What is it with college kids and online video challenges? There are plenty of startups catering to this strange video niche/fetish. IBeatYou and Strutta (read our review) have dedicated their entire Websites to this activity. And now Blowtorch Entertainment, the independent movie studio that raised $50 million last November, is getting in on the action with a Facebook app called Blown (and is using the tagline, “Get Blown”).
Blowtorch makes feature-length independent films, and is shooting one right now in Philadelphia with Luke Wilson called Tenure. But it also tries to engage with its potential college audience online through its Website, and now on Facebook. For instance, anyone can create their own short videos and the best ones get re-shot with professional actors by Blowtorch and will be shown before its main features in theaters across the country. Now with Get Blown, the idea is to get this audience to issue video challenges to each other. Right now, it is only a Facebook app, but Bebo and mobile versions are coming soon.
The barriers to participate here are really low. You don’t have to shoot your own scripted video. All you need to do is come up with a challenge, or join one, such as finding the best human beatbox video on YouTube, the worst male dance, or coming up with the cheesiest pick-up line. You can film yourself doing this, or simply find examples already out there on the Web and load them up into each challenge, where they can then be voted on and spread virally. Here’s an example of one that the company came up with for finding photos of the lamest tattoos:
Zach Challenge: Lamest Tattoo from George Johnson on Vimeo.
With all the spam applications hitting Facebook, it’s nice to see an application with potential.
Some potential yes…and the name will get a lot of attention.
There is so much going on for students I think. When face book is involved it will sure be big and useful.
Erick,
If you come up w/ a challenge, can you put that challenge on your own personal website? Will it grow virally with your website or virally through blow torch?
What’s the benefit to a persons own website that wants to use Blowtorch?
Erick,
If you wrote this headline for your (former) editors at Time magazine, what would the reaction have been?
Score one for “Freedom of the Blog.”
Why don’t they keep the focus on making movies. So much potential for cool facebook apps, too. Why strech the brand? I don’t get it
oh, its THAT kind of “getting blown”…should have figured..
so who wantes to blow me?
I don’t get it either. There is no motivation for people to join or start challenges. No movie exposure, no cash prize for winning, no ad rev split for pages viewed in your challenge, no syndication revenue for content creators. What is the incentive besides making more pages to serve ads onto?
Check this out:
http://www.framecaster.com/howitworks.html
This sounds a lot like http://www.peoplescourtraw.com, which is more interesting.
Darrin,
in the coming weeks, the platform will be available for you to challenge your friends on other social networks and platforms, many of which you’d expect and a few you might be surprised by. You’ll also be able to take your challenges with you–to keep and syndicate to your own audiences whether or not they’re part of a social network.
How many active users do they have ? I kinda find it difficult to promote non multiuser stuff in facebook .. actually I am trying to make my Sudoku app into multiplayer ..
$50 million?…looks like crap.
Bragster.com does a waaaayyy better job.