Reel Pop

Anyone who followed YouTube phenom lonelygirl15 as she skyrocketed to fame, or watched as self-made stars like Brookers or the Lonely Island trio found mainstream outlets for their work, understands that Hollywood has begun to use online video sites as a new kind of talent pool. These days, talent is less likely to be found at an open audition in Los Angeles than, say, performing karaoke in their bedroom in Worcester, MA.

It's a phenomenon that New York startup blip.tv is hoping to take advantage of.

"It's definitely clear to me that the Hollywood world is beginning to see sites like blip.tv as the farm teams of talent," said blip.tv COO Dina Kaplan from her 3rd-floor loft office in Manhattan's Chinatown.

While some sites try to capitalize on the online video boom by aggregating as much content as possible -- copyrighted or otherwise -- blip.tv is taking a more personal approach. The real value, according to Kaplan, is in the videobloggers themselves.

Like YouTube, Blip.tv is a combination destination and syndication portal that helps videobloggers publish their work both on blip.tv and on other sites. Unlike YouTube though, blip.tv isn't interested in promoting music videos, network television shows, or other previously published and copyrighted work.

"We try very hard to promote a culture of sharing original content," said CEO Mike Hudack. "Don't get me wrong, there's a market for piracy, but we're very careful to steer our users away from that. We just don't need it...In some ways it does put you at a disadvantage, but there's also something very attractive about the higher quality you'll find."

Blip.tv isn't hurting for quality shows. Perhaps the most famous videoblogger using the site is Amanda Congdon, who approached Blip.tv before her Amanda Across America tour.
Blip.tv is also a second home to shows like Goodnight Burbank, Something to be Desired, and the war videoblog Alive in Baghdad.

Blip.tv works like you'd expect it would, with some additional features. Videobloggers upload their work to the site and create a subdomain. The blogger can then choose to syndicate his or her videos to blogs or other sites. Starting tomorrow, users will be able to cross-post their work directly to MySpace. The new video will then be automatically announced in the bloggers' friends' MySpace bulletin space.

The MySpace feature is just one of several new features that Blip.tv will be rolling out on Saturday. Perhaps the biggest change will be the site's new homepage, which will attempt to provide an experience more akin to a television network's site.

Hudack said they're making the homepage change out of consideration for their role as editorial gatekeepers, while trying to retain the site community's independent attitude. "We're sort of removing the heavy hand of the studios," he said.

Saturday will also mark the introduction of several new advertising models on the site.  Hudack and Kaplan said that new advertising deals will allow bloggers to choose between different types of advertising, from pre-roll to post-roll to contextual banner ads that appear alongside the videos.

They noted that on blip.tv, whether to apply advertising to a video is at the blogger's discretion.

So far, Blip.tv's traffic stats -- about 1 million page views per month according to comScore -- seem to indicate the site is still struggling to attract users. Hudack and Kaplan say, however, it's not their intent to be a destination site.

Blip.tv has also recently partnered with video mashup site Eyespot (which also recently added new features), and the company provides the underlying technology for CNN's user-generated video site, CNN Exchange.

By positioning themselves as a conduit for new voices, Blip.tv hopes to become something of a talent powerbroker in the online video age.

"The talent, they're not just going to jump at the opportunity to be on TV anymore," said Kaplan.

"I mean, I'm not saying they're going to turn down millions of dollars, but it'll take a lot more to make them jump from a medium that lets them play by their own rules."