It’s no surprise to the followers of Next New Networks that internet television has gone mainstream; 150 million views is hardly “niche.” But it’s interesting to me how quickly the mainstream media has made the transition to covering our piece of the rock like it’s an everyday thing. Today there were two buried stories in business sections of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, mentioning internet TV as just another story to be covered. The Times trumpeted the value of the web (and YouTube in particular) for Superbowl advertisers, while the Journal bemoaned the slowness of advertisers to climb on board (hear, hear). Only a year ago the idea of launching a political campaign with an online spot was the hottest thing since sliced bread.

No big point here, but it’s fun to realize how fast the right ideas integrate themselves into our lives as if they were there all along.

The sweet scent of victory. Yesterday’s Iowa Caucus was a huge one for the NNN political team. Our boy Obama won the Iowa caucus- and with her video gaining a million views in just over 24 hours, the Obama Girl herself gave her victory address this morning:

We’ll be watching out for our invitation to the inauguration. Meanwhile Veracifier had an unprecedented number of people reporting on the ground in Iowa- surely an internet first. Through our ground hounds partnership with the Uptake we posted multiple reports throughout the day, including most of the major candidate’s pre Caucus rallies:

and stories from across the state, like Hound Chuck Tomlinson’s take on the media blitz itself:

The Uptake itself streamed live video throughout the Caucus, and it was all done by the seat of our pants, with everyone surprised by both the quality and amount of reporting we were getting in from all of Iowa. Bring on New Hampshire!

Tim Shey says, “Nice to start 08 with a bonafide hit. Big props to Amber, Ramon, Marc and the whole crew.” I say, Holy crap! BENNNNNN!!!!!!”

…:::UPDATE from BP’s Ben Relles:
“Ha! Would love to take credit but my my wife and I were having new relleses the day that video was made.

“All credit to Tom, Rusty, Boxser, Steve, Jared, and two spellbinding performances by Liam and Goldberg.”

YouTube says:
Honors for This Video:
#7 - Most Discussed (Today)
#4 - Most Discussed (Today) - Comedy
#35 - Most Discussed (This Week) - Comedy
#2 - Most Viewed (Today)
#1 - Most Viewed (Today) - Comedy
#20 - Most Viewed (This Week)
#4 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Comedy
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Germany
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Australia
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Canada
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - United Kingdom
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Ireland
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - New Zealand
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Spain
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Mexico
#2 - Recently Featured - Comedy - France
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Italy
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Japan
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Netherlands
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Poland
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Brazil
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Russia
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Hong Kong
#1 - Recently Featured - Comedy - Taiwan
#7 - Top Favorites (Today)
#4 - Top Favorites (Today) - Comedy
#50 - Top Favorites (This Week) - Comedy
#37 - Top Rated (Today)
#9 - Top Rated (Today) - Comedy
#23 - Top Rated (This Week) - Comedy

To paraphrase an old blues, “it’s been a good year, but a long year.”

15 networks launched, YouTube’s #1 content partner, 100+ video views. Colleagues in New York and across the country, viewers and friend across the globe. Whew!

I’ve been lucky enough to be part of a number of once-in-a-lifetime experiences during my life. All year I’ve known Next New Networks is one of them.

It’s hard for any of us here at Next New Networks to figure that it’s only been a year since we ‘officially’ opened. Sure, for the founders we’ve been at work getting the company together for twice as long, but we started bringing on our colleagues last January and I, for one (though I know we all heartily agree), have to marvel at what they’ve all accomplished. Like any start up everyone here came into an office space that was literally being built while the work was trying to make sense of itself, and we were trying to explain exactly what the company was up to and what a specific job would entail (we’re still working on that). And even as the paint was going on the walls and the computers were being debugged, we were launching networks and cajoling communities of viewers to come take a look.

We couldn’t have even begun without an incredible group of investors and board members who’ve become Next New Networks’ friends, advertisers who’ve kicked the tires and bought a ride, and a large audience of loyal viewers who’ve spread the word in every way now known to humankind.

More’s coming, good stuff too, I assure you.

Thanks everyone –our colleagues, our investors and board members, and our audiences– for an awesome first year. Here’s to hundreds more.

After getting suggestions from everyone in the office over the last couple of weeks, here’s a list of Next New Network’s must-see moments of 2007. Everyone had a lot of favorite episodes, so this particular top 10 is as arbitrary as any — but it at least gives an idea of the kind of fun we had this year.

2007 was a great year for us. We passed 100 million views, learned a lot, and made a lot of new friends — by any count, millions of people have seen the little white robot on the end of a video they loved this year. Thanks to everyone who’s been watching and reading this blog, and we can’t wait to entertain you more in 2008.

Without futher ado, here’s the list…

(more…)

Alan reworked an earlier promo he’d made for Fast Lane Daily to celebrate our imminent milestone of 100 million video views in our first year — you can watch it embedded above on our blog or check it out here.

As of December 23, as you can see from the sidebar on our blog, we’re just over 97 million views, and that’s without a full count yet of some of our podcast downloads or partner views that tend to come in less than real time. I think we’ll make it, so I don’t actually advocate the kinds of shenanigans in this video, but if you’d like to help, blog some of your favorite videos, send them to your friends, and you can help push us over the top!

At this point, I’m not going for 100 million — I want to see how far over 100 million we can get by the end of the year!

Hope everyone had a happy holiday…

Michael’s post from the other day inspired me. 100 million of anything’s not too shabby, I think. Especially in less than a year (nine months to be exact).

Good things are abounding for Next New Networks as 100 million video views are just around the corner!!!

From March to November, Next New Networks has generated 82 million confirmed video views while monthly views keep climbing!

At the current rate of growth, we expect to serve the 100 millionth video view early in the fourth week of December. Who will be out 100 millionth view? Will it be you??

If you’re a regular reader of VentureBeat, Read/WriteWeb, GigaOm, or TechCrunch, you might have heard of the Crunchies, which they’ve established to highlight the best business accomplishments of 2007.

If you think Next New Networks was one of the cool startup stories of 2007 (and if you’re reading this blog, we have some hope that you do, and thanks!), we’d love if you take fifteen seconds out of your day today and please nominate us for any categories you think we might qualify. Nominating is really easy — it takes five seconds, no essays to write, and it’s totally anonymous. All you do is go to the site, type in our name, and it’s done.

We’re happy for any nominations we might get, but some that might apply for us are Best business model, Best consumer start-up, Best video site, Best use of viral marketing, Most likely to succeed, Best new start-up of 2007, or Best overall.

I’d like to personally suggest you nominate Herb Scannell as 2007’s Best startup CEO. At a time when other people in the entertainment industry responded to video on the internet with litigation and, now, sadly, broken down negotiations, I’m impressed every day that Herb went from a Vice Chairman seat at MTV to helming our little privateer ship a couple miles off the network TV coast. As I type this, he’s sitting in a meeting with me and the network managers and programming team, leaned forward in his chair, like he is every week, totally engaged and leading the brainstorming as to how we secure the uncontested title of #1 provider of TV programming on the internet, and make that the business we all know it can be. In less than nine months, he led an unproven company to a significant fundraising round, made friends with companies like YouTube, Veoh, and Bebo as part of an unprecedented number of distribution partnership deals, and oversaw the creation of a ton of great new networks — it’s hard to believe that a year ago, ThreadBanger, Veracifier, Fast Lane Daily and Indy Mogul, just to name a few, didn’t even exist. If you’ve met Herb in the past year, you know what a fun and smart guy he is, and how lucky we are to have him — I have no doubt that we wouldn’t be where we are now if he hadn’t agreed to take the top spot here.