[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=z8Q-sRdV7SY[/youtube]
JibJab, mostly made famous by the political videos such as the one seen here, has become a well known comedic Website. There weren’t many, if any, contenders that were able to pull in high traffic page views or late night television appearances like JibJab until now. SmashMash is a new Website that calls itself ‘The Ultimate Expression Machine’, allowing anyone to create “JibJab-type” creations of their own. Critics are wondering if SmashMash has the sustainability to maintain an active audience and the usability for hilarious video creations that may take some popularity away from JibJab.
Launched by the two Spiridellis brothers in 1999, JibJab became an overnight success with the release of their first video in 2000 featuring the rapping Founding Fathers. Soon after, the Bush and Gore rap video landed JibJab on several major television networks. Through some ups and downs, books and toys, involving the terminator, JibJab’s final push to make it big came true with “This Land” pulling in a quick 80 million views. JibJab seemingly earned their success and has had an amazing ability to maintain it and gain cooperation from many talented individuals. The site has made its mark as a go-to for political satire, laughs and customizable emailables.
Unbeknownst to many, SmashMash was started in 2000 by three technical men from Lucasfilm Games. Eight years later, SmashMash has been released to everyone for free in its beginning stages to allow people to try it out. The program is a small download – enabling users to animate photos, create cartoons (similar to JibJab) with moving mouths and dancing heads and even edit video and their own audio. The possibilities are endless and SmashMash is seemingly simple to use.
Comrades
Is it possible for SmashMash and JibJab to live harmoniously in the online world, complimenting and availing one another? Other similar program offerings have delighted different individuals and managed to stay afloat amongst their counterparts such as Flock and Firefox. The question is; do they want to? Many people develop pages with all intentions to be the best and supersede their competitors. In addition, the majority of online users these days tend to equate the release date with ability – in the sense that whatever program was released last must be better because they have had the opportunity to develop a program that offers more than the previous released competitor edition.
Competitors
Therefore, on the subject of competition – who’s projected to come out ahead? SmashMash is a modern way of thinking in this online world by allowing you to be the next big creator of a world-known video that is emailed, blogged and posted all over your social networking sites such as Facebook and Ning. If you are a more experienced editor or a novice that just takes a few minutes to master SmashMash – there is no reason why you can’t produce a hilarious JibJab quality video. SmashMash received three stars from Simple Spark. JibJab, on the other hand, has pretty nifty options that SmashMash does not offer (at this time) including pre-made videos where you can paste a friends head right in and mail it out as an ultimate form of embarrassment. This JibJab feature is very easy to use – except you can only do most of it once until you are required to buy points to keep goofing off. Drawn!, a blog for illustrators, artists and cartoonists, believes that JibJab is facilitating the rise of the independent creator. SmashMash is currently offering their pro-version at no cost but that will, unfortunately, go away in time. So…who is better?
Kaput
Will JibJab, SmashMash or both go kaput? It isn’t unrealistic to consider that something even better will eventually come along. Here are some downfalls of both: JibJab doesn’t allow you to do a whole lot of customization. You can’t upload your own video, edit it, add sound and publish it to your social networking sites or YouTube. With SmashMash, you can – however – you have to be decent at it and somewhat funny. The SmashMash Website has an area of videos that people are currently creating and I haven’t seen anything worth mentioning. I will say, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. MetaCafe has a great video on how to use SmashMash to make photos talk and I would suggest watching some tutorials before you post something idiotic. Another downfall of both can be the cost. Regardless of the pettiest of costs, many people will not want to hand over their bank information to a site just to make a video. I would have to say that there is more justification in paying for SmashMash because you are buying the ability to use a program to create pieces that you can have forever and those pieces (videos, pictures, etc.) have the possibility to make you money.
The best thing about the World Wide Web is that people have endless possibilities. If there isn’t a program or site created to do your task yet, there’s a good chance that there will be. And not much stands in the way of new, useful (and in this case hilarious) inventions being created and constantly improving what’s currently available. Time will tell who comes out ahead between these two grand ideas – for now, everyone should just have fun!
