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CollegeHumor shuts down

washingtonpost.com

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Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#131

Post by blackearl »

irjustin wrote: post #13
ASalazarMX wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. Did they abandon Youtube for Facebook? They could have easily managed their followers in Facebook while continuing to upload to Youtube as usual.

A large problem is content stealers. They'll post the entire video without attribution. Also Facebook for a very long time didn't do anything to prevent content stealing even with takedown notices there were too many. FB didn't have an automated system. College humour was basically forced to put their entire video just to retain views.

Not sure why I was flagged, @fatjewish was popular on twitter/ig/etc. and was nearly given a comedy central show until comedians complained that he stole jokes.

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#132

Post by nerevarthelame »

jedberg wrote: post #92

Presumably Sam now owns the rights to all the content. He could shop it around to Netflix/Hulu/Amazon. I’ll bet one of them would pick it up and maybe even give him a budget to hire some of the writers back and make new content again.

Their parent company, IAC, has been trying to sell CH for months now. I'm sure they tried shopping around Netflix/Hulu/Amazon. I'm skeptical that Sam on his own will be able to accomplish a more desirable deal than what IAC would've been able to get. (Skeptical, but hopeful.)

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#134

Post by Shish2k »

xamuel wrote: post #39
echelon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When I was growing up, I played on MUD games, which were text-based massively multiplayer games 100% free to play, with no ads or any other kind of monetization, with full staffs of admins, programmers (!!), level designers, and moderators, all 100% volunteers. Reading that now, it sounds like I'm describing some kind of crazy sci-fi utopia that couldn't even get published because it's too unbelievable.

Realms Of Despair (http://www.smaug.org/) is still running - last major update 2002, last update at all 2010 :P

`nc realmsofdespair.com 4000`

A CLI interface with no readline support; an MMO where you need to manually save your game to avoid losing progress whenever the network glitches for a second; very nostalgic :D

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#135

Post by reaperducer »

shadowgovt wrote: post #108
echelon wrote: post #24

CollegeHumor is blaming this on Facebook for faking viewership numbers. This isn't the first time Facebook killed culture, and it won't be the last. We really need to de-platform or find a way Facebook can't steal value.

I'm extremely torn between "This is an outrage" and "Buyer beware." Nobody forced College Humor, Funny or Die, or any of the other companies that shifted resources to believe Facebook. They took a calculated market risk and the gamble didn't pay off (and they don't have enough reserve capital to survive a failed gamble). In an ideal market, the back-stop on this behavior would be "Nobody trusts Facebook's self-report…

Nobody forced College Humor, Funny or Die, or any of the other companies that shifted resources to believe Facebook.

Yep. Their mistake was they believed the hype. A bunch of publishers did. "Facebook is the future!" and 90% of newsrooms started pushing their original content to Facebook, sacrificing their own ad views.

Fortunately, most of the big J players have seen the folly in this already and reversed course. Usually they build their own platform because they have many media properties. But I see a lot of small market and independent publishers still stuck in the "Facebook is king" mentality because of middle managers who are still stuck in the old echo chamber.

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#136

Post by shadowgovt »

vkou wrote: post #126
shadowgovt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and that's the meta-story. "Ad-supported business models are fragile."

Do you have a better business model that has been proven to work for monetizing the kind of content CH made? People won't pay for a subscription for that, people won't donate enough to keep the business afloat, and people don't actually want to use attention tokens/microtransactions. A lot of people claimed that these alternatives work, but I've yet to see a business prove that they actually work.

It's possible that for the kind of content CH creates, a better business model doesn't exist.

It's tough to make a living being a comedian. Especially in an era of deeply-interconnected communication where "everyone's a comedian."

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#137

Post by [deleted] »

shadowgovt wrote: post #108
echelon wrote: post #24

CollegeHumor is blaming this on Facebook for faking viewership numbers. This isn't the first time Facebook killed culture, and it won't be the last. We really need to de-platform or find a way Facebook can't steal value.

I'm extremely torn between "This is an outrage" and "Buyer beware." Nobody forced College Humor, Funny or Die, or any of the other companies that shifted resources to believe Facebook. They took a calculated market risk and the gamble didn't pay off (and they don't have enough reserve capital to survive a failed gamble). In an ideal market, the back-stop on this behavior would be "Nobody trusts Facebook's self-report…

[deleted]

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#138

Post by dwild »

Waterluvian wrote: post #91
ErikAugust wrote: post #61

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.” Dr…

I don't follow. How is that not "shutting down"? It's contracted to life support in order to empty the existing pipeline to minimize losses. Maybe this is a Ship of Theseus kind of thing. They get rid of almost all employees, empty the pipeline, and then retool. What's left of College Humor?

> It's contracted to life support in order to empty the existing pipeline to minimize losses.

Is it really life support? Or simply, what is always should have been?

Do you really need 100 staffs for College Humor? For the production side, sure you may need quite a bit of staff for each individual production, but once a production is done, you no longer need them, but you still have to pay them. How long you'll have to pay them will be mostly based on luck (what are the odds that you can always produce something that require each individual staff qualification...).

It makes much more sense to have a minimal team, and then hire on a contractual basis based on the production needs.

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#139

Post by jedberg »

nerevarthelame wrote: post #132
jedberg wrote: post #92

Presumably Sam now owns the rights to all the content. He could shop it around to Netflix/Hulu/Amazon. I’ll bet one of them would pick it up and maybe even give him a budget to hire some of the writers back and make new content again.

Their parent company, IAC, has been trying to sell CH for months now. I'm sure they tried shopping around Netflix/Hulu/Amazon. I'm skeptical that Sam on his own will be able to accomplish a more desirable deal than what IAC would've been able to get. (Skeptical, but hopeful.)

Sam might be willing to take a lot less money than IAC.

Re: CollegeHumor shuts down

#140

Post by manigandham »

shadowgovt wrote: post #109
ceejayoz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the revenue will have been CH directly selling ads (sponsorships, product placement, etc.) based on those inflated viewership counts.

... and that's the meta-story. "Ad-supported business models are fragile."

Not they aren't. Facebook and Google are advertising businesses, and two of the most valuable companies in the world.

Poorly executed business models based on faulty data and no clear profitability are fragile.

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