Friday Rewind: Tubefilter News of the Week – August 28, 2009

So maybe you’re on summer vacay and skipped a few days of your Tubefilter fix this week. (Lucky you.) So it being Friday we’re once again recapping the top web series news of the week. Monday started off with the release of the highly anticipated Legend of Neil musical episode on Atom. It’s one of the only web series eps we’ve actually felt obliged to drop the NSFW warning on just to look out for our office-locked readers. The 9-minute episode (above) so far is coming in at over 138,000 views—not bad at all for week one of a mid-season.

There was also our unabridged roundtable discussion on just what the heck the oft-used ‘Branded Entertainment’ buzzword is all about. As brands dip more toes in the web video content pool, there’s no shortage of opinions about what this means. It’s a long one, but well worth bookmarking for some weekend reading.

And of course we can’t ignore the fact that The Guild launched season 3 on Xbox on Tuesday before its wider (MSN/Zune) launch next week on September 1. The popular series also quietly nabbed a retail DVD deal by the same company that put the Dr. Horrible DVD on the shelves earlier this year.

And finally, several examples of network TV turning to the web to find fans for their fall lineups, including a prequel web series for CW’s The Vampire Diaries and a web series/ARG for ABC’s FlashForward.

Top stories of the week:

• ‘Legend of Neil’ Raunchy Musical Episode Debuts
• Branded Entertainment Demystified – What’s In a Name?
• ‘The Guild’ Season 3 Begins on XBox, Inks Retail DVD Deal
• Henson Puts ‘S.U.D.S.’ Puppets Preview on YouTube
• ‘Vampire Diaries’ Prequel Web Series, CW Starts Biting Early