Why does everyone want to come out with a comedy video network? It seems like every Hollywood vet that comes out with some sort of Internet presence or website or social network wants to make a comedy something or other. The latest? Dean Valentine, the former chief exec of UPN, has just launched the beta version of Comedy.com, reports Variety. Easy enough name to remember.
The content you’ll find on the network is pretty funny. It’s full of skits that come from the company’s production studio in Santa Monica, and users are free to submit content as well, from videos to jokes, via text or audio files. This submitted content is aggregated into the various tabs on Comedy.com, and are promoted throughout the site based on the number of votes (LOLs) that an individual item receives.
Search and filter options are available for finding certain jokes or comedians, and you’ll find other run of the mill social networking tools, like blogs, available for your account as well. Your profile actually works as a central location for consuming the content found throughout Comedy.com, and it has a couple of extras as well, such as a Joke of the Day module, and a One Liner ticker that streams in the toolbar at all times.
What’s frustrating about the content on the site is that it’s rarely shareable and not exportable. The one liner ticker, for example, would be a prime piece of Comedy.com’s site content that’s perfect for an RSS feed. The biggest issue I personally find to be debilitating across most of these comedy video networks is that few of them aggregate content from across the web.
You end up with several segmented networks that form content around a select group of comedians and actors that operate within that existing group, and that puts a heavier burden on the user or consumer when they have to visit so many different websites in order to see the clips from the individual comedians they like. Then again… they could always just head over to YouTube.