In Tuesday’s edition of online Variety, I found the first
mention I’ve seen of Didja, a site due to be launched next year by NBC
Universal.
The plan for Didja is a niche social/video site, with the
focus
being on commercials, including TV spots, trailers, and, in this
Utopian product ideal, spots created especially for Didja.
The site is
allegedly scheduled to launch early next year, with USA-SciFi President
Bonnie Hammer describing the goal for the site as to “become
the
go-to destination for on-demand advertising content.“
NBC’s vision
here is to get a slice of the online video sharing advertising pie for
themselves, but there may be a fatal flaw in their plan: we’ve already
seen this site before.
Been There, Done That
AdCritic was a fatality of the first dot-com
crash, having shuttered for the first time in December
2001 when the site’s traffic turned the site into an
unsupportable model.
AdCritic was relaunched
for a period of time as a premium service in 2002, and now exists as a
side project on Ad Age’s Creativity
Online site.
NBC isn’t even the first out of the box with this rehashing of
AdCritic. adTV was
launched earlier this year, and TBS also launched VeryFunnyAds as
a tie-in to their comedy focus.
At this point, Didja is nothing more than a placeholder site
with Google
syndication ads for didgeridoos. No logo, no coming soon, no splash
page to even let you know a site plans on launching.
You have to start
wondering, as company after company jumps on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, if
we aren’t reaching the tipping point. Maybe we really are ready for the
next big thing.
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, her work can be found on Profy.com
