Funny or Die CEO on the Secret to Viral Video and the Future of 'Billy on the Street'

Life

We are shooting season two of Brockmire [on AMC-owned IFC] and we just launched FOD TV, these blocks of interstitial segments on IFC. There's also this Thanksgiving House that we are doing with them. It's a house in Beverly Hills, and people are going to go in and there are going to be scenes from a fictionalized Thanksgiving happening in all the different rooms with different comedians.

Mugsfrom Farah’s Palestinian father, who was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Jerusalem before settling in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Farah was born.

Mugs from Farah’s Palestinian father, who was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Jerusalem before settling in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Farah was born.
Can Funny or Die scale?

Scale in premium comedy is hard. Comedians hate sequels. They don't like doing the same thing over and over again. That originality makes it fun, but also makes it somewhat of a one-off business, which is hard when most of entertainment is all about formats. But we have this whole branded entertainment group that's making partner content for car companies and movie studios. And now what's great is that we're starting to be paid to promote our own shows, working as a social agency and consultant like we've done on shows that we didn't produce. And then there are all the production services we can provide, whether it's longform or shortform or live. You can start scaling because you're bringing all those different productions under one roof.

Is it harder for web content to go viral today?

Going viral today is different than it was five years ago. The honest answer is that most virality is driven by Facebook. That's good because our views have never been higher, but it's also a different monetization structure. The things that really go viral now are the things that strike an emotional cord, like Jimmy Kimmel's recent monologues. He's obviously speaking from the heart. It doesn't necessarily mean that they get viewed 50 million times, but they become part of the fabric of the conversation. Going viral is more about that than some insane amount of views.

What does the rise of Facebook and other platforms mean for FunnyOrDie.com?

Funny or Die needs to be on every platform and we need to be optimized for those platforms because that’s where a lot of the audience is. But the website is still our home base. There’s less traffic to every dot com now, but having that home page still means something to our partners.

Farah’sgrandfather (right) was the CEO of a Grand Rapids, Michigan, furniture company.