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WatchMojo

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WatchMojo.com
Type of site
Reference, Pop Culture, Infotainment
Available inEnglish, Spanish, Turkish, Portuguese, Dutch, German, French, Polish
Created byAshkan Karbasfrooshan
Raphael Daigneault
Christine Voulieris[1]
URLwatchmojo.com
Launched14 June 2005; 18 years ago (2005-06-14)[2]
Current statusActive
Company
Headquarters
Montreal, Quebec
,
Canada
Key people
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan (CEO)
SubsidiariesWatchMojo Espanol[3]

WatchMojo.com is a Canadian-based privately held video content producer, publisher, and syndicator. With over 8.8 billion all-time video views[4] and 15 million subscribers (making it the 29th most-viewed and 43rd most-subscribed channel),[5] WatchMojo has one of the largest channels on YouTube. 60% of its viewers and subscribers are male, whereas 40% are female, and 50% hail from English speaking countries.[6]

History

According to the company's official biography, The 10-Year Overnight Success: An Entrepreneurship’s Manifesto - How WatchMojo Built the Most Successful Media Brand, after spending the first half of the 2000s writing hundreds of columns on entertainment, lifestyle and history and publishing two books, company founder Ashkan Karbasfrooshan created WatchMojo to produce videos that were of higher-quality than the user-generated fare found on most websites, but in a format, style, length and tone that catered to Internet viewers' tastes. As such, WatchMojo.com was founded in June 2005 by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, Raphael Daigneault, and Christine Voulieris. Other early key employees include Kevin Havill and Derek Allen. The WatchMojo.com website was launched on 14 June 2005 and its YouTube channel was launched on 25 January 2007.[7] Originally the content featured hosts and vlog-style presentations, but over the years the programming shifted to more polished visuals featuring voice-overs. Dan Paradis and Rebecca Brayton are two of the main hosts, who are seen occasionally in the company's videos, but generally mainly heard in the channel's voice-overs.

WatchMojo is an independent channel, it is neither a Multi-Channel Network (MCN) nor part of one. According to the CEO Karbasfrooshan, WatchMojo employed 23 full-time employees and a team of 100-plus freelance writers and video editors by October 2014.[8] By March 2017, that number jumped to 50-plus.[9]

The videos it produces are typically submitted and voted on by visitors of the site on its suggestion tool, as well as ideas suggested on its YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter pages. As the activity on its YouTube channel comments' section grew, WatchMojo designed and built the suggest tool to centralize voter submissions. The suggest tool has garnered 10 million votes across the 2.5 million list entries on 500,000 video ideas suggested by the 250,000 users who have signed up for the feature.[10]

On its main YouTube channel, It hit 1 million subscribers on 30 October 2013 and then 5 million subscribers on 29 August 2014. In December 2014, on the day its YouTube channel surpassed 6 million subscribers, it announced a representation deal with talent agency William Morris Endeavor.[11] It surpassed 10 million subscribers on 5 December 2015.[12] The 15 millionth subscriber was registered on July 29 2017. Across the company's other channels (JrMojo, MsMojo, and the non-English international editions), the WatchMojo Network boasts over 18 million subscribers.

During the 2016–17 regular season of the NHL, WatchMojo sponsored the NY Islanders. In October 2016, Karbasfrooshan published The 10-Year Overnight Success: An Entrepreneurship’s Manifesto - How WatchMojo Built the Most Successful Media Brand on YouTube on the company's new publishing imprint, as it ventured into digital books and guides.

In August 2017, WatchMojo posted a video titled "Top Ten Consoles Nobody Bought". Viewers commented on the similarities between WatchMojo's video and YouTuber Larry Bundy Jr.'s video: "Top Ten Actual Worst Selling Consoles". Upon being notified of the similarities and use of plagiarism traps Larry had purposely placed in his work, WatchMojo swiftly investigated the matter, issued an apology and took down the video the same day. Karbasfrooshan explained that the company relies on its suggest tool as inspiration for many of its videos, but it counts on a large base of freelance writers, and conceding that the company should have been more vigorous in screening the similarities before publishing its video.

Later that month, the company unveiled a handful of channels in mainland China in partnership with Weibo.[13]

Content

WatchMojo.com does not feature user-generated content nor does it allow a mechanism for users to upload videos onto its site.[14] The website produces daily "Top Ten" videos as well as videos summarizing the history of specific niche topics. These topics can be one of 17 categories: automotive, business, comedy, education, fashion, film, anime, Hentai, health and fitness, lifestyle, music, parenting, politics and economy, space and science, sports, technology, travel, and video games.[15] Each day it publishes over 5 videos for 60–75 minutes of original content. In February 2016, it launched the MsMojo channel to better serve female viewers and fans. It also launched multiple non-English channels for the Spanish, French, German, Turkish and Polish markets.

On April 15, 2017, WatchMojo debuted The Lineup, a game show that combined ranking top 10 lists with elements of fantasy draft and sports talk radio banter.[9] It won a Telly Award for Best Series in the Web Series category[16]

On May 31, 2017, WatchMojo livestreamed its first ever live show, called WatchMojo Live At YouTube Space at Chelsea Market. The show consisted of an afternoon industry track covering online media, advertising, and VR. It was then followed by an evening show featuring DJ Killa Jewel, DJ Dan Deacon, Puddles Pity Party and Caveman.

On July 12, 2017, it followed up with WatchMojo Live at YouTube Space in London at King's Cross Station, featuring musical acts by Llew Eyre, Bluey Robinson and Leif Erikson. Speakers at the industry track included Hussain Manawer, Ben Jones and Kim Snow.

In addition to video programming, it has ventured into digital books and guides. Titles under the WatchMojo Publishing unit include Top 10 Anime of All Time, 50 Most Influentual Sci-Fi Shows on TV, Read-Only: A Collection of Digital Horror, 75 Most Influential Horror Films of All Time, 50 Most Influential Comics of the 1980s, Top 100 Music Videos of the 2000s, 100 Decade-Defining Movie Movements of the 1990s, as well as its 10-year Special Edition Magazine and 10-Year Overnight Success book covering the company's history and rise of YouTube as a dominant video platform.

Business model

WatchMojo.com lost money the first six years of operations, broke even in 2012, and has generated a profit since 2013.[17] Due to the 2007–2009 recession, WatchMojo.com had de-emphasized an ad-supported model in favour of licensing fees paid by other media companies to access and use their media. Later that year Beet.TV featured WatchMojo.com alongside Magnify.net as examples of companies which successfully switched from ad-based revenue models to licensing fee based revenue models.[18]

In 2012, it shifted its focus to YouTube and as a result of its growth in subscribers and views, it became profitable.[9] In addition, WatchMojo licenses its content to Verizon's Aol and Go90 platforms, DailyMotion, Facebook and others. Many academic institutions and educational publishers use the company's programming in ESL programs as well as K-12 curriculum. WatchMojo encourages educators and students to use videos in its catalog that are pertinent and complementary to their studies as part of presentations.

References

  1. ^ "About WatchMojo". Retrieved 2015-07-18.
  2. ^ "WatchMojo.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools". WHOIS. 2016. Retrieved 2016-03-08.
  3. ^ "Bienvenidos a WatchMojo Español". YouTube. 2015-11-02. Retrieved 2017-04-13.
  4. ^ "YouTube's biggest star PewDiePie ups his game with 4.3bn annual views - HITC Tech". Hereisthecity. Retrieved 2015-05-03.
  5. ^ Cohen, Joshua (2015-01-23). "Top 250 Most Subscribed YouTube Channels Worldwide In 2014". Tubefilter. Retrieved 2015-05-03.
  6. ^ "YouTube Millionaires: WatchMojo Aims To "Inform And Entertain" Its 10 Million Subscribers". Tubefilter. 2016-01-21. Retrieved 2016-05-22.
  7. ^ "WatchMojo.com - YouTube". YouTube. Retrieved 2016-04-14.
  8. ^ "WMFAQ Ep. 12: How to Work for WatchMojo". YouTube. Retrieved 4 November 2014.
  9. ^ a b c Kelly, Brendan (2017-03-30). "WatchMojo's latest venture is an online hockey quiz show The Lineup". The Montreal Gazette. Retrieved 2017-04-13.
  10. ^ http://www.watchmojo.com/my/suggest.php
  11. ^ Jarvey, Natalie (2014-12-09). "WME Signs Online Video Producer WatchMojo (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2015-05-03.
  12. ^ "WatchMojo.com - YouTube". Wayback Machine. 2015-12-05. Archived from the original on December 5, 2015. Retrieved 2016-04-14. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  13. ^ http://weibo.com/u/6126520743?is_hot=1
  14. ^ Alicia Androich; Eve Lazarus; Norma Ramage (9 September 2011). "Canada's Digital Media Companies to Watch". Marketing. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
  15. ^ "Content Overview". WatchMojo. Retrieved 2015-05-03.
  16. ^ https://www.tellyawards.com/winners/winners/list/?event=999&category=79&award=5&_p=12
  17. ^ Czikk, Joseph (2016-01-28). "Canada's largest YouTube channel WatchMojo refuses to get comfortable". Montreal in Technology. Retrieved 2017-04-13.
  18. ^ Whitney, Daisy (22 September 2009). "The Shift from Ad Models to License Fees". Beet.TV. Retrieved 5 February 2012.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WatchMojo&oldid=796686029"