TechCrunch
Inside Funny Or Die's Celeb-Filled Video Production House
Funny Or Die has spent the last six years making some of the funniest content on the web, and unlike a lot of the new media companies that have popped up lately, it’s done so without leaning on YouTube for distribution. Instead, Funny Or Die has relied on hilarious, celeb-filled videos to drive content to its own website.
The concept behind Funny Or Die was spawned kind of from Hot Or Not, according to CEO Dick Glover. At the time it was formed, there weren’t all the social media outlets that we have today, and there was no real place on the web to find all the best comedy content. So they set out to build it.
The Funny Or Die headquarters is surprisingly small, but within a constrained space, the writing and production team are able to churn out upwards of . That’s because the team has kept scrappy and small, with a kind of startup mentality you might not expect from a media company that has celebrities dropping in all the time.
“The nice thing about Funny Or Die is that everything is produced in-house, so all of the writers, directors, producers, and editors — they’re all under one roof, literally,” Mike Farah, the company’s head of production, told me.
So how does Funny Or Die get so many stars to participate? Glover says it’s able to do so by giving them the freedom to create content that the can’t do anywhere else. That sort of creative freedom is appealing to celebs who might want to work on something different than what they usually are known for.
“The incentive for them is they can do whatever they want and that’s a powerful incentive,” Glover said. “This is a community where by and large, that’s not the case with them. Yes, they can pick and choose their projects, but once you’re into a project you’re getting notes from six different people and you have demands from other people.”
That’s attracting big-name talent to work with Funny Or Die, which in turn is attracting viewers and outside investment. Last year, it got some strategic funding from Turner.
Check out the video above, which is the last in our series on the new digital media companies in Los Angeles. And be sure to watch all the others that we’ve published previously to learn more about how a whole new video ecosystem is forming there:
- Get Ready For TechCrunch TV’s Tour Of The New Hollywood
- Inside Machinima, The New Video Network For Gamers And Fanboys
- Fullscreen Gives Video Creators The Tools To Collaborate And Make More Money On YouTube
- Meet Tastemade, The YouTube Network For Food Lovers
- Check Out YouTube Space LA, The Company’s Huge Production Space For Local Video Creators
- How YouTube Network Big Frame Focuses On Big Stars With Four Vertical Brands
- How ZEFR Brings Content ID To Content Creators, Media Companies… And Now Brands
- This Is How Maker Studios Scales Video Production For The YouTube Generation
- Inside Funny Or Die’s Celeb-Filled Online Video Production House
Worth $100B, Facebook Has Recovered $58B In Market Cap Since Last September
Today Facebook ended normal trading with a market valuation of $100.6 billion. The milestone capped a long return to form for Facebook, after a botched IPO and mobile concerns led investors to unload their shares during its first year as a public entity.
Facebook traded as low as $17.55 on September 4, 2012. This makes the achievement of reaching the $100 billion mark today more fun, as it comes almost a year after the company was at its lowest recorded ebb. Facebook has recovered $58 billion in market capitalization since last fall, more than doubling in value since its 52-week low.
Facebook is in fact quite close to setting an all-time high. As TechCrunch reported on the day of the company’s IPO, “Facebook shares opened at $42.05, a 10.5 percent increase from its final price last night at $38.”
Today, Facebook closed at $41.34, up 1.95 percent during normal trading. In after-hours trading, the company is up a fraction. However, Facebook traded as high as $41.94, pennies from an all-time high.
What is causing Facebook’s long boom? The precise opposite of what dragged it down in the first place. The company has proven that it can monetize mobile usage at high levels, driving revenue growth. Facebook has consistently expanded its user base as well, demonstrating functional longevity.
It’s a good moment for Facebook. However, the firm is incredibly richly valued, which might make it ripe for a market correction, or investor profit taking. Google Finance estimates its trailing 12-month price-earnings ratio to be 207.87. Yahoo Finance lists a slightly smaller figure: 187.06. Investors are valuing Facebook as a growth company.
Any slip in its next-quarter earnings report — anything that might indicate that Facebook’s revenue growth will slow — and Facebook could find itself trading a lower multiple. Still, today was a good one for Facebook, snagging 2 percent more value in a day of generally negative trading.
Momentum alone might carry the company to an all-time high tomorrow.
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