JMS

I’m convinced that I learn more from some of Ethan’s distillations of presentations at conferences like Pop!Tech than I would if I were there myself.

Here’s a bit about Ask a Ninja (which had an excellent cameo on NPR not too long ago with a review of Pirates of the Carribean).

Couple highlights from the post:

Nichols is in an odd situation - Bernie Gershon, the VP of ABC’s digital media group, has been quoted as saying, ‘shows like Ask a Ninja are our biggest competitors.’ It can be disconcerting that ABC - a huge corporate branch of Disney - is considering two guys in a weird apartment their competitors.

He offers us some hard numbers on Ask a Ninja:
- 0 dollars spent on the pilot episode - ‘Our first capital investment was a $6 lycra ski mask. We were like ‘Man, I hope this pans out.’’
- 1 times quoted in Congress, by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren
- 40,000 ‘friends’ on MySpace
- 300,000 to 500,000 viewers per episode
- 20 million views in last 10 months

The project has succeeded, Kent believes, by following some simple rules:
- Distribute without judgement, even if you think what you’ve produced is bad
- Grow with your audience
- Let the content follow the form.

(Via …My heart’s in Accra.)