Sony Buys Grouper, Turner Peddles Ads at Changes Is Good

Sony Buys Grouper, Turner Peddles Ads

Published by Siddiq Bello August 23rd, 2006 in Broadband, Broadband-Wagon, Fun with PR, Grouper.com, Sony, Technology & Entertainment, User Generated Content, Viral marketing, Web 2.0, social networking, video.

Sony Pictures Entertainment announced today that they were buying Grouper.com, one of the 30 plus UGC video sites attempting to unseat YouTube as the King of crap collection. The deal puts $65 million in the coffers at Grouper and CEO, Josh Felser, gets to keep his job. They say they may move the company towards advertising in the future but have no current plans to change the sites model or structure. You can read the press release here or just marvel at the word-smithing of Grouper’s CEO below.

“When you pair Grouper’s innovative video sharing platform on the web and the desktop with Sony’s connected devices and copyrighted media you create a dynamic and exciting environment for consumers,” said Grouper CEO and co-founder Josh Felser. “We have an opportunity, as part of the Sony family, to bring together user-generated and copyrighted content across platforms and devices for the first time.”

Someone need to let Josh know that for the last 10 years user generated content has been little more then copyrighted content flying across platforms and devices without the permission of companies like, say, I dont know, SONY.

In other ~~corporate attempts to remain relevant, broadband-wagon video~~ news, Turner Broadcasting launched VeryFunnyads.com. A not quite UGC site, which offers slightly better content then Grouper in the form of ads from around the world. Users can rate the ads and will probably be able to do all the buzz wordy social networking things that seem to come standard on these types of sites. The site is related to a show called, Funniest Commercials of the Year, which will air on TBS in December. Not groundbreaking but an interesting offer and a worth while “work day accelerator”.

Enjoy and Share: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

0 Responses to “Sony Buys Grouper, Turner Peddles Ads”

Feed for this Entry

No Comments

You must login to post a comment.

Announcements

Welcome to my new digs. I've made a few changes that will make hte blog more interesting for me and perhaps more educational for you. Alas, I could find no tool to improve the editing.

Changes Is Good