Latest by marcsiry: Free advice for HBO: Viral videos have one thing in common (besides crap production values): Authenticy.
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HBO is creating an Internet TV show called "Hooking Up" which will feature seven YouTube-famous personalities. Philip DeFranco and Kevin Wu? Yeah, we'd never heard of them — but their videos and those of five other lucky videographers picked by HBO have generated a total of 35 million views. Why would HBO, known for high-quality productions like The Sopranos, Sex and the City and The Wire, risk tainting a brand people actually shell out money for on their monthly cable bills? HBO parent Time Warner should have released "Hooking Up" on the AOL-owned social network Bebo, and let HBO stick with content worth paying for. Here are the videos that landed their stars, inexplicably, an HBO deal:
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As a a part of a deal to bring HBO shows to the iTunes store, Apple will allow a content producer to break its $1.99-per-show price structure for the first time, HBO employees involved in the deal told Portfolio. Last summer, Apple CEO Steve Jobs refused to allow NBC to do the same, so NBC boss Jeff Zucker took his shows elsewhere — to Microsoft and the Zune, specifically. Why did HBO get the deal while NBC didn't?
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Videoblogger Amanda Congdon, who was once famous on the Internet for being famous on the Internet, has returned from a noncareer at ABC and an as-yet invisible development deal with HBO to introduce Sometimesdaily.com, a series of Web videos about, as far as we can tell, making Web videos. At least Rocketboom, on which Congdon's bosom won her many fans, was about something, though we can't quite remember what.
We are growing concerned. After her career as an ABC nonjournalist fizzled, the formerly famous, generously-racked host of Rocketboom has been absent from her own blog since November 27. An "under development "show with HBO has gone nowhere. On January 23, Congdon Twittered that she was "writing monster blog post reflecting on ABC and talking about what's next." Amanda, 28 days is more time than even Scoble puts into a post. Just press Publish, ok?
IAC and the Huffington Post brought fake news site 23/6 out of beta today. It only took them two years to come up with this? The site features political satire and targets people in the news with articles, videos and photos. If this sounds familiar, it's possibly because HBO and AOL already tried the same concept out with This Just In, to which the Wall Street Journal compares 23/6. The Journal does not note that This Just In shuttered in September. Another reason for pessimism? The site hasn't sold out its inventory for launch. It's currently running ads for BustedTees, another IAC company. Seriously, what kind of crappy blog displays ads from its parent company's network?
The Internet just imploded: HBO, television's supposed savior, has paid "six figures" for the rights to a Second Life "documentary" titled "My Second Life: The Video Diaries of Molotov Alva." For the uninitiated, machinima, short films recorded entirely within the game world, is a rather popular genre among the videogaming set and usually parodies of the originating property.
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Valleywag
online video
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