Ashton Kutcher knows how to work the new media circuit.
In September – after some teasing and along with partner Jason Goldberg on behalf of their production house Katalyst Media – the model/actor/head honcho at the monkey factory launched his first foray into online original programming with Blah Girls, an animated series that taps into the perennial popularity of gossip rags and silly little school girls.
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Last night, at paidContent‘s end of the year mixer, Kutcher leaked the news during a Q&A with Arianna Huffington that he’ll be rolling out a new online original series in the coming months.
No news yet on the content, but it does have an interesting distribution strategy. The program will run on widgets made via Slide (“the world’s largest publisher of social entertainment applications“) and any Facebook users that have added the FunSpace application will be able to watch.
Looking at Blah Girls‘ less than impressive numbers on YouTube and MySpace, it’s no wonder Kutcher is apt to test new ways to get viewers tuned in. And with FunSpace’s nearly 14 million “active users” (a good percentage of which are most likely in the perfect demo to watch an Ashton Kutcher production), perhaps this will be the prefect way to attract an audience.
My concerns: I’d be a little worried to distribute a series on a third party application that is subject to the will and whims of the site on which it runs. Plus, there are still millions of people outside of Facebook or on the social network but unwilling to embed an application that might be interested in the content. An exclusive window with Slide and then distribution around the web seems like it’d be a good play.
More news as the story develops, but sight unseen I’m betting this will be the best Facebook sereis to date. Diaries was terrible.
