Blip (website)
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| Subsidiary of Maker Studios | |
| Fate | Shut down |
| Founded | May 5, 2005 (as blip.tv) |
| Defunct | August 20, 2015 |
| Headquarters | New York City, New York, U.S. |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
| Owner | The Walt Disney Company |
| Parent | Maker Studios (2013–2015) |
| Website |
blip |
Blip (formerly blip.tv) was an American media platform for web series content and also offered a dashboard for producers of original web series to distribute and monetize their productions. The company was founded on May 5, 2005, and it was located in New York City (where the headquarters was based) and Los Angeles. It was financed by Bain Capital Ventures, Canaan Partners, and Ambient Sound Investments. Blip’s mission statement was “to deliver the best original web series to audiences across multiple platforms.” The site showcased a wide variety of dramas, comedies, arts, sports and other shows. Blip was acquired by Maker Studios in 2013, and shut down by them on August 20, 2015. It is in the process of bringing many of its former content producers to a new website, maker.tv.
Founded on May 5, 2005 by Mike Hudack, Dina Kaplan, Justin Day, Jared Klett, and Charles Hope, blip.tv was bootstrap funded by its founders for the first year of its operation. The partners created blip.tv shortly after they joined Yahoo’s video blogging group, and saw an opportunity to create a video-hosting site that focused on being “a best–in-class video hosting,distribution and monetization platform for independent producers of quality video content.” The group acquired the blip.tv domain, created the site’s original interface in a week’s time then began attracting producers and viewers who were interested in niche video content, such as the web series, for which the site has since become known.
In 2007, blip.tv secured funding from Ambient Sound Investments and in 2008 received additional support from Bain Capital. In 2008, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore teamed up with Blip, alongside Brave New Films, to distribute his movie Slacker Uprising, which was the first time a notable director released a free, feature-length film via the Internet.
In 2009, blip.tv’s distribution network grew significantly with the addition of new partnerships with YouTube, Vimeo, NBC Local Media New York and Roku. In 2010, blip.tv surpassed 100 million video views. The following year, after reaching over three billion cumulative video views, the site underwent a massive overhaul. The company rolled out a new logo and name, dropping the “.TV” and becoming “Blip.” Along with the redesign came a change in business policy, and instead of acting mainly as a video distributor, Blip then "[embraced] its destiny as a video destination with a redesign that put the most popular blip.tv web series front and center."
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