Yahoo to Further Boost Online Video Viewers with Vuguru

A lot of questionable, great, and newsworthy items came out of SXSW, e.g. homeless people being turned into Wi-Fi hotspots, live machinima performances and even the announcement of distribution deals for digital studios. During the Times are a’Changin: Digital Storytelling Today panel, Larry Tanz (CEO of Vuguru) and Erin McPherson (Yahoo! Inc’s Head of Video) announced a multi-project licensing deal. It’s a big win for Vuguru.

“Yahoo! has demonstrated a serious commitment to premium content, and their ability to reach a massive audience world-wide makes them an ideal distribution partner for the upcoming series of Vuguru-financed shows,” said Tanz, newly promoted CEO of Vuguru. “We look forward to working closely with Yahoo! to develop and produce shows that the Yahoo! audience will love.”

Yahoo! has made some major moves in online video recently, from Bill Maher’s live comedy performance to deals with Funny or Die, Broadway Video and Tom Hanks. Taking advantage of the company’s 700 million users worldwide, McPherson sees quality content as an important part of Yahoo!’s future.

“Our established portfolio of original programming stands to benefit from the creative input and expertise of our newest partner Vuguru,” said McPherson. “Through this partnership, we will develop stories that are based on our deep knowledge of what our audience wants, in the context of our leading content verticals and we will continue to create unique and compelling content experiences for our users.”

The distribution deal, combined with the studio’s involvement with Stan Lee’s World of Heroes YouTube channel has made 2012 a great year so far for the company Michael Eisner founded in 2007. It’ll be interesting to see which series get distributed to the rapidly growing Yahoo video viewership, as Vuguru has projects that span many many different genres including horror, thriller and drama.