Blip.TV site relaunch is good for WebSeries Creators

BlipTV has been an important player in the rise (and mainstreaming) of online episodic series and this week they have relaunched and refocused their site. And the new face and new perspective should be very exciting to web-series creators as Blip becomes focused on being the Curator of the best of online TV.  It’s not a radical or revolutionary shift but it is an important one as it solves the problem of connecting shows with viewers from both ends.

At one end, viewers have a quality mechanism to find shows they like. Rather than the scattergun lowest common denominator of YouTube, BlipTV focuses on bring together in one place a broad spectrum of shows and then grouping them into discernible collections - largely around genre. Not rocket science but important. BlipTV is also working the same angle form the other direction. By bringing together their system as a dedicated channel - which really in essence  bares no great distinction from a cable channel broadcaster with online bells and whistles - they provide a single point of connection through which hardware manufacturers and other providers can funnel BlipTV content. BlipTV can now very viably be a button on your media centre remote, a channel on your internet connected TV, an icon on your PS3 or XBox360, an app on your ipad, a widget on your laptop. These very simple orientations are crucially important to move the Web-Series from being ‘different’ and the ‘other’, to being mainstream viewing on mainstream devices; it shifts web-series from stuff you watch at work, to stuff you watch anywhere including the lounge room at night with your feet up. Thats the convergence we’ve talked about for so long but which took so very long to actually arrive in a practical manifestation that leads to real cultural change.

The third simple factor is aggregation. The internet is a swirling cosmos of stuff that expands like the universe at a massive rate. To be more viable, personal, relevant and functional in wider viewing contexts than in front of the computer at work, it needs filtering. The radio DJ has played this role for many decades. Too much music for me to ever listen to so i use the DJ as my filter - I find a station and a DJ I like and listen to my music based on the idea of “I like what he likes”. YouTUbe in many ways is a poor aggregator because of it’s hands-off approach. ‘Likes’, comments and ratings serve as a kind of aggregation filter but their open sprawl descends into lowest common denominator banality very quickly. Blip.TV as with other dedicated ‘channels’ are looking for a better signal to noise ratio by having more direct filters. Barriers and gate-keepers are bad, but filters are good because whilst YouTube is about the Big Audience, BlipTV is about the Right Audience. You don’t need to be the loudest thing on the internet to be heard, you just have to speak to the right people - filters allow you to do that. Koldcast, My Damn Channel and BlipTV are giving good options for series creators to stop wearing out their voice box yelling on YouTube and find the right audience who want to listen.

A number of articles are starting to spread about the BlipTv change. The New York Times writes

“If you think professional video shows created exclusively for the Web are difficult to find, you’re not alone. Blip.tv, a video site that specializes in Web-created shows, has heard the same complaint from its users too. To fix this problem, the company reintroduced its Web site on Tuesday with a focus on curating the best video shows for its users.”

Mike Hudack CEO of BlipTV discusses the changes and the changing face of online TV.

It is indeed exciting times to be making WebTV and telling episodic stories. if you havn’t setup your BlipTV channel site, now is the time to grab your bit of real estate and start thinking about you can get the BlipTV Curator to highlight your show.