In a recent article, Wired outlines how the once-popular comedy website CollegeHumor rose to prominence, and how it was “decimated” by Facebook, shows how cutthroat the world of digital media can be.
Wired writes in an article titled “CollegeHumor Helped Shape Online Comedy. What Went Wrong?” about the once-popular comedy and video sketch website CollegeHumor, which began in the years before Facebook and other social media platforms really existed as we know them.
At the time, independent websites such as CollegeHumor were the only places internet users could find comedic content, now with just a few major websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube shaping how people view media on the internet, CollegeHumor has seen mass layoffs and declining views.
Wired notes that many online businesses operated solely on advertising income, when that advertising-income dried up as a result of users flocking to social media many sites attempted to shift their content to platforms such as Facebook. For many, this move was a disaster after it was revealed that Facebook had vastly inflated its video metrics, resulting in the social media firm apologizing and paying $40 million to advertisers who had received incorrect information on just how many people were viewing their ads.
This had a huge impact on many online businesses that had moved to Facebook, including CollegeHumor. The site continued to diversify its business and ride the popularity of major online trends, but its overall viewership declined. Many have taken issue with the idea that the site declined due to a drop in quality or changing internet tastes. Adam Conover, an employee at CollegeHumor who has gone on to star in the successful Adam Ruins Everything series, commented on the decline of CollegeHumor and the career move of one of the site’s founders Ricky Van Veen who now works at Facebook, stating:
“People will say that this change that happened in the online content industry is just a case of winners and losers,” Conover says. “That this is just sort of a natural order of events, and there’s predators and prey, and we got eaten. I dispute that characterization!” CollegeHumor didn’t lose, he says. They got decimated by Facebook’s ever-changing platform—not to mention “they aggressively acquired our executives.”
Van Veen’s current position at Facebook has rankled some of his former CollegeHumor pals. “Ricky and I have an intense long-term relationship and it’s hard when a friend joins a terrorist group like Facebook, because you can’t really talk to them in the same way,” Lodwick says. Conover has suggested that Facebook hired Van Veen as part of a strategy to dominate companies like CollegeHumor. “Why did they bring him on? I guess to help them figure out how to steal traffic from sites like the one that he founded,” Conover says. (Facebook declined to comment on Conover’s allegations.)
The CollegeHumor brand has since been acquired by CollegeHumor executive Sam Reich who is attempting to keep the site running, but many are still worried about the future of the media firm. Wired writes:
CollegeHumor flourished because it grew in tandem with iterations of the internet that no longer exist, but it hasn’t totally lost its talent for intuiting what comes next. Five months ago, it released a video titled “CollegeHumor Is Shutting Down.” In it, Katie Marovitch (playing herself) walks into the office to discover her coworkers packing up their things because the website they work for is going out of business. “Why are we going out of business?” she yells. “You guys are my family!” People make jokes and explain that there’s no money. It’s a very strange sketch to watch now, as life has imitated art and the people in the video really have packed up that same office. But in the sketch as in life, one of the employees proposes a far-fetched plan to save the company. “How much does CollegeHumor cost?” Katie asks. “Maybe I could help.”
Read the full article at Wired Magazine here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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