Jib Jab Joke Box Email Joke Repository in Invite-Only Beta

Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, the brothers who own JibJab are brilliant. Not only do they (almost always) do great viral videos, they also have 600,000 subscribers to their newsletter to help them get each new viral project off like a shot.

The Jib Jab brothers have done work for Disney, Cartoon Network, USA Networks, Sony, Kraft, and Imagine Entertainment. But the really smart thing they figured out is that they'll make more money in the long run by promoting their own projects than by doing projects for clients.

When their servers were overloaded by 80 million people trying to view "This Land", the political spoof that became the talk of the 2004 election, they began asking for a small fee per download. They probably made a mint as a result, although they aren't talking about the numbers. CNET named "This Land" as one of the top 10 memes of the 1990s.

Jib Jab Joke Box Launches This Spring
Joke Box, the latest viral from Jib Jab, has opened as an invitation-only beta. The project seems like a much better idea than their most recent campaign, Big Box Mart, which was kind of a bomb.

Joke Box offers members a way to organize all their favorite funny emails (including videos, audio clips, images and text jokes) in one place. Then you can share your jokes with friends - and discover the latest and greatest email jokes going around by surfing other people's Joke Boxes. Although the Beta is free, there is sure to be a charge to join the public version of Joke Box.

Members can upload jokes to their personal Joke Box, with titles and descriptions, add other people's jokes to their own box, comment on and rate other people's jokes, press a "shuffle" button to see jokes chosen at random, and search for jokes by the name of the person who posted them or the topic of the joke.

To encourage beta members to upload material, JobJab is holding a contest to find the funniest JibJab Jokester. The beta tester voted by other beta members as having the funniest JokeBox at the end of the contest period will win a $5,000 cash prize! Voting starts on February 6, 2006 and ends on March 6, 2006.

So far, no blog and no RSS feed. Both ought to be part of the mix.