking at Digifest, HBOlab Director Danila Koverman says the name Runaway Box was created so that HBOlab could experiment, and “fly under the radar.” Hooking Up is the first show out of HBOlab show to get more heavily branded as HBO.

Additionally, to differentiate the show from other college themed web series, HBO brought together web celebs like Jessica Rose (lonelygirl15), KevJumba, Sxephil, DaveDays, and Michael Buckley, highly touting the millions of views they had garnered on the web in a trailer advertising the show.

Man in a Box is a hilarious series from HBO Labs’ Runaway Box, created by Cleveland-based comedian Mike Polk, who also plays Greg