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CollegeHumor shuts down

washingtonpost.com

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Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#61

Post by ErikAugust »

CollegeHumor did not shut down, from the article itself:

“In words that I’m sure are as surreal to read as they are to type, I will soon become the new majority owner of CH Media,” said Reich, a longtime executive at CollegeHumor. “Of course, I can’t keep it going like you’re used to. While we were on the way to becoming profitable, we were nonetheless losing money — and I myself have no money to be able to lose.”

Dropout, its streaming service, will continue for at least the next six months while it churns out content already slated for release, Reich said. The future of CollegeHumor itself, and other humor sites run by the company, are less certain.

“In these six months, I hope to be able to save Dropout, CollegeHumor, Drawfee, Dorkly, and many of our shows,” Reich said. “Some will need to take on bold new creative directions in order to survive.”

The CH Media staff contracted from more than 100 to between five and 10 employees, according to Bloomberg News.

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#62

Post by synlatexc »

amylene wrote: post #45
slg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook faking viewership numbers is really an under-reported story. So many publishing companies had moderately successful business models. Then Facebook came along with their amazing viewership numbers. Everyone "pivoted to video", switched to targeting native Facebook views, and chasing those unbelievable viewership totals. The views ended up being well lower than reported which means the promising revenue never…

I am out of the loop, what were the Metrics that FB falsified? And how did they falsify them before the video was hosted on their site? Just trying to understand how their game numbers caused this post, and I can’t seem to make it connect.

FB's measure of views was dubious (3 seconds, even if the audio was off). So the #s looked great for them, but in reality the majority of views were just glimpses as people scrolled through their news feed.

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#63

Post by _ea1k »

RandomBacon wrote: post #57
rchaud wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Platform giveth, platform taketh away. There used to be a time where you actually had to go to collegehumor.com to watch the videos. Once everyone turned into sharecroppers on FB, Youtube or whatever, this was the risk they took.

IF Facebook didn't fake their numbers, then I would be inclined to agree.

Does it really matter? Why switch just for view numbers without a revenue model?

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#65

Post by redwall_hp »

echelon wrote: post #34
yoz-y wrote: post #33

Why does the article start with a false premise that "internet used to be fun" and "bygone era". Come on, if you don't want to follow Twitter drama just go to some other place. Ugh.

It's not a false premise for many of us. I miss the indie internet, before big corps and big tech started taking over. I miss IRC and forums and personal websites. I miss the time when Digg was new and hadn't taken over, and memes weren't the most upvoted content. When websites weren't all Javascript and Google wasn't Yahoo. MySpace and LiveJournal and Xanga were never as sterile as Facebook and Instagram. The intern…

Speaking of Technorati...the site Technorati. "The Web We Lost" pretty much sums up what I miss: https://anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/

The early 2000s had so much promise. The rise of reasonably easy to use blogging platforms, RSS, and web companies that were interested in playing in that world of distributed independent communication. Even Google was a different beast back then. It was the perfect balance: faster paced and more interactive than the days of manually editing files on GeoCities, but still mostly driven by indies doing things because they enjoyed it...instead of the cynical, marketing driven hellscape centered on siloed social media sites.

My pet hypothesis is that we had another Eternal September with the rise of the smartphone. Some of that amazing stuff is still out there, but it's drowned out by the firehose of corporatism and "normal" people. You can even see it with the shift in web sites aiming to be primarily consumed on a phone screen instead of a regular computer.

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#66

Post by rchaud »

yoz-y wrote: post #33

Why does the article start with a false premise that "internet used to be fun" and "bygone era". Come on, if you don't want to follow Twitter drama just go to some other place. Ugh.

There was a chart posted a while back about how consumer Internet traffic has changed in the past decade or so. Today, the majority of traffic flows through FB, Google or Netflix properties. 10 years ago, it was much more diverse.

With that loss of diversity comes loss of communities and cultures. CollegeHumor used to have all its videos on its own site. If you liked the site, you created an account and interacted with the community, which had its own culture as you wouldn't behave as you normally would on FB or Twitter.

With the pivot to FB, that's gone. Now, it's no longer a friendly conversation between people who have CH in common, it's a free-for-all comments section featuring everyone from spambots, trolls and random users who stumbled across the video and just have to add their 2c.

Numerous other forums and blogs, all with their own communities have suffered this fate. That is why the Internet isn't fun anymore.

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#67

Post by maemilius »

_ea1k wrote: post #63
RandomBacon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IF Facebook didn't fake their numbers, then I would be inclined to agree.

Does it really matter? Why switch just for view numbers without a revenue model?

View numbers were the revenue model. Eyeballs make money for advertisers. The more eyeballs, the more money.

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#68

Post by jlmorton »

40four wrote: post #36

Unrelated... but on the Washington Post I clicked through to the page that sells subscriptions, only to find that they hijack you back button and do not allow you to go back in your browser history. What a joke. Makes me want to never visit their site again. That is unacceptable.

That wasn't my experience (on Firefox, at least). It just opened in a new tab. The only history in that tab is the subscription page, so the back button doesn't work.

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#69

Post by riffraff »

mikepurvis wrote: post #51
slg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook faking viewership numbers is really an under-reported story. So many publishing companies had moderately successful business models. Then Facebook came along with their amazing viewership numbers. Everyone "pivoted to video", switched to targeting native Facebook views, and chasing those unbelievable viewership totals. The views ended up being well lower than reported which means the promising revenue never…

Relevant Twitter thread from Adam Conover ("Adam Ruins Everything"): https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1183209875859333120 An article about the settlement, including a link to the document itself: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/facebook-pay-40-mi...

what I don't get is, if they saw a high number of views on FB with no actual revenue, why didn't they revert to their previous behavior of just sharing links?

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#70

Post by bordercases »

ConsiderCrying wrote: post #50
Zhyl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some content creators are already doing this. I'm seeing more spinning up their own newsletters or RSS feeds, patreons, direct donations, subscriptions services (or completely independent platforms). There is an awareness of the dangers of putting your eggs in one basket, let alone the dangers of putting them in a basket as opaque and uncertain as Facebook. CollegeHumor had a lot of hits and spawned some genuine tale…

The problem with Patreon is that it's also getting quite bad for content creators (at least there were a lot of complaints about half a year ago) with the cut they take, the money transfers, and the fact that they've tried to ban adult content creators. It would have been fine if this was all stated/implemented right away but, much like many other platforms, they're doing this at a slow creep. There are alternatives…

Does this make an argument for crypto?
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