Ms. Day.

Q: How long does it take to find a new CEO after you raise $12 million? A: Not that long, it turns out. Go figure. Brooklyn-basedNew York-based Blip, which recently dropped the .tv and added a Networks, may not be a startup anymore. It's more than six years old, its founders have already flown the nest, and it just hired a grownup CEO after a four-month search.

Kelly Day, EVP and general manager of digital media and commerce at Discovery Communications, will "take responsibility for the Company’s next phase of growth for its industry-leading advertising and distribution platforms," according to a press release that comes about a month after Blip announced the fresh millions.

It struck us as odd that Blip chose someone with an ecommerce background to head up a video site; Blip's representatives did not immediately respond to a question about whether that was odd.

But then again, former CEO and cofounder Mike Hudack is a high school drop-out whose resume includes Time Inc., the National Hockey League, and starting his own small Internet security and privacy company in Connecticut at the age of sixteen, according to CrunchBase.  (Mr. Hudack took a medical leave from the company in November.)

"[Ms. Day's] experience and expertise in building audiences and establishing deep distribution partnerships aligns perfectly with Blip's strategic vision of providing producers the opportunity to distribute and monetize their content as broadly as possible," Jeffrey Glass, board member and managing director at Bain Capital Ventures, one of Blip's investors, said in a statement. Ms. Day added that she was "thrilled" and Blip is "uniquely positioned to take advantage of the tremendous growth in online video."

Sounds like Blip is going into money-making mode. Blip hosts and distributes independent video content, helping content creators syndicate their videos to iTunes, YouTube, social media and set-top boxes. The company recently launched its own destination site, which it says now accounts for 12 percent of the company’s “overall monetizable views,” or videos that can run ads. What kind of shows can one advertise against on blip.tv? Try The Aimless Cook, desultory culinary adventures, or Dealership, a comedy show about four car salesman who "do everything but sell cars." The company says it gets more than 300 million views a month.

Tagline: "Waste time with us!" (mypodstudios.com)

The site, which launched in September 2011, has an announcement to make: it had more than five million unique viewers in December, making it the 191st most trafficked site in the nation according to Quantcast, "right behind collegehumor.com, blip.tvand cbsnews.com and just five spots behind hulu.com," as MyPod notes, all with a team of five. "Advertisers and consumers are flocking to the site, and they are profitable after only six months," a rep wrote in an email to Betabeat.

Slow down there, site we've never heard of! A million viewers for every employee? Could such stats be true? MyPod Studios comes out of Black Ocean Video, a New York-based incubator. MyPod's offerings include how-to videos, cocktail recipes, comedy shorts from Julia Stiles, and "men's interest" videos of the bikini-themed variety. There are around 5,000 in all, with "moar videos plz" the most common complaint from viewers. The site already has revenue from advertising.

So how did they do it? The key is curation, says Jay Miletsky, founder and CEO. "Consumers don’t have time to wade through hours of video to find something tailored to their interests, so we do it for them. And because we’re so successful in attracting viewers, advertisers feel confident marketing through our site," he said in a release.

The curation approach appeals to advertisers, too, who don't have to worry about their brands appearing on offensive amateur content or having an awkward Adsense moment, like when an ad for Delta appears on a video of a plane crash.

Interestingly, Mr. Miletsky isn't as bullish on original web series as its competitors YouTube, IAC and blip.tv. "Personally, I would love to see Web series take off in a big way," he told ReelSEO. "But honestly, I don’t see it happening. Yes, there will be some stand out efforts, and series that get some heightened attention, but the fact is that people consume video differently online than they do on TV. When people watch television, they’re in a more relaxed environment, and their minds are conditioned to watching episodic content with a week or more between segments, for 30 or 60 minutes at a time. And they’re comfortable opening their minds to getting to know new characters and story lines."

His comment ignores the trend in streaming web TV to television sets at home, but nevermind. MyPod specializes in quick hit, at-your-desk videos, although it's moving into the sticky category of gaming as well as refining its mobile offerings. What else is promised for 2012? More videos of Bridgette, Mr. Miletsky says.

Finally, a Bain Capital story that doesn't involve the term "vulture capital." This morning, Blip, a video network highlighting original web series, announced a financing round of more than $12 million. Bain Capital Ventures, Canaan Partners, and other previous investors contributed $6.5 million as well as debt from Silicon Valley Bank totaling about $6 million.

The company, formerly known as Blip.tv, filed a Form D in December of last year, signifying that they had already raised $6 million from Bain and Canaan Partners.

In the press release, Blip claimed revenue had grown 100 percent year-over-year thanks to 13 million monthly uniques in the U.S. and 30 million monthly viewers globally. The new funding, said Blip, will be used to develop tools and services for web series producers, invest in its advertising and distribution platforms, and "significantly expand" syndication relationships.

Betabeat spoke with Blip COO Steve Brookstein to talk about the competition for eyeballs, whether YouTube is a friend or foe, and if he's voting for Bain founder Mitt Romney.

According to Mr. Brookstein, the search for a new Blip CEO is progressing along. "We've seen a number of very strong candidates and hope to have a selection soon," he said. (Blip CEO and co-founder Mike Hudack took a medical leave from the company last fall. Around the same time, Blip announced the depature of co-founder Dina Kaplan, who had been handling the company's PR and marketing.)

Although Bain Capital may be making headlines of late, Mr. Brookstein said he doesn't foresee "any particular rub-off effect" on the company. He pointed out that it was Bain Capital Ventures, a division of the firm that Mitt built, that backed the company. "We think the world of Bain," said Mr. Brookstein, adding, "I think [Bain's investment] has zero impact on the sideshow going on with Gov. Romney." Mr. Brookstein declined to specify whether he would consider voting for the presidential hopeful, noting, "I don’t even discuss my voting practices with my wife."

As for Blip's destination site, which the company launched in May of last year, Mr. Brookstein said it already represents 12 percent of the company's "overall monetizable views," or videos they can run ads on. The destination site features a curated collection of 2,200 of Blip's 55,000 videos. "But we also have our player distributed on many other platforms." The site is merely one way, "we can monetize throughout our entire distribution platform," he said.

The most popular series right now are Day[9], Smosh, Red vs. Blue, and Nostaliga Critic. Blip doesn't necessarily have exclusive deals with the web series it showcases, which is why Mr. Brookstein tried to position YouTube rolling out its channel initiative and original content as a good thing.  "We work closely with YouTube, in some respects a partner, it's not really we versus they," he said. Rather, he reasoned, YouTube is shinning a spotlight on a huge market with room for them both.

So Blip has no competitors, we asked? "To some degree Hulu," he admitted, or "anyone who is looking for eyeballs."

In that arena, Blip may have an unexpected leg up, at the annual 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, Blip beat out Hulu, Dailymotion, Crackle, and Joost to win "Best Distribution Platform" from the International Academy of Web Television. In other news: web TV has its own international academy! Who knew?

blip

The folks at Form D landed the SEC form for what appears to be a new round of funding at Blip Networks, the corporate name of blip.tv. So far the company has sold $6 million in shares on what would be its Series D, with the option to sell another $5 million still on the table. 

The new money was first noted by Erick Schonfeld, who also pointed out that measurement from Quantcast and Comscore show blip's traffic to be flat and even down over the last year, averaging 1.4 million per month in recent months.

These numbers are clearly not a great reflection of the company's reach. Before blip.tv poached some of Youtube's biggest stars, the company was reporting monthly unique views over 300 million. That's across dozens of different video platforms, including the web sites of their video stars, big sites like Youtube and connected TV services like Boxee and Roku.

So the overall viewership on blip's network is larger than the monthly unique visitors to their website by a factor of several hundred. Schonfeld is right to point out that blip made a point back in May of announcing a new site that they hoped would become a destination in its own right, and the traffic stats seem to indicate that is not happening. "That's the benefit of having a network that is so much larger than your home site," Evan Gotlib, blip's SVP of sales told Betabeat. "You can take your time and really get it right without having to worry about growth."

There is also a lingering question of leadership at the company. Speaking with blip this morning Betabeat learned that co-founders Mike Hudack and Dina Kaplan have both officially left the company. Cable industry vet Steve Brookstein is the acting CEO as the company continues a public search for a new leader.

Press Play on the Panda

Youtube just rolled out a new look for the site they are calling Cosmic Panda. Between that and bidding Pi in the recent Nortel auction, Google is really letting their geek flag fly.

The most interesting change in Cosmic Panda is that it puts a lot more emphasis on showing users related content from a single channel and bringing together episodes from ongoing series. 

"The new interface… makes it very seamless to go from episode to episode, and understand on your channel page that there are many different actual shows to watch," comedy duo The Fine Brothers told GigaOm. "That, combined with the new feature of having the default on every video page be more videos from the specific channel that video is from, vs. random related videos that only some of the time are actually related, is a huge win for content creators to get more views and more subscribers. This is HUGE to hopefully curb some of the metadata spam that plagues the site, with people copying your tag, titles, description in order to show up in your related videos...This feels like a real push to getting us closer to seeing differences between the random one offs or virals, and the more professionals who create actual series."

Youtube desperately needed to respond to the demands of professional content creators. A gaggle of the platforms biggest stars -- iJustine, Fred, The Annoying Orange and Freddie Wong -- all made the jump to New York based blip.tv last month. From the beginning blip.tv has been focused on original, serialized content for the web, and the service's recent redesign put a heavy emphasis on the identity and continuity of these weekly shows.

Right now Cosmic Panda is still in experimental beta, but users who want to check it out can head over TestTube and try it out.

The start-up week starts Wednesday:

VIDEO LAUNCH. General Assembly-based VHX.tv, launched by Vimeo alum Casey Pugh and Know Your Memester Jamie Wilkinson about a month and a half ago, is in public beta as of yesterday. The app, which creates a curated stream of video based on links your friends share on Twitter, Tumblr and the rest, has a better looking interface than TechStars-hatched competitor Shelby.tv and more channels , verticals, or filters, whatever you want to call them--but unlike Shelby, doesn't put emphasis on who exactly shared what. "Coming soon: mixtape-style playlists, an API for developers, and iPhone, iPad and Boxee apps," the company teased.

Meanwhile, Blip.TV and YouTube are ramping up efforts to suck users into web television with the same enthusiasm previous generations had for television-television.

KICKSTARTER TEASES TEE. There's a link going around that declares--"this is not a Kickstarter shirt"--it's a lie. Kickstarter founder Yancey Strickler has been printing t-shirts with stats from the box that hangs up and to the right of every project, indicating how much money has been raised and how many days are left; he's been giving them out to friends but is now scaling the project. Since the number of shirts to be printed is fixed, donors can consider themselves part of a special Kickstarter club, he says in the video.

UBER WENT TO THE HAMPTONS. No really, they did. Uber's New York office sent drivers of two cars to the Hamptons over the weekend to drive well-heeled vacationers around from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m., Friday to Sunday, at the same rates found in the city.

NO VACANCY. Recently-funded, bi-coastal start-up Nodejitsu is up to 12 developers. "The hiring spree slows down," said co-founder Marak Squires.

ALSO, IN HIRES. Former Quirky community intern Ruthea Noteware has joined ex-Zagat mobile chief Ryan Charles on his boot-strapped start-up Consmr (not to be confused with New Jersey-based Cnsmr).

NOW HIRING. "Quick update is we are over 100 start-ups and counting, 250 registered job seekers and counting (we are going to begin getting aggressive outbound push from some great sources, so expect every bit of 1000 candidates)," Silicon Alley Job Fair organizer Tarek Pertew writes with about two weeks to go to the event.

APPS, EVENTS 'N LEFTOVERS. Skype competitor ooVoo, 26 million users, launches iPhone app. The June 8 New York Tech Meetup will start at 7:30 pm, instead of the usual 7 pm. Continuing hacker education group Collabracode hosting demos on Saturday, June 4 (there will be dumplings!). Union Square Ventures partner Brad Burnham is speaking at General Assembly tonight;  DUMBO Tech Breakfast meets Friday. Consultant Bill Manos taking over for Andrew Ran-Wong as head of the meetup for New York Business Entrepreneurs Network, which is up to more than 10,400 registered "business mavens."

Got an announcement for the start-up news roundup? Email tips@betabeat.com.

Disclosure.

Currently many big web hits rely on YouTube's front page to drive viewership beyond their core fan base. "Google gives us a 48 hour window on the YouTube homepage," says Brandon Laatsch, whose YouTube channel has more than 1.5 million subscribers. "With Blip we get more control over how we connect with viewers and a better chance to build engaged fans." The plan with blip.tv, says Laatsch, is to build a dedicated homepage and drive viewers there.

"Producers should really be in charge but need a lot of support," said blip.tv co-founder Mike Hudack on stage. With a billion views per quarter, blip will leverage its distribution and advertising power to build on the success of The Collective's stars. The addition of this talent should help grow Blip's monthly uniques from 300 to 500 million.

"Is there anybody else in here named Fred because we will give you a series immediately," joked Michael Green, CEO and founder of The Collective. "Seriously though, this is an opportunity to connect artists with their fans without a traditional intermediary and, by doing that, keep a greater share of the revenue for us and the creators."

Fred will be launching an animated series and says the partnership with Blip will help him produce these more expensive shows. YouTube, while massive, can't scale like a network, Mr. Green says, which supports a recent story on TechCrunch about the video giant's plans to become a "network of networks."

Well traffic is no longer a problem at blip.tv. Monthly video views have tripled over the past six months to 330 million. That means the network, which has 3 billion video views to date, expects to clock 1 billion more each quarter.

"Our focus now is discovery," says co-founder Mike Hudack. With that in mind blip has redone their website, aiming to create a destination portal that will help users find new content, not just watch the show they stumble on through search or social.

The old blip.tv site had no notion of categories. Now an editorial team is curating verticals like comedy, sports and tech. "The thing we heard again and again from viewers was, 'we want to be programmed to',"  says Hudack. When a user arrives at a channel now, a playlist featuring several hours is already cued up.

Big brand advertisers can now sponsor site takeovers and brand specific channels, with Reebok backing Health and Fitness and T-Mobile USA as the official launch sponsor for the new site. Blip is so focused on the production values for their new site, they even designed the Reebok ad in-house.

The company, which just moved into new offices, has 50 employees and is still hiring. Of the 50,000 or so shows in the blip catalog, only 1,800, or roughly 5% are being featured on the site. The aim is to drive traffic to these programs and provide an incentive for the producers who didn't make the cut to step up their game. "We're drawing a line in the sand and saying you need certain elements," says Hudack.

The new blip.tv site is live here.

A senior citizen vlogger with a handlebar mustache pitched The Observer on his idea, a men’s grooming series, focusing largely on ornate facial hair. “Getting into the market is easy, because anyone is a publisher today,” he intoned. “Making money off of your ideas, that’s another story.”

That seemed to be the rub at this conference, entitled The Future of Digital Hollywood. “People think you’ve got great content, that will be the key,” said the panel’s host, Gary Delfiner, SVP at Screen Media Ventures. “But the whole mentality, build it and they will come, that doesn’t work anymore.”

Delfiner took a dramatic pause, or perhaps just a deep breath. “But for those of you who think there is no business here, well just take a look at Dina.”

Dina Kaplan, co-founder of blip.tv, smiled, cupping her chin in one hand. Blip is a New York based network for independent web shows ranging from videogame strategy seminars to tween singing sensations. “I can tell you that our tops shows are now pulling in hundreds of thousands and we expect that to be millions this year,” Ms. Kaplan said.

Ears around the room perked up. “For a long time people thought of us as the little engine that could,” she went on. “But this is the year people are going to realize we’re serious business.”

When it was founded back in 2005 blip had a simple thesis. There would be a huge market for a network of independently produced web series. This, of course, was a longstanding dream. Josh Harris had tried and failed with Pseudo back in 2000, despite telling the major networks on 60 minutes that he was coming for their heads.

“If you looked at the market back then, there were a lot of companies in the space who had raised gobs of money,” says Blip co-founder and CEO Mike Hudack. “But then we Youtube took off, their boards started pushing them to be “me too”, and chase the viral video world of dogs on skateboards.”

In the beginning the founders kept their days jobs and paid the bandwith costs out of their own pockets. “There was really just one web show at the time, Rocketboom,” says Kaplan, “So the whole thing was kind of built on a dream.”

Warren Lee, a venture partner at Canaan specializing in video, passed on blip when the company pitched him in 2008 but invested 18 months later. “It became clear that they really understood where they fit into the market, and that this was a business with a ton of potential to scale,” says Lee.

This year of blip’s more than 50,000 shows will earn six figures, enough to pay full-time employees and health insurance. In 2010 the company saw its ad revenue increase five fold and expect that to double or triple again this year.

The recent acquisition of New Next Networks by Youtube north of $40 million has put the spotlight on the business of original content for the web. “For a while everyone was focused on the bottom and the top,” said Ms. Kaplan. There were the amateur videos on Youtube which might go viral and there were the well produced corporate shows which got funneled to Hulu. “Now people are beginning to see that the value in the middle of that pyramid.”

The key to this success has been scale. blip does 140 million video views a month on 33 million uniques, with the average viewer sitting down for a 25 minute session. Shows on blip end up pretty much anywhere the eyeballs are, from Youtube to AOL. Ad revenue is split 50/50 between the folks producing the programs and blip. Even with their size , however,  blip has no interest in producing its own content. “We’ll never play in the Hulu sandbox,” says Kaplan.

The independent ethos is a key part of the success of programs on blip.tv. The most popular show on the network insists on keeping its growing business private. “I keep encouraging them to tell people about it,” says Kaplan. “But they feel like they might lose of their street cred with the fans if viewers knew they were making $450,000.” The joke around the blip office these days is that the stars of the network are now earning far more than the execs, says Kaplan. “But that just means we’re doing our jobs right.”