Did you miss the latest e-mail joke?

Now there’s a vault on the Web, of course where you’ll have a good chance of finding it. The L.A.-based Spiridellis brothers, JibJab’s co-founders and the creators of popular animated spoofs of the 2004 presidential race and big-box retailers, have launched a comedy Web site called JokeBox.

People can share their favorite e-mail jokes or videos without the endless chain of e-mail forwards. Users create their own “jokester” account to deposit their funnies, and can link to each other’s jokeboxes and request alerts when a new joke is added. The site is free, but to view more than 10 jokes in a day, users must sign in and set up a profile.

But Gregg Spiridellis insists it’s not a copy of other sites.

“YouTube is a place where you go to watch videos, MySpace is a place where you go to meet people,” he said. “But JibJab is a place where you come to share jokes,” he said.

The site is advertiser supported. Budweiser sponsored its April launch.

There are comedy-police, a group of deputized users who patrol the site for offensive, lewd or pornographic content. Users rate jokes, of course, to make sure they’re actually funny.

“People may have very boring senses of humor, and they’re welcome to post their jokes,” Spiridellis said with a shrug. But the boring ones will just sink lower and lower into the vault. “Or they’ll wind up in other boring peoples’ jokeboxes,” said his brother Evan.

JibJab is hoping to drive more traffic to its site its last animated video drew more than 80 million views. JibJab has a five-spoof distribution contract with MSN Network, so its videos are only available through MSN or through JibJab’s own site. In between projects, the site doesn’t get much action. JibJab is trying to become a humor brand. “Viral entertainment springs up and disappears,” Spiridellis said. “By creating a hub for all this content, I guarantee the first time you see a joke in the future it will be from us.”

Mail Music


Scott Blum, founder of online music site iMusic.com which he sold to ArtistDirect Inc. and then to Apple Computer Inc. has launched another online music venture. But this time he’s using e-mail, rather than the vast ocean of the Web. DailyCD is a free e-mail newsletter featuring music articles and select albums, and draws from musicologists and music journalists but it only features one album per day.

“The idea of digesting something in bite-size chunks was very appealing,” Blum said. Since leaving iMusic, Blum has established Daily Media, an e-mail newsletter company whose flagship newsletter DailyOM, centered on aromatherapy and healing has more than 350,000 subscribers. The newsletter is advertiser supported, delivering a nugget of holistic wisdom each day to readers’ inboxes. Instead of waiting for users to check the Web site, the Web site comes to them.

“The No. 1 most-used application on the Internet for the last 20 years is e-mail,” Blum said. “It far outweighs peer-to-peer.”

Blum wants to simplify the mountains of information on the Web that many find daunting. DailyCD does the selecting for you.

The idea that too many choices might be a bad thing is tough for some of us to swallow but secretly, many welcome fewer choices. “Other music sites force people to invest several hours,” Blum explained said. “DailyCD is going after just a few minutes of your day.”

Staff Reporter Hilary Potkewitz can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 226, or by e-mail at

hpotkewitz@ labusinessjournal.com

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