Early last summer, Steve and Zadi from Jetset showed us all at Next New Networks just how easy it was to use Ning to set up a specialized social network. My partner Tim Shey was the only one of us to take the bait and one night in August he delivered on a vision we’d been talking about at Channel Frederator and popped up Channel Frederator RAW, another one of our ‘firsts,’ this time the world’s first social network just for animation.

We quietly started mentioning RAW on our blogs, and eventually asked for a few members, to see whether the thing had any legs. At first I thought I’d send out a wider invitation after 100 members, but things being as busy as they were I never got around to it. Over this past weekend I’d friended my 200th RAW friend and realized it was now or never. So, the previews are over, we’re on Broadway.

At 3pm ET today I sent out a note to a select list of filmmakers, artists, and fans, people in our community we’d been in contact with for years. As of five minutes ago we’d increased the size of our network by almost 50% and the action on the site has perked up 10-fold. More art, more video, and most gratifying of all, more conversation is going on between animation people across five continents.

Thanks Steve, thanks Zadi, thanks Tim. Most of all, thanks to our new members (some cool icons they have above, yes?). I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves.

So, as you might have heard, just shy of two years from launch, it’s Channel Frederator’s 100th episode. And I wanted to say “Thanks” to our loyal fans.

From day one, our viewers are the ones we’ve built “Cartoon Central on the Internet” around; they’ve called the phone lines, left comments, and voted for their favorites. They’re the reason we’re here and we all appreciate it more than we can say.

Among the home team I’d like to tip a hat to the hard working colleagues I have who get the work done whether I’m here, not here, or physically here but not mentally. Eric, Carrie, Mike, Lee, Dan, Jeaux, Scott, oh man, you make it all work fantastically. We’re all lucky you’re so talented. (Melissa, you’re not here anymore, but you too, thanks.)

Everyone at Next New Networks work their butts off to super distribute and promote your cartoons to over 4.9mm video views last month alone! And that includes our NNN investors, your faith in our vision makes the difference.

David, thanks for pushing us into the world’s original cartoon podcast. You changed our lives.

And Emil, there’s nothing too big to say to you. You’re my first, and deepest, interactive mentor. And friend. Thanks bud.

Twelve hours ago: It’s 11:21pm, Friday, July 20, 39 minutes before the official release of the new Harry Potter. I’m in line at the Maine Coast Book Store in Damariscotta, Maine (”We’re not online yet — someday!). I’m with over 300 fans (including my two boys and my wife)–most of whom are well over 16– waiting for our reserved copies of Harry Potter + the Deathly Hallows. I’d never been in Maine until six hours ago and standing in this small town with all this excitement is a fantastic introduction to the state. I’ve never stood in line for the release of anything and it’s thrilling to see that a book can motivate all these folks as much as a movie star. I can’t believe I left my camera at the hotel.

Wandering around iTunes yesterday gave me a pleasant jolt as I realized Veracifier was in phenomenal company on the News & Public Affairs charts. Ahead of ABC News and The New York Times, right behind The News Hour and CBS News.

And why not? The original reporting team Josh Marshall has put together on Veracifier’s TPMTV is second to none in the modern world.

“It” is Indy Mogul, one of our newest Next New Networks, which in the month of June accumulated over one million views from its “super-distributed” partners that range from Veoh, YouTube, and iTunes (among others) to visitors to the indymogul.com website. They watched Erik Beck create Zombies, fake gunshots, a variety of brains and other film trickery for the filmmaker with a bargain basement budget. Erik’s done it in record time for us at Next New Networks, joining his Next New cousins (same family, eh?) Channel Frederator and VOD Cars who have crossed the million mark many times over.

At Next New, we’re keeping tabs on the millionaire nets as an indication of a meaningful audience in (cable) TV and a marker for new teevee (we’re borrowing the term from Om Malik’s blog). Think of it as the “gold record” standard of our emerging TV/video world on the internet. Next we’re shooting for “platinum” status.

Thanks Erik, and all you Indy Moguls who are making your own films on You Tube, Veoh and other places, where the next generation of filmmakers are thriving.

Last week was a long one for me. I love how things are going here at Next New Networks (yikes, is that really what our company is called? People let us get away with that one?) but there are some things we’re doing that are insanely ambitious and it makes for some long days and nights. I’m haunted by the unread or unreplied emails, the simple tasks I didn’t get done, the ideas put on the list months ago we haven’t had time to do. I can get a little tired, a little worn out.

But then I came home late last Friday night, and noticed that the N-Bot Twitter page had linked earlier that day to a new episode of Thread Heads: “Viewer Appreciation Week.” That sounds promising, I thought, and I clicked through to check out the new episode.

My friends, I got a little weepy. Check out the episode if you can — I’ve embedded it above. Rob and Corinne do a roundup of a lot of the fun things going on at ThreadBanger — response videos from YouTube and our site, comments, forum posts — and it’s magic, at least for me.

Why? (more…)

You’re anxiously refreshing the page to immediately absorb any incoming critiques, comments, or cuss words. You’re the creative addict chained to the chair waiting for your digital ripple to transform into a tsunami, and I’m out looking for you.

Last week, upon Fred’s urging, we started posting “Vimeo Vids of the Day” on the freshly-launched Indy Mogul. I’ve always felt that Vimeo represents a fresh new sort of creators community that other video sharing giants can’t fully attest to. It’s a friendly, small town atmosphere. The church, the post office, the local pub, and bright blue picket fences lining every dark brown house.

Posting to bigger pages can feel like plopping down on a crowded street corner in midtown Manhattan, holding your hard work up for the world to see, and praying a kind soul comes by and says something constructive.

With that in mind, I’ve been spending a portion of every morning looking for the best, the brightest, and the most innovative of the Vimiaddicts (I think I just coined that … if not, I’ll still take credit). One of the first I came across was Brett Dougherty, a video blogger and film student from Syracuse University. I didn’t even know that much at this point, I just knew he had cut together a very real, raw, and interesting clip. A short couple minutes later and it was on the site. I sent a cursory note informing him we had written the flick up.

He quickly shot back telling me couldn’t really ‘express just how awesome’ my message was.

The cycle quickly began. Brett sent me yet another message proclaiming his excitement, practically making me blush with just how enthused this talented young buck was to get spotlighted on the site. In short order he signed up for a user account, added his email address to the mailing list, began commenting on episodes, and even called and left a personal voicemail to me on our hotline.

If Brett had been excited about my blog post, I was ten-fold thrilled about his quick leap over from featured artist to fan of our network.

The world needs more Bretts and I’ll be seeking them out every day, walking down Main Street Vimeo, smiling and waving to everyone holding a camera and sharing.

This week is the week that all the broadcast networks convene in NYC for the “upfronts” to present their new Fall lineups and wine and dine advertisers to put their money down on their new shows. Shrinking audiences has been a dynamic of broadcast networks since the coming of age cable, beginning measurably in the 90’s. But this year there’s new shrinkage. Apparently, there are 2.5mm less viewers coming to broadcast this Spring then last, and there are all kinds of suspects from daylight savings time to DVR’s to the shows’ quality themselves. Last year shrinkage was felt at the upfronts, when UPN and the WB, resulted in the CW, and one less network. Recently, it was reported that that merger actually netted a shrinking audience as the CW resulted, much of the time, in less viewers coming to the one new channel than each of the old networks. And before that — shrinkage took the form of less nights of original programming as ABC, CBS, and NBC all have given up on programming on Saturday nights and run mostly repeats of that weeks’ top shows.

So where does shrinkage stop? At Next New Networks, we salute the broadcast networks for shrinkage and we encourage them to come clean and declare shrinkage the way of the future and learn to love it like we do. That’s what we’ve done — creating micro-networks, and shrinking shows down to minutes. Get with the program(s) guys and love your shrinking world. We do.