They may not have meant for the association, but globs, lube, gunk and goo came to mind, which, if you stretch the metaphor, seem to be the yin to Gloob.tv’s yang. The operators (well, spin-meisters) of the site assert that searching for video on YouTube “doesn’t have to be like digging through a trash heap…”
That quote goes on to include “cats playing the piano, bad karaoke singers, soccer goals, and teen girls talking about their slutty friends.”
Oh, come now. Everybody likes cats playing pianos.
Actually, they tell me, the name is a mutant of “glued to the tube,” (really? Did that get past the focus groups?) and is the latest brainchild of Future US, publisher of several special-interest magazines like PC Gamer, Pregnancy, Guitar World, and Revolver.
Gloob.tv builds on the YouTube concept by taking out some of the “you” involved, and replacing with some “we.”
Videos featured on the site are user-submitted and often user-generated but instead of a the mob deciding which videos got the most play (which was kind of the point behind YouTube – you know, it’s a populist media), an electorate of sorts – sorry, editorial staff – selects what appears on the site based on merit, not numbers.
If you remember, this how we demolished the White House.
Not that I’m all snarky about it. The concept would cut down on billion-dollar lawsuits, providing the electorate, er, editors, are cautious (and I’m not sure if they are).
Like YouTube, though, users are able to rank and comment on videos, and will be able to embed them on their own sites. Also like YouTube, it features videos from YouTube one would think were protected under copyright – including clips from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” which is owned by Viacom, who’s suing YouTube for a whole lot of money.
But we would assume the electorate has that covered somehow. Perhaps Fair Use can cover them, and perhaps YouTube will be the test to see if so.
Unlike YouTube, it offers “spotters” compensation based on the traffic generated by their comment streams.
Videos are divided into categories: movies, news, games, sports, TV, celebrities, tech and stupid. Future US says the categories are designed so users don’t have to sift through irrelevant video.
“We get to do what we are world famous for: filtering good stuff from bad, and telling people where and what to spend their time on,” said Future US president Jonathan Simpson-Bint. “While Gloob is a web 2.0 aggregation business, it has a unique and, we hope, comforting old world angle to it: there’s too much choice, our experts will help you through it.”
Choices, choices, all these damn choices. Choices are bad, just ask AT&T.
Shee-yeah…Something tells me that’s not going to go over well.
