A look at MySpaceTV's new direct-record tool.
(Credit: MySpace)MySpaceTV, the video-sharing section of News Corp.'s MySpace, has announced the addition of direct video uploads. This means that you can now sit in front of your Webcam, navigate to MySpace, and hit a "record" button, blab on incessantly about how the Jonas Brothers are ruining American youth, and you've got yourself a piece of Web video.
Many other video-sharing sites, including Google's YouTube, have similar features already. The real advantage to the presence of direct uploads on MySpace, however, is the fact that they can then be quickly embedded in member profiles, "bulletins," and comments, capitalizing on the fast-growing video commenting trend.
MySpace also announced that MySpaceTV videos' maximum file size has been extended to 512 megabytes; that's half of what YouTube allows, but YouTube also caps them at 10 minutes in length, which MySpaceTV does not.
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MySpaceTV)
MySpaceTV, the video platform run by the popular social network, announced Tuesday the launch of Special Delivery, a new hidden-camera reality show.
The premise of Special Delivery's short videos is to catch delivery employees (pizza, packages, and the like) in awkward situations, roping them into stunts like "Would you do a birthday dance for my dog?" and "Will you help me propose to the love of my life?" Naturally, there's a camera hidden somewhere so it's all caught on film.
Special Delivery is the second project that MySpace.com has co-developed for its video platform, which launched last June. The first was faux-reality show Roommates. The new program was created in association with a company called Avalon TV, whose executive producers are Jason Irwin and Garth Holsinger
The programming on MySpaceTV has varied extensively in quality and reception. Prom Queen, created by former Disney czar Michael Eisner's production company, got a decent amount of buzz but Eisner admitted it wasn't profitable. The scripted drama Quarterlife, a project from the team behind My So-Called Life and Thirtysomething, was enough of a success that NBC picked it up amid the Writers Guild of America strike. But Roommates, created exclusively for MySpace, debuted to cringe-worthy reviews.
MySpaceTV also syndicates content from professional distribution partners like National Geographic and The Onion, as well as Hulu, the joint venture between NBC and MySpace parent company News Corp. The site additionally hosts an extensive amount of user-generated video.
MySpace.com is testing out the director's chair with a new Web-based series, Roommates, which debuts Monday at 1 p.m. PDT. Through December 21, a new three-minute episode of the show will be available each weekday on the MySpaceTV portal and through the Roommates profile page.
When college ends, the real party begins? Can somebody make sure my boss knows that?
The series, co-created by MySpace and new-media production studio Iron Sink Productions, marks the first time that the News Corp.-owned social-networking site has been behind the development of a scripted Web show. Roommates is a show within a show, as four recent college graduates move to Los Angeles and enlist in an uber-surveillant reality show while four of their other friends observe from their "real lives." They are, naturally, all good-looking females with penchants for strappy tank tops.
MySpace users will be invited to participate in the creative process, said Jeff Berman, general manager of the MySpaceTV division. "They'll be able to help shape story arcs," he said. "We're going to see some of the best creative ideas for the show come from our users." There will also be a polling tool, similar to the ones that MySpace has been using for its presidential dialogue Webcasts, to gauge audience opinions of the plot and characters. "It's not quite Choose Your Own Adventure," Berman explained, "but it's the MySpace version of it."
Advertisements for the show are provided by Ford as part of its campaign for the 2008 Ford Focus car.
Roommates isn't the only Web-based series that MySpace has on the way. Coming on November 11 is the drama series Quarterlife, which wasn't actually created by MySpace. The latest project from Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life creators Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, Quarterlife simply has a distribution deal with the social network.
But Roommates is pure MySpace. A release from the social network said that it "will retain creative control over all aspects of the show's development--including casting, story development, location scouting, wardrobe, and more--allowing the company to create the series exclusively with the MySpace audience in mind."
There will be more professional content coming to MySpaceTV soon, Berman hinted. "We're launching our partnership with Hulu in the next few weeks to bring network content to our users," he said, referring to the joint online video venture between NBC Universal and MySpace parent company News Corp.
NEW YORK--Marshall Herskovitz, co-creator of the upcoming Web series Quarterlife, calls his decision to distribute the show on MySpace.com a "deal with the devil."
At a Thursday screening of the first six eight-minute episodes of the show as part of the CMJ Music Marathon and film festival, Herskovitz--best known as one half of the team that created the critically acclaimed TV series Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life--emphasized his aim to bring creativity to the world of professional online video.
'Quarterlife' protagonist Dylan, played by Bitsie Tulloch
(Credit: MySpaceTV)"What I'm seeing on the Internet right now is really boring, and I think these big companies are missing it in a big way," he explained in a question-and-answer session following the screening. "All these new things, Hulu and even Joost, they're creating these platforms as though that's the goal. But they're not creating interesting programming. They're reusing content from television."
He continued: "There aren't any very good ideas coming out of it, and I haven't seen anything that really interests me."
Then, according to Herskovitz, there's the YouTube problem.
"People are quite fascinated by user-generated content on the Internet right now, and I'm not against that. And we want that on our site. But I believe that user-generated on the Internet, just like reality shows on television, are not completely satisfactory," he asserted. "There are reasons why we've had classical storytelling for 2,500 years, and across so many cultures. And there are reasons why we've had a film grammar for the past 100 years about how we shoot a film, and there's a place for that."
Which is why he and Zwick saw a window of opportunity for Quarterlife, a series about a half-dozen 20-somethings working in "creative" industries like acting, writing and filmmaking. Divided into eight-minute episodes, the Web series will be the center of a planned social network for fans as well as young creative people in general.
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A promotional photo of 'Dylan,' the cute protagonist of 'Quarterlife'
(Credit: MySpaceTV)We reported back in July that MySpace in the midst of a deal with the creators of the movie Blood Diamond to create a new Web-based program called Quarterlife. At the time, it wasn't confirmed, representatives from the parties involved declined to comment, and quarterlife.com was password-protected.
Now, it's official: a release from MySpace has confirmed that Quarterlife will debut on its
MySpace started dabbling in its new role as a digital-age broadcaster when it hosted Prom Queen, a Web series created by Vuguru, the online video studio helmed by former Disney chief Michael Eisner. But Prom Queen was syndicated across a number of online video platforms, rather than committed to a single one. This summer, MySpaceTV snagged exclusive rights to the debut of Lonelygirl15's season finale, but after its "premiere" the episode was openly distributed among the likes of YouTube and Revver.
MySpaceTV, however, is the "exclusive international distribution partner" for Quarterlife. The 36 episodes that the social network has ordered will presumably be restricted to the platform, but company representatives did not indicate whether the company will take any kind of action to keep it off other video-sharing sites.
Jeff Berman, general manager of MySpaceTV, emphasized in an interview with CNET News.com that the original programming doesn't mean that MySpaceTV should be considered an exclusively professional video platform. "Our users are streaming content from the most super-premium studio- and network-produced product all the way down the 'long tail' to the stupidest pet trick imaginable," he said.
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LG15)
My, my, Lonelygirl15 sure has come a long way. Not so long ago, everyone thought the too-cute videoblogger was, well, a too-cute videoblogger. Then some online video fans with a shocking amount of time on their hands deduced that she was likely an actress in a staged series of video episodes. (They were right.) Now, leading lady "Bree" (played by Jessica Rose) has gone all professional on us--the new MySpaceTV video portal will be hosting Lonelygirl15's season finale.
Season finale?
On Friday, MySpaceTV--which launched in June and has been rolling out content deals ever since--will broadcast the final episode of the "first season" of Lonelygirl15. But it's a little more complicated than that: the "12 in 12" finale will be shown in 12 segments, each one broadcast on the hour starting at 8 AM ET. Lonelygirl15 episodes have been uploaded to the Lonelygirl15 MySpace page since the series' early days, but this is the first time that they'll be available only on the portal. Lonelygirl, after all, is one of YouTube's biggest stars too.
This announcement of an "exclusive" Web video broadcast may be a sign of things to come, an indicator that perhaps we should be thinking about online video hubs as networks rather than just platforms. Perhaps we'll soon be saying, "Oh, it's on MySpaceTV" or "You can catch it on YouTube" instead of talking about whether a program is on NBC or Fox.
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