YouTube stars migrate for moolah

[From IHT]

Lonelygirl15 has moved to Revver. Smosh has moved to LiveVideo.com. And Ask a Jew guy is being lured by Metacafe, ManiaTV and others.

Online D.I.Y video enthusiasts that have become pageview-magnets are being courted to be the talent/celebrity of the new media age.

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Meanwhile, Joost, the next creative endeavour of net-cloggers and Kazaa/Skype founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, is set to take off - via legal means.

The Scandinavian duo behind the file-sharing software Kazaa and the Internet phone service Skype are doing everything by the book.

An agreement has been signed with Viacom to broadcast the "mother lode of television programming" - shows from MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 and other Viacom networks - online. Viacom and Joost will share revenue from advertising as part of the deal.

"The reason we're doing this is because of our history," said Friis said. "We know how these things work. And above all, we know that we don't want to be in a long, multi-year litigation battle."

This month, Viacom ordered YouTube to remove more than 100,000 clips of its programming because the two companies had not reached an agreement on licensing and revenue sharing.

The Joost format, said Friis, will differ from YouTube, which allows users to upload video snippets of TV programmess or their own self-produced content. "It's not Web video, it's TV," he said...

...somewhat ambigiously.

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