Spout.com!
What an amazing day out today…yeah. Spout.com, I’m into this…for a few reasons. (1) Web 2.0 at its finest; great offering packaged in a great design – I love the use of both Flash and AJAX. (2) Its based right here in downtown Grand Rapids and run by some great people in the downtown community. (3) Most important of all…it is taking on and challenging the traditional marketing and distribution channels/methods/etc of Hollywood. Seriously I love that…we saw the mixtape distribution game go nuts from 2002-2005 within the hip-hop community. It’s was like…why even get signed to a record label you know? And Spout.com is taking a similar but more organized approach to this in the film world. Very simple, let the small/independent producers release their films direct via a community-based website and let the (passionate) public rate it, blog about it, tag it, and buy it. It really is a pretty simple setup…but being well executed is always a differentiator on the web…and I’m into how Spout.com does it. Check the site at the link below if my explanation didn’t make sense. And yeah, I’m very excited to see something like this happening in downtown GR…inspiring and refreshing.