Virtual Hilarity

1
Virtual Hilarity
Streaming Personalized Comedy
Charles Sebens, Francisco Saldana and Matthew
Archie
2
A Fusion of Web 2.0 Ideas

• Applied to COMEDY!

3
Agenda

• Comedians
• Gathering Content
• Comedian Profiles
• Users
• Custom Recommendations
• Community Viewing
• Viewing Modes
• Profitability
• Conclusion

4
Why Will Comedians Post Their Material For Free?

• Connect with fans
• Sell tickets to shows
• Test out new material

5
Grassroots Movement

• Send representatives to comedy clubs
• Win-win situation
• Start in a single city with local comedians
• Build a database of users and videos
• Then go national!

6
Comedian Profiles

• Links to their best videos
• Blogs by the comedians
• Comedian-audience communication
• Notifications about tours and shows

7
Playlist Selection

• Users rate videos while viewing
• Create a database of user ratings
• Based on your ratings, determines which other
  users in the database have similar tastes
• Presents content other users with your taste liked

8
Community Viewing

• Recreating the comedy club experience
• Allow users to stream a video simultaneously in
  groups
• Groups created based on similarity in taste
• User profiles
• Avatar chatting

9
Waiting Room

• As groups form users may have to wait
• Jokes
• Fun Facts
• Statistics
• Tips on usage

Waiting The Candidates as Trains
10
Virtual Hilarity
That was NOT funny!
Shut up, that was great!!
Lolzzz
New Group
Home
11
Viewing Modes

• Audience mode
• Community viewing
• Full screen mode
• Distraction-free
• Compact mode
• Allows multitasking

12
Technology

• Open-Source Building on the commons
• MySQL
• Python
• AJAX
• FLV Content
• Proprietary
• Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server
• Adobe Flash Player
• ActionScript Language

13
Profitability

• Sell tickets to comedy shows
• On commission
• Based on preferences
• Advertising Comedy
• Linking to DVDs/CDs of comedians being viewed

14
Structure
15
END