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fredseibertdotcom · 18 days

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Next New Networks, Part 3

I’m going to try, in as few posts as possible, to create a coherent timeline of the short, eventful life of Next New Networks, an early, consequential moment in streaming video history.

From Part 1: Emil Rensing and I, with a huge assist from future Tumblr creator David Karp, stumbled into the brave new world of online video without much of a plan.

From Part 2: Our friend –my former partner at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, and our future Next New Networks partner– Jed Simmons introduced us to Spark Capital in Boston, who wanted to partner and fund Next New.

Part 3: Late 2006

What do we do now?

Once Spark signaled their interest, we needed to get serious. I still had Frederator Studios, my successful and increasingly busy independent cartoon production company, but the excitement of this opportunity was overwhelming. Even if I was significantly older than the typical internet entrepreneur, I felt that my background in media and production could be meaningful. The first phase of the consumer internet required deep engineering skills because the infrastructure was still somewhat nascent. Web 2.0 had developed enough tools that even someone with my limited skills could participate. Besides, I had Emil on my side, someone who had a unique understanding of the state of the tech world.

By summertime, after a variety of conversations and meetings, Emil and I settled on a co-founding team. Jed Simmons, of course. Emil had a start up friend –Tim Shey– who’d sold his DC based, interactive agency and moved to New York where he was consulting with some early stage video companies. I was stretched to thin to have an operating role in the joint, so we all agreed that my childhood friend and adult colleague Herb Scannell –former Vice Chairman of MTV Networks and CEO of Nickelodeon– would be a perfect CEO. Luckily, he agreed, and our management line up was in place. (David Karp would be our founding developer, until he launched Tumblr several months later, of course).

We can leave the machinations of filling out the A-round of investment aside. Suffice to say, many venture capitalists were uninterested in any idea that didn’t have unique software attached –we didn’t– but we put together an investor group and board of directors that were excited with our vision.

Next New Networks posters designed and illustrated by Frank Olinsky

Our vision? ah. yes. By the time we were on the road pitching our wares, we had taken the basics of VOD Cars and Channel Frederator and put together a plan that was based on “communities of interest,” which we felt would be the engines of viewership and growth. As Tim Shey later wrote:

Next New Networks popularized the ideas of videoblogging and advertiser-supported online video, and pioneered the multi-channel network (MCN) business model and the concept of audience development, assembling a diverse and successful portfolio of original programming including hit channels Barely Political, VSauce, and ThreadBanger, and a network of independent creators such as The Gregory Brothers—racking up over 2 billion video views and thirteen Webby Awards, more than any online media company at the time.

Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times was probably the writer that caught onto what we had accomplished better than most.

By March 2007, we were fully funded with our first round, expanded past the Frederator/NY office into a larger space in the same building on Park Avenue South, and started to put together an amazing start up staff that could actually execute. At least, what we’d morphed our vision into. Super distribution!

(More to come.)

#Next New Networks #2006 #2007 #Spark Capital #Fred Seibert #Emil Rensing #Jed Simmons #Tim Shey #Herb Scannell #David Karp

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thebibliosphere · 7 months

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ID: A cropped screenshot from Ingram Spark showing various distribution regions. The highlighted ones are the US and the UK. The price shows 17.99 with a red exclamation mark next to it.

The next drop-down box prompts the author to set the wholesale discount to 55% trade, noting that this is the "retailer preference."

The author compensation, aka the amount the author will get paid for their work after wholesale discount and printing costs have been taken out of the $17.99 price tag, is shown as 0.61 cents in the US and 0.04 pence in the UK.

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So this is a thing that I saw today when I logged into Ingram to confirm some metadata.

They used to list "retailer preference" at 40%, which is what they have made into their new wholesale distribution standard. You will not be able to distribute your books for global wholesale anymore after October 30th if you don't have your rates sent to 40%.

I don't doubt retailers would prefer if we sold to them at 55%. But considering myself and several others already have doubts over whether or not Ingram is actually showing our discounts to retailers (they've been caught showing mine as 5% even though they've been listed at 35% for three years), I'm just sort of sitting here, well, I can't accuse them of fraud, but let's just say I am not not thinking it.

Also, just a fun little tidbit, I tried to use my old ISBNs with d2d which legally I am allowed to do. They are mine. I own them. Anyway, d2d sent me a warning about how it would require me to work with them and Ingram Spark over several weeks to transfer the ISBN, and ahaha. Hahahahaha.

I'd say, "How do we think this is going to turn out?" But I think we all know.

We know.

#ingram spark #I fucking hate it here (late stage capitalism)

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moon-mirage · 8 months

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Alliance

Rue and Katniss

#the hunger games #thg #katniss everdeen #rue #i think it must have been so rare to have alliance between districts in the games #katniss was a capital favourite #i doubt there was much attention on rue #in other games this alliance would have been unthinkable #but it was one of the sparks that led to the revolution #and i think many people saw that katniss and rue genuinely liked each other

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spark-circuit · 9 months

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me hearing my friends lament that they can't play older games on newer consoles because they're not remade or rereleased yet and may never be brought back:

#I've been making this joke repeatedly but i can't help it this screenshot is too good #genshin impact #spark's genshin adventures #spark talks about nothing of relevance #now that's what i call shitposting #emulation #emulating games #i studied games preservation in my last year of uni so i can make this joke :)#it's always morally correct to preserve works that are being restricted for capitalism

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thatswhatsushesaid · 9 months

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okay everyone, you've presumably survived two group projects at mdzs university, you are probably getting passing marks, and the end of the term is in sight. you just have to get through one last project, and then you're home free for the holiday(s) (of your choosing)

so, it's time to decide who you will throw your lot in with one last time:

good luck!!

#real talk if I had to join any of these groups I'd probably drop the course and take up drinking #but if I HAD to join one #i'd probably choose lwj sl & sms #just because the tension will be Real but it won't be quite as cringe-inducing as listening to jin zixun start every team meeting #regaling us with his latest venture capital start-up idea #or carrying the dead weight that will be nhs on any project that doesn't spark joy in his heart #mdzs

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sluckythewizard · 3 months

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GET BACK ON THE OPERATING TABLE, SIRE BOY! YOU DIE WHEN WE LET YOU! EVEN AS WE SPEAK WE'RE SYNTHESIZING BLOOD AND ORGANS, SYNTHESIZING HEART AND SOUL.FACES R HARD TO RECONSTRUCT. MAYBE A COOL ROBOT VISOR? SEE YOU SOON.

#suckeny spoils #thats it thats the suckening spoiler tag #BLACK LIST IT WHILE YOU CAN!!! RAH!!#also my white ass is supposed to be IN BED a SLEEP but NNOOOOO i gotta really rotate this loser in my head so fast im seeing blu sparks #ohhhh gabe montezz oouhhh cmeeere cmere get into my lab and let me do uhh uhh i dunno soemthin #cw gore #forgot that might be an important tag #i can deny any character death #ALSO incase it wasnt obvious #thats Viv n Vexs handwrighting #viv writes in a lighter color and speaks w proper grammer other than all the I's being capitalized always #vex writes ina darker color And all caps and writes his Es backwards #yes is homesuck quirks WHATEVERyou can try to kill me but you wont win

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rhynehoward · 1 month

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#cameron brink #los angeles sparks #wnba #la is the entertainment capital of the world?????? maybe idk. and the sparks can't give us ANY(!!!!!!!!!!!) draft content??? embarassing #cbrinkedits #wnbaedits

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nando161mando · 6 months

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Rich guy discovers that workers aren’t motivated by making rich people richer.

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shinobicyrus · 2 years

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He’s only officially owned Twitter for 17 days.

#Twitter #Elon Musk #Blue Checkmark #Listen the Ted Cruz and Bush Impersonators were just....comedy gold #but this?#Elon is crashing the stocks of companies HE DOESN'T EVEN OWN #people warned him this exact thing would happen and only conceded #'maybe this is dumb' and then did it anyway #maybe this will finally dispel the ridiculous media image of him as some genius real-life Tony Stark #meanwhile Ely Lilly - having done literally NOTHING - not only lost BILLIONS in stock #because the stock market is all the worst elements of automation and human greed #but now them having to tweet that Insulin is in fact *Not* free #is sparking conversation from people asking 'Yeah but WHY is this extremely cheap to make life-saving drugs SO EXPENSIVE??'#and they deserve all of it #and I'm not even gonna touch the Lockheed thing because HOLY SHIT #I feel sorry for all the small time artists and people whose living depending on the networking and visibility Twitter provided #and of course the huge swaths of Twitter's workforce that were kicked to the curb on a fucking WHIM #but I am also loving the chaos #is making a lot of very rich people and companies very very miserable #Capitalism #Stock Market #Social Media #Billionaires

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ammaterasu · 2 years

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'i want this series to give us an epilogue to show us their future!!!' so you want to see your fav barrier breaking MC become a complacent adult and a bad father?

#theres a cookie cutter complacent adult template that every epilogue writer applies and it strips og of everything that made og so lovely #this is akin to when mimi said kishi wrote redemption arcs for rasa and that was proof he became a parent #or soemthing something #point is the trend of 'becoming more conservative as u age' / 'losing the energy that u can save the world! one person can be the spark !!'#this is also when kat said getting traction and mainstream attention and 5 sequels and capitalism watering everything down etc etc #p

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fredseibertdotcom · 26 days

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Next New Networks, Part 2

I’m going to try, in as few posts as possible, to create a coherent timeline of the short, eventful life of Next New Networks, an early, consequential moment in streaming video history.

From Part 1: There was almost no “professional” quality video on iTunes in November 2005. The result for us? 1 million downloads in the first 30 days! We had some hits!

Part 2: Early 2006

Wait! What? iTunes? What about YouTube?!

Let’s set the scene of online video in late 2005. The consumer internet is still coming into its own. Broadband connections, which will supercharge video consumption, have barely made themselves known. Vimeo is first, but starved by its corporate parent, YouTube is going to be the big thing, but it’s still independent, Google has launched its own (ultimately failed) competitor. No one understands who/what online video is for.

In our case, we announced Channel Frederator and VOD Cars as “video podcasts” and YouTube was wedding videos and baby’s birthday party. Apple iTunes was the place for podcasts, and Emil and David Karp were the only two people who’d pointed out to me that iTunes had recently been optimized to handle video, not just audio.

What did it all mean to me? Who the fuck knows? I had no particular plan, neither did Emil. Things just seemed cool, it was fun. I had a loose professional agenda, but it was a cartoon agenda, not particularly an online video strategy.

That said, as our numbers kept growing, and Steve Jobs used our logo in live presentations for the Video iPod, I said to Emil:

“You know, if we could launch 100 of these channels with this kind of performance, we could have our own media company!” Emil nodded, and we decided to register www.NextNewNetworks.com in January 2006. What the hey!

But still, no plan.

Jed Simmons @Next New Networks 2009

Until Jed Simmons started showing up.

Jed and I had been partners at Turner Broadcasting, the top two dogs running Hanna-Barbera Cartoons for Ted Turner until he sold his whole company to Time Warner (now WBD). He’d moved to the UK, got involved in venture, moved back to NewYork, I moved back to NY to run MTV’s online business for a minute, quit and opened Frederator/NY in addition to LA’s Frederator Studios. I suggested that he take a desk in our office and we could get into trouble together. The office was an open plan (I didn’t want to spend money to put up walls) so he could hear everything my big mouth spouted.

There might have been any plan, no strategy, but it sure was exciting. Thousands of views a day, hundreds of submissions of animated shorts –people still hadn’t realized that they could control the internet as well as well could– it was a brave new world. I would tell anyone who would listen how neat it all was.

Jed would ask me about what I was going to do with it all, I pushed him away. One day, he asked if I’d talked to any VCs. I didn’t know what he was talking about. He patiently explained and told me that a buddy we’d worked with at Turner was a venture capital guy now, Jed would invite him in. Sure.

Within a few days we were describing how we did what we did and why we thought it could be expanded. He blubbered about how YouTube would beat us, blah blah blah.

“YouTube is going to be our distributor,” Emil piped in. I’m not sure I understood what he meant. But, Emil was always right about these things, so I blah blah’d about it myself. Our friend wasn’t impressed (he rarely was when I had an idea at Turner either), and then he left. So be it.

A couple weeks later, he was back. But, this time he came with Santo Politi, one of his bosses, a founder and general partner at Spark Capital in Boston. We were at lunch downstairs in the French restaurant (owned by Anthony Bourdain’s partner and the ex-boyfriend of a former MTV colleague) and I went into what had become a 20 minute blah blah. In 10 minutes, Santo interrupted.

“OK, we’re in.”

What?

“We’re in. We’ll syndicate an $8 million, A Round.”

Emil, Jed and I looked at each other. What???

(More next time.) Part 1 here.

Next New Networks -by Tim Shey by Fred Seibert

#Next New Networks #Emil Rensing #Fred Seibert #Jed Simmons #Spark Capital #Boston #2006 #2007 #Channel Frederator #VOD Cars

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mkaugust · 8 months

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desperately trying to reconnect with the out of nowhere vibes from the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT when I woke up and immediately wrote hundreds of words on my phone in the dark. the most productive writing session i have had in months.

#something about insomnia sparks creativity #and something about a day spent in capitalism crushes it #all of the elements are in place i have the music i have the time etc etc AND YET

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kiwibirdlafayette · 1 year

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if jordan was in life series and his glasses changed with his life yall realize that would mean green life = spark conway, yellow life = ??? and only his red life is mr jordan sparklez

which. which is fucking genius. my fuel for the dianitee fire

#if were talking about this im capitalizing on the mianite jokes #if you dont know who spark conway is. Watch mianite #(this is propaganda)#yellow glasses sparklez is the forbidden s3 alt *i am shoved into a canonn and shot jnto the upper atmosphere*#jordan dies and he comes back as a different alt #mianite by a gay man #captainsparklez #jordan captainsparklez #lafakiwi talks #verdigris musings

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spark-circuit · 2 months

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