Funny or Die Goes Mobile with Babelgum: Q&A with FOD CEO Dick Glover

Babelgum and Funny or Die announced yesterday an exclusive, wireless licensing agreement to bring Funny or Die videos to mobile platforms. Over funnyordie the next two years, Babelgum will bring new and library Funny or Die content to mobile users, including a stand-alone Funny or Die-branded iPhone application and Funny or Die content in all current and future Babelgum applications. The Comedy channel on the Babelgum website will include a Funny or Die branded section that will contain new content after Funny or Die premieres it on its website, along with favorites from the Funny or Die library including The Landlord, Good Cop Baby Cop, Denise Richards’ Funbags and other top-rated videos.

Over the past six months, the Funny or Die site has averaged over 25 million video views per month. Funny or Die’s founders are Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy. Judd Apatow is one of the site’s principal partners. An integrated mobile and Web content platform, dickglover Babelgum recently launched an original mobile application in the United States, UK and Italy, that brings regionally tailored programming to smart phones – at present iPhone 3G, iPod Touch, Nokia (N96, N95 and 6210) – via 3G and WiFi. Babelgum’s content partners include, among others, EMI, Sony BMG, the Associated Press, PBS, BBC, VBS, Lonely Planet, and National Geographic.

he next two years, Babelgum will bring new and library Funny or Die content to mobile users, including a stand-alone Funny or Die-branded iPhone application and Funny or Die content in all current and future Babelgum applications.

MobilizedTV brings you this exclusive interview with Funny or Die CEO Dick Glover.

MobilizedTV: Tell us a little about Funny or Die’s history with mobile as a distribution platform.

Glover: Funny or Die started in April of 2007; I joined in Jan. 2008 but I’m familiar with the history. Certainly from the beginning, we were always thinking about mobile. Obviously anything you do in 2000 and beyond, mobile is a reality and is in your mind. Not too long after the site launched on the web, we had a WAP site up, so you could always access it via mobile. Early on, we also had–and still have–a deal with VCAST where we supply a small number of videos to them. In this day and age, no one who’s creating content doesn’t think about mobile. No one intelligent anyway.

How did the deal with Babelgum take place - did they approach you?

We clearly have been looking around for some time, including looking at creating our own mobile apps. Our platform is proprietary and we are fully self-contained. We looked with our tech team in Palo Alto at doing our own mobile apps. Then, through someone we know, we were introduced to Babelgum. We have the site in the U.K. and we also have spent some time in Europe, so we’re familiar at a high level with Babelgum. The intro was done and we started looking at them, and we thought, wow , this is a good fit. We agree with you wholeheartedly that our content is very digestible on a mobile platform. They already have a widely distributed mobile platform and plans for expansion. As we talked more and more, we thought they were a perfect partner. I also think it’s good to know what we’re good at and seek out partners who are good at what they do.

We’re very excited about this. We think it’s a good marriage.

Will the library content on Funny or Die be repurposed directly for mobile, or will it be edited or changed?

The library content will be the exact same videos. No editing. Just from pure quantitative basis, it wont’ be all of the videos. We’re a UGC site as well as professionally produced and curated stuff, so there are tens and tens of thousands of videos available. What we’ll do with them is choose the top few hundred and make them available as well as all the new stuff.

Will you be creating made-for-mobile content?

Maybe, maybe not. The basic plan and the key is that when a video goes live, it’s available on the website and on the mobile app simultaneously. There isn’t at this point in time a specific plan to produce either just-for-mobile or just for the website. Now it’s for both. We continue to do what we do which is put up timely, funny, smart stuff every day. We’re not like a movie studio where you plan and have a big release every few weeks. Two days ago, we put up a video with Tiffany Thiessen and it’s been wildly successful. Kristin Cavallari has a new one up today and that will do well. All the good ones continue to be available. Our stock in trade is this steady supply of very good often celebrity-driven, funny, timely videos. We do crank out a minimum of four or five exclusive ones as well as some great UGC.

Are there any plans to leverage FOD’s core strengths in other ways on the mobile platform with games or commerce for example?

The answer is that all of this is absolutely being talked about. I can’t tell you anything specific, like in 3 months we’ll have games or commerce. Games are a good example. We’ve looked at it a lot and we think there is some opportunity but we haven’t found the right solution yet, something the fans will love. Will we find it tomorrow? Maybe. Will we never find it? Maybe.

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