Blip

Where web series lived before YouTube channels, bought by Maker Studios and deleted a year later

Acquired & killed
19902026

Blip, originally blip.tv, was a New York video platform founded on 5 May 2005 for independent web series. It hosted and sold advertising for shows like Red Letter Media and Channel Awesome, splitting the money evenly with producers, and passed three billion cumulative views before rebranding to Blip in 2011. Maker Studios bought it in August 2013, cut most of the channels in 2014, and closed the site on 20 August 2015.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2005
  2. 5 May 2005 Launch
    blip.tv goes up

    Built in a week for web series.

  3. 2008
  4. September 2008 Feature
    Michael Moore releases Slacker Uprising
  5. 2010
  6. 2010 Peak
    A hundred million views
  7. 2011
  8. 2011 Rebrand
    blip.tv becomes Blip

    A destination site rather than a host.

  9. 2013
  10. 21 August 2013 Acquisition
    Maker Studios buys Blip
  11. 2014
  12. May 2014 Decline
    Most channels told they will be closed

    Only professional series may stay.

  13. 2015
  14. 20 July 2015 Shutdown announced
    One month of notice
  15. 20 August 2015 Shutdown
    Blip goes offline

The site through time

Read the old front page here, in one piece, from our own capture: blip.tv, 3 June 2010 →

Browse blip.tv as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Blip Networks, Inc. 2005–2013 Founded Five founders from the Yahoo video blogging group, New York
Maker Studios 2013–2015 Acquisition Bought for the talent; the site was closed
The Walt Disney Company 2014–2015 Acquisition Owner of Maker Studios when Blip was closed

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Monthly active users ▲ 40 million 2012 Reported ComScore and Quantcast figures cited by the company

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Maker Studios bought Blip in August 2013, tightened the rules so that only professional series could stay, cut most channels in 2014, and shut the site on 20 August 2015 with a month of notice. Disney had bought Maker Studios in 2014 and folded it into the Disney Digital Network soon after.

Our analysis: Blip was a home for a kind of video that YouTube was not built for: half-hour reviews, scripted series, shows with episodes and seasons. It paid better than YouTube, it split advertising money fifty-fifty, and it hosted the people who became the first generation of internet television. What it never had was an audience of its own; viewers found the shows through YouTube, Twitter and the shows' own sites, so Blip was paying for hosting and sales while somebody else owned the front door. Once the creators could sell their own advertising on YouTube, the case for Blip was mostly the cheque. Maker bought it for the talent contracts, and a company owned by Disney had no reason to run a second video site.

History [edit]

A television network for the internet

Five people from Yahoo\'s video blogging group, Mike Hudack, Dina Kaplan, Justin Day, Jared Klett and Charles Hope, registered blip.tv and put the first version up in a week in May 2005. Their bet was the opposite of YouTube\'s: not clips from a phone, but shows with episodes, made by people who wanted to keep making them. Blip hosted the video, pushed it to iTunes, Roku, YouTube and Vimeo, sold advertising against it, and split the money down the middle with the producer.

That deal built a roster. Michael Moore released Slacker Uprising through Blip in 2008, the first free feature-length release of its kind by a director of that standing. Channel Awesome, Red Letter Media, Rooster Teeth and hundreds of other shows put their episodes there. By 2010 the site had passed a hundred million views, and by 2012 it was reporting around 500 million monthly global views and 40 million unique viewers. In 2011 it dropped the .tv, became Blip, and rebuilt itself as a destination rather than a pipe.

Bought and closed

Kelly Day took over as chief executive in 2012 and Blip moved further towards commissioning its own content through Blip Studios. On 21 August 2013 Maker Studios, the largest of the YouTube multi-channel networks, bought the company. The rules changed at once: channels had to prove they were professional series of sufficient quality, and in May 2014 thousands of users were told they would lose uploading in July and their channels in September. Disney bought Maker Studios in 2014. On 20 July 2015 Blip announced it would close, and on 20 August 2015 the site went off, taking a decade of web series with it unless the producers had kept their own copies. Maker Studios itself was absorbed into the Disney Digital Network shortly afterwards.

The domain today

blip.tv does not resolve to a site. Many of the shows it hosted now live on YouTube, re-uploaded by their makers.

Similar projects

Vine Six seconds, looped forever 2013–2017 Justin.tv One man's life stream that became Twitch 2007–2014 Periscope Live from anywhere, until the money ran out 2015–2021 Musical.ly The lip-sync app that became TikTok 2014–2018 Mixer The $100 million assault on Twitch 2016–2020 Quibi $1.75 billion, six months, gone 2020–2020

Sources [edit]

  1. Blip.tv Wikipedia 1 January 2024 [archived]
  2. blip.tv in the Wayback Machine Internet Archive 1 January 2010
  3. Maker Studios is shutting down Blip next month Variety 20 July 2015

Last verified: 31 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).