Very cool! JETSET and Smashface were mentioned in a nice article by our friend Casey McKinnon in today's Guardian Unlimited newspaper. :)

In case you don't already know, Casey is co-creator, producer, and star of two current online shows, Galacticast and A Comicbook Orange. She's celebrating her two-year anniversary creating web shows. Congrats, Casey!

In talking over our business direction with Zadi tonight, I think it's really important that people who are working on building a business always set aside time each week to sit down and talk over where you're headed, if it still makes sense, and ask yourselves whether the things you're doing day in and day out support the larger mission.

It's funny that a couple of things we had not considered in the past for JETSET suddenly made an awful lot of sense in the larger context of the mission we're trying to develop at Smashface. These weren't any ideas that were terribly innovative, but we had not seriously considered them because we hadn't focused on the idea of what it is we are trying to build.

Our goal at Smashface is to be working on projects that span all forms of media and that don't conform to the traditional structure of entertainment. That's not to say it won't have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but that each of the arcs exists in a larger context, exists in the context of audience contribution, and that each media incarnation informs the other.

Speaking of new initiatives, we're going to work on being better bloggers. I'm going to try to post every day going forward. I'm sure I'll miss a day here and there, but I think it's important that I find a way to create a daily record of the things we think and talk about.

It is I, the Blog Neglector! I really need to start writing about some of the stuff that we've been doing! We are in some crazy times! Prepare for some horn-tooting, because, well, who the hell else is gonna do it?!

Yesterday we found out that JETSET, which we always called "the little show that could," is no longer such a little show. We surpassed 1,000,000 views for the month of September, which is a nice milestone.

That we have been able to sustain and grow JETSET is a major source of pride for Zadi and myself. Throughout the 16 months we've been posting JETSET shows on the web -- 80 as of next Monday -- we've always been proud that we have been able to make a malleable format that is always growing and changing.

And we are really only scratching the surface of the untapped potential of JETSET.

In the next few months, we will roll out a new website for the show, at least one spinoff show, a JETSET blog, and something I'll save for a surprise so as not to turn it into the proverbial jinx. We are also going to step up our production values big time.

There's not really any time to rest on our laurels because there is so very far to go. We have an industry to try and impact and an awful lot left to learn. Trust me, we have our eyes and ears open.

I always say that JETSET has flown under the radar of the people who keep tabs on the so-called prominent web shows that are out there. You won't find us mentioned in the Wall St. Journal, The New York Times, Techcrunch, BoingBoing, or any other mainstream publication or blog. Nope, we just keep making quality shows that take advantage of what the web has to offer. We cultivate a community of viewers that never ceases to amaze us with their passion and endless invaluable contributions. We find great people to work with like Rick Rey, Annie Tsai, Eric Rey, and Barrett Garese. Our friends pick us up when we need it, and we try and do the same for them. And we have never let anyone or anything stand in the way of the things that we know are right for us and for the show.

Never wait. Never ever. If there's something that needs to happen, go out and make it happen. Make them have to keep up with you, not the other way around.

Oh, and if you were one of the million-plus who watched in September, thanks!

Attention content creators: watch the video above and sing along!!!

It's pretty rare that a day passes by that I don't feel fortunate about being a content creator for the web at this moment in time. Perhaps at no other time in recent media history have content creators had as much say over what kind of content they can make, where their content goes, and how it gets distributed. And more importantly, we may have never had as much control of our own destinies as we do at this moment.

The future belongs to us if we fight for it!

Got some pretty exciting news the other day -- the show we've been doing for the past nine months, JETSET, has been nominated for a Webby Award in the Music/Variety category of Online Film & Video. We were also mentioned in one of their press releases.

If you like the work we've been doing, it would be a really great thing for us if you'd take a couple of minutes and register on their site to vote for JETSET for the People's Voice award.

The Webby Awards have been called "the Oscars of the Internet" by The New York Times. While it would be a really great thing to say that JETSET is a Webby Award winner, awards are bad things to look at from a personal perspective. There's been a lot of talk about the fees that the Webby Awards charges businesses to enter their work for consideration. Let's just say it ain't cheap.

We paid to enter because it was a smart business decision for the future of the show. For us, it was worth the fee to get our show in front of influencers and people whose work we admire on the judging panel, even if we never got nominated. Turns out we were very fortunate and made it past some 8000+ entries this year to be one of the nominees. Very, very cool.

Even if we don't win, we've already turned our entry fee into hugely disproportionate gains in exposure and audience. So while I can understand why people grumble about the cost, if you look at it as an investment in your show or website it's relatively cheap.

The Webby Awards are a large event -- maybe the biggest in the online world. We feel fortunate to be a part of it. Even if we don't win our category, it would be great to get that People's Voice Award. Hint, hint!

We're really happy to announce that Smashface has signed a licensing and distribution deal with Next New Networks for JETSET! This deal will give JETSET a stable platform for at least the next twelve months, and it will allow us to focus our energies on thinking of new ways to interact with our audience and make great content.

Zadi and I have known Tim Shey for a few months, but it seems a lot longer -- he's one of the founders of NNN. They were a sponsor of the Halloween Videoblog Festival last year, and at that party I got a chance to talk with Tim about what they were planning on building with NNN. I liked the things I was hearing, such as how they were focused on niche content, identifying audiences around which they could build networks of their own new shows, and creating an infrastructure that allows content creators to be free of worrying about platforms and distribution models. Seemed like a pretty smart approach to us.

We also liked that there were people at the helm of the company that had serious experience building and growing media companies. Herb Scannell and Fred Seibert basically built MTV, Fred built Frederator Studios, and Herb was president at Nickelodeon Networks. For some people in the online world I think there is a certain fear about working with companies with top people who come from mainstream media. That thought crossed our minds, as well.

When the Channel Frederator Awards were held here in L.A. in January, we got to spend an afternoon with Tim to talk much more in-depth about NNN's plans. We could see that they were not approaching this thing as if they had all the answers. They knew that there were going to be hurdles to cross and things to figure out, and they seemed to be genuinely interested in hearing criticism. A year of planning had gone into NNN, and in that time Channel Frederator had become a really fun show that we were watching regularly. This allowed us to get a sense for how they might approach their other shows.

Zadi and I had been thinking about the future of JETSET since it first rolled out the door. We knew we had something that could really reach a wide audience and break boundaries in terms of audience interaction, but time and money were always an issue. I was working a full-time job until January, and we did not want to be in a position where we were going to miss opportunities.

After talking to Tim, it seemed quite plain to us that we were thinking in very similar ways about building online shows and making them as interactive and engaging as they could be. They were calling them "networks," but they are really just groups of shows that serve the same audience with niche content. This is what we wanted to do with JETSET eventually -- build a network of teen shows with JETSET as the hub. Zadi had been hatching that idea since last June.

We presented the idea to Tim of making JETSET a part of Next New Networks, and things came together very quickly with the help of Barrett Garese at UTA. Even though it's their clearly stated mission to build new shows, I think we could all see the potential of placing an established show like JETSET into the infrastucture they had already built since we seemed to have such similar plans. So it made very natural sense for all of us that way.

Zadi and I have a very steep task ahead of us -- to be one of the first shows to try and figure out how to engage viewers on primarily mobile devices. Some 60+% of JETSET viewers watch on their phones, iPods, or PSP's. We're really glad to have the support behind Smashface to help JETSET solidify and grow while we all work on developing this industry. And we're excited about the possible opportunity to help NNN develop shows around JETSET eventually.

These are interesting times. :)

While doing on location shoots for a new show we're working on, we shot an episode of JETSET in New Orleans.

It's an amazing place, literally infused with history and culture. And ghosts. Some strange things have happened to us since we walked through the narrow back streets of New Orleans. Makes you wonder sometimes.

Sadly, the 9th ward in New Orleans is all but a dead zone in some areas. A few places have come back, some restaurants for example, but it's an incredible sight to see all these homes wiped out and standing there a wreck eighteen months after Hurrican Katrina. It's infuriating, actually.

Brings back some thoughts from the karmagrrrl days: Wake Me Up When September Ends.

If there's any one statistic about JETSET that is startling, it's the fact that now over 50% of our downloaded episodes are delivered through our 3gp feed, which tends to be mobile phones. When you include iPod and PSP distributions, the percentage of mobile downloads goes over 65%! Whoa.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that the target JETSET audience is teenagers and young adults, who are more likely to be using their phones, PSP's, and iPods to watch video. So that's cool.

But I wonder, how many of these viewers ever actually visit the JETSET website once they subscribe? Based on a cursory analysis of our site stats and some decent educated guessing, I would say about 15% of mobile subscribers visit the site to participate in wiki projects or post comments.

Having just analyzed our January website stats tonight, we're seeing an ever-increasing disparity in our number of total show viewers compared to web viewers. So it begs the question: how relevant is the JETSET website to the show itself?

For us, we thought our website was one of the keys to our growth phase last fall when we started involving our community in projects like Brandon's Pitch, Are You Happy?, and The Confessional. Now, however, we're faced with the reality that as our viewership has grown, we need to start thinking about how to engage a specific audience -- the mobile viewer.

Mobile web browsers are horrendous (hurry up, iPhone), so the prospect of creating web-based projects to engage that audience is not attractive yet. We will be testing some new ideas in the coming weeks that are intended to interact with this group via things like SMS, but it's amazing how reactive content creators have to be to their audience to stay on top of things. We never anticipated the prospect of potentially needing to think about show ideas that engage someone watching on a specific device.

The audience really has the power now, and that's why this is so different from traditional media.

I don't think the website will ever go away, but it has to morph and change rapidly. For example, should I be thinking about creating a mobile version of the site for easier viewing on phones? The answer to that is probably yes.

What do you think? Are websites for videoblog shows becoming less relevant?

UPDATE: I neglected to include 3rd party distributions in the percentage of our total viewership. Including distributions like TV Tonic, DivX, Shozu, and a few others, the percentage of mobile distributions goes from 65% to 55%. As you were.

Cool! Michelle from DivX just sent us a note that the video from our Stage6 CES show was posted. Man, DivX quality is just sick. Check out the HD version and prepare to be blown away. There's a standard quality that is also really, really good considering the small file size. Great technology over there.

Super-special thanks to Irina from Geek Entertainment TV for moderating! And also to Eddie for asking great questions!

Here's the stuff we covered:

• Origins of JETSET
• Our fancy Hollywood agent
• Brandon's Pitch project
• Videobloggers in Hollywood
• Headbanging to Rammstein
• Hey Josh (the awesome Josh Shipp)
• Spreading vlogs
• Top 10 list addiction
• Q & A with the audience

Thanks to Ben Cote, Michelle Osorio, and everyone from DivX who made CES such a great time for everyone who attended. You guys rock and made CES fun for us.

Video in HD version
Video in standard quality

Sorry to be an egregious self-promoter, but with all the attention on Macworld this week, the announcement of Apple TV, etc., we were featured on the iTunes home page today! HUGE day.

We'll be in Vegas for CES Wednesday and Thursday, so if you're going, shoot me an email and we'll try to hook up.

Zadi and I will be at the DivX booth doing a live show Wednesday at noon 2:30PM, so come check us out!

In the meantime, I am formulating some thoughts to follow up on the last post about comments on video blogs. Thanks to all of you who commented and contributed some very interesting thoughts.

Update: Here's a link to DivX's booth location and the time of our show. Note that our showtime will be 2:30PM on Wednesday. Hope to see you there!