Reel Pop

By Andrew Wallenstein
Alas we hardly knew ye, Firebrand, the soon-to-be-defunct website where the cream of the commercial crop got an online/TV showcase. It launched last October with the financial backing of NBC Universal (the New York Times reports the venture "burned" through at least $30 million), but with little traffic traction to show for it, Firebrand has been tossed on that scrap heap in the sky along with ThisJustIn.com, another conglomerate-backed (Time Warner) entertainment site that went nowhere fast.

Moral of the story? I could give you the standard shpiel on consumer distaste for overt commercialization, except I don't really believe it. The point really is that there is no sense building a single destination for great commercials to live online when they are already distributed virally on plenty of other sites.

Here's what I had to say about Firebrand when it first launched.