Dina Kaplan, COO and one of blip.tv's original co-founders, started this morning's press event by noting that the company has been quiet over the past year because they had been working on closing a number of deals and doing the necessary QA work in order to launch the associated new features. Thanks to all the new partnerships announced, including those with YouTube, Vimeo, Roku, and NBC, content creators can send their videos straight to these new sites and services - and even to set-top boxes that allow viewers to watch the content on the big screen TV in their living room. Already, the company distributes to iTunes, AOL Video, MSN Video, Blinkx, Facebook, Twitter, Sony Bravia televisions with Bravia Internet Video Link, TiVo, Verizon FiOS Video On Demand, iPhones and the Internet Archive.

The Roku box, best known for its ability to stream Netflix movies to your television set, currently provides access to over 50,000 TV shows and movies, but according to Jim Funk, VP of Business Development, the company wanted to offer more content to their users - something that will now be possible thanks to blip.tv. With the new SDK designed for Roku's open platform, content creators will be able to launch their own channel on the Roku player. The update that provides this functionality will arrive this fall.

Blip.tv also announced an expanded relationship with the makers of another well-known set-top box - that being the TiVo. Now, content creators will be able to publish their shows directly to the TiVo DVR from their content dashboards.

The video service will help show creators make a splash on broadcast television, too, at least in New York City by way of a new partnership with WNBC, NBC's flagship station. A new show called NY Nonstop will syndicate 5,000 to 10,000 of blip.tv's top shows on a channel dedicated to information and lifestyle.

Perhaps the biggest news, though, out of all the partnerships announced today, is blip.tv's new distribution deal with YouTube. Show creators will be able to send shows directly to this major video portal directly from their blip.tv account. Blip.tv will also be able to serve its own advertisements within the YouTube player itself, providing a revenue share for the content creators.

Other partnerships announced include deals with TubeMogul and FreeWheel, for analytics and advertising, respectively. TubeMogul is providing the audience and engagement data to content creators via the revamped dashboard. They're even able to track the "unofficial" views of unauthorized uploads. FreeWheel will provide optional advertising opportunities for blip.tv users across all of the service's distribution network.

Blip.tv's New Dashboard

Along with the numerous partnership deals, blip.tv also announced their revamped dashboard where content owners upload, manage, and track their videos. Some of the new features - like the "upload to YouTube" option - were added to facilitate interaction with the new distribution partners, while others - like the ability to reorganize episodes - are just great upgrades to the service.

The main screen of the new dashboard features an easy-to-use interface where creators can quickly see the number of views and revenue earned for all their media. It also offers an "activity stream" which displays a list of everything happening with the content, like when a video gets a comment on YouTube, for example.

The process of uploading videos to blip.tv is now easier, too, with a simplified feature that lets you just browse for a video on your computer then send it to the service where it's uploaded in the background while you move on and fill in additional metadata about the video.

Content creators can also better organize their episode list now, thanks to new features that let you re-order shows via drag-and-drop. As soon as you make the change in blip.tv to the order, other lists on the web - such as those on iTunes or in RSS feeds - will update as well. Videos can be batch-edited as well, allowing creators to quickly send multiple videos to YouTube, for example, or any other service they choose.

On the dashboard's analytics page, blip.tv users can track views and revenues on a chart, even adjusting the timeframe that displays via a provided drop-down box. Other information includes an engagement summary (how long people watch the video), referrer list, browsers used, episode details, and more are also shown on this page.

All the changes to the blip.tv dashboard should be live as of today.

As startups such as Blip.tv continue to grow and partner with old-guard media companies for television distribution, what will happen to the major networks, whose current model creates a scarcity of opportunity for revenue while requiring a "least objectionable programming" approach to content? Will network TV survive? Watch and find out what Hudack thinks.

Web 2.0 Fridays being what they are, the Blip.tv team geared up for beer and Rock Band about 5 minutes after the interview finished. More announcements about "super-secret" developments now in the works (Hudack's terminology) are to be released in the weeks to come.

According to stories on Nextgov and Federal Computer Week, the GSA had a number of other legal concerns about the standard terms and conditions of these services, including problems with indemnification clauses, liability limits, and endorsements, which led it to enter negotiations with these services. Also, a lot of the standard agreements call for dispute resolutions by state courts, while for government agencies, federal law has to apply.

It is important to note that these new agreements only cover the free services offered by these companies. The GSA is also looking into expanding these agreements to a wider range of social media services.

A number of federal agencies, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Library of Congress already use services like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. To do so, however, these agencies either needed special waivers, or they negotiated terms directly with these services. Some of these initiatives have been very successful. Pictures from the Library of Congress, for example, have been viewed over 15 million times.

Library of Congress on iTunes

In addition, the Library of Congress today announced that it will begin to share more of its content on YouTube and, as podcasts, through Apple's iTunes. This initiative will launch in the next few weeks.

Engaging the Public

We are glad to see that the GSA has now removed some of the major stumbling blocks that stopped a large number of government agencies from using social media sites. Now we just hope that these agencies will also use these services to actually engage with citizens.