While our founder/partner Jed Simmons always is the first to give credit where credit is due for the recent Series B round of funding that allows us to stay in business a bit longer, and of course, we have our great, faithful investors to thank, I wanted to push a little love his way.

Jed’s one of the best partners someone could have (I should know, this is my second partnership with him; we first got together at Turner Broadcasting and Hanna-Barbera Cartoons in the 90s), someone who’s takes his mission incredibly thoughtfully without taking himself too seriously at all. He’s smart, focused, and tenacious (you’ve gotta be to survive a start up), and he’s the first one to recognize the value of every one of the colleagues we’ve got at our place. An amazing amount of personal sacrifice is at the heart of any entrepreneurial venture, and this year we’d also have to infinite hours of gratitude to Jed’s family for helping us too.

Thanks Jed. I told you when all this started I wouldn’t take it on without you, and I’m glad we decided the ride would be fun.

I imagine the SXSW Interactive festival can look excessive, with all the blog posts, photos and videos of geeks out every night partying and having a little too much fun. But here’s an example of things that happen at SXSW which are why we all go: boarding the plane today, I ran into Pete Cashmore one last time, whose great blog Mashable had just run an insightful piece about our company a few hours before, and I was able to tell him in person I appreciated the story and let him know we’re fans.

This was just one of a hundred small but important interactions I had with people over the past week who are important to my life and work in some way, many of whom I only see once a year at gatherings like SXSW. It’s become the best opportunity to spend quality time with lots of people from across the interactive (and film and music) world in one place, and I’ve seen returns both personal and professional for every hour I’ve spent there.

The interactive conference was bookended for me by a couple of great NNN-related events that were part of both the Film and Interactive Festivals (which are separate, but feature a handful of joint panels and parties). (more…)

Congratulations to Steve and Zadi on the 100th Episode of EPIC FU (formerly JETSET). They started working with us at Next New Networks around episode 50, so that’s also getting close to a year of great episodes together. Marc Boxser from our team shot a tribute video featuring many of us from the New York office talking about our favorite EPIC FU moments of the past 100 episodes (with some great editing help from Justin and Ramon):

In the video are, in order: Marc Boxser, Jed Simmons, Steve Nelson, Liam Collins, Fred Seibert, Roy Weissman, Erik Beck and Gary, Patty DeArtega, Jared Roessler, Ramon DeSouza, Justin Johnson, Tim Shey, Corinne Leigh, Emil Rensing, Diane DeCordova, Herb Scannell, Scott Moschella, Dan Meth, Ben Ross, and Rob Czar.

You’ll notice some of the footage is messed up — maybe it’s something similar to what happened to EPIC FU’s latest episode, embedded here below. Can you figure out what’s going on? What exactly is FUnetics, and why are so many videos popping up on YouTube with the same mysterious pledge?

It was a great weekend for politics here at NNN. This weekend we were all over the moon to see our very own Amber Lee Ettinger aka Obama Girl make a cameo in the opening of Saturday Night Live’s return episode after the Writer’s Strike. To quote Barely Political’s creator Ben Relles it was ‘beyond exciting’. Great job Amber and Ben.

And as the icing on the cake Noam Cohen in the New York Times did a great piece on Josh Marshall today and his winning of a George Polk Award. As soon as bloggers are considered, we know Josh will be up for a Pulitzer.

Josh- Our Man of the Year

Veracifier’s star Josh Marshall and TPM won a George Polk journalism award yesterday for their reporting on the federal prosecutors firing scandal in 2007. Traditional journalism accolades such as the Polk underline that bloggers like Josh are proving the success of old fashioned gum shoe journalism through the medium of new media. A huge congratulations to TPM. We continue to be proud to be associated with them.

Who isn’t gushing over the new MacBook Air? Well, not everyone — but heck, there are always some complainers. The response has been relatively positive. In Meredith Viera’s case, that’s an understatement, as Engadget recently noticed.

Technology comes and goes, and I for one don’t think we mark the passing of old technology with as much ceremony as it deserves. That’s why I was thrilled to see the Indy Mogul team take a masonry drill to one of the old iBooks in the office. The ending is the best part.

So now that we’ve drilled it, which NNN employee (or other celebrity) do you think should lick it? Let us know.

With the new year craziness, I don’t think we’ve had a chance to properly roll out the welcome mat or celebrate this, but recently Corinne and Rob of ThreadBanger renown have made the big move from Florida to New York, following the trajectory of other awesomely talented people like Erik Beck, Justin Johnson, and Scott Moschella that we’ve managed to entice here, despite cold winters (well, not today), ridiculous rents, and near-constant giant monster attacks. We’re a little used to seeing Rob and Corinne around, since they’ve visited here probably more than any other producers, but the last few days it’s been great to run into them around the offices and realize they’re not leaving.

I can’t wait to see what kinds of great things happen with them sharing space with Indy Mogul and Channel Frederator, to name a couple networks (and maybe they’ll finally improve Derek D’s wardrobe on Fast Lane Daily), but until then, it’s as good a time as any to point out their awesome end of 2007 episode, where they counted down some of the amazing moments of their first almost-year. Though I might have to fight with some people on the forums for the biggest fan title, I’m really proud to be ThreadBanger’s first fan, if only because I got to see their first episode before anyone else (that I know of). Congratulations, Thread Heads, and welcome to the Big Apple. We’re so glad to have you here.

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.