Reddit is now making a concerted effort to court top brand-name consumer advertisers by weaving them into original video programming. This comes as it aims to broaden its appeal beyond its huge core tech-savvy community.
In a reflection of its expanding premium content strategy, YouTube has unveiled two new original channels focused on cars: Motor Trend and Drive.
The Motor Trend channel, created by Source Interlink Media, will include original content from the likes of Motor Trend. Meanwhile Drive will take viewers behind the scenes and "[celebrate] the rich culture of cars." Content will include news, reviews and commentary from industry figures such as Chris Harris, Mike Spinelli, Leo Parente, and Alex Roy.
In addition to Facebook's announcement of a new partnership with the MLB to live stream a number of regular season games, the social network this week also signed a deal with global esports company ESL to bring over 5,550 hours of esports events and other original content to Facebook, including 1,500 of original programming.
Reddit experimenting with web programming by releasing an original video series called 'Explain Like I'm Five.' The three episodes draw inspiration from the subreddit of the same name, where users discuss complex political and social issues in a simplified manner.
But at Tumblr, at least, there's something else very interesting going on: according to Karp, there are 9 curators for every creator on his site.
Reblogging, on Tumblr, is so easy that the vast majority of Tumblr sites actually create little or no original content: they just republish content from other people. That's a wonderful thing, for two reasons. Firstly, it takes people who are shy about (or just not very good at) creating their own content, and gives them a great way to express themselves online. (As Arianna Huffington says, "self-expression is the new entertainment".) And secondly, it acts as a natural amplifier for the people who do create original content - the average post on Tumblr gets reblogged nine times, and therefore reaches vastly more people than if it just sat on its original site waiting to be discovered by people visiting it directly.
"One key advantage of using a vintage and nostalgic game is to indirectly remind consumers that Kibbles 'n Bits products, owned by Del Monte Foods, have been around for about 30 years. "It reinforces the perception that the products are familiar and well-established," said Zac Maricondia, Draftfcb copywriter.
Arcade-style 8-bit games have proven to be surprisingly popular in this era of high-tech video graphics. (Originally 8-bit referred to the data capability of the processors used in video game consoles. Now it refers to the style of graphics and music produced by those early processors.)"