iFilm was founded in 1997 by filmmaker Raphael Raphael as a thinktank for artists and technicians about future directions of film. Raphael sold the domain to Rodger Raderman, founder of iFilm.net. The original intent of iFilm was to make short, independent films available online. It rejected home movies and pornography, but was open to all other film types. By August 1999, the site had over 450 movies, offices in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and employed 40+ people. Also during the summer of 1999, film editor
Andrew Hindes and former sales and marketing head of
Variety (magazine) Coco Jones joined the iFilm team. "If the consumer thinks about 'films', then we want them to come to iFilm as their first point of entry," said founder Rodger Raderman. "We see ourselves as the portal – the first stop on the web for all things film-related." iFilm had many high-profile investors, such as Axiom Ventures, Inc.,
Eastman Kodak, Liberty Digital, Rainbow Media (Now
AMC Networks),
Sony Pictures Entertainment,
Vulcan Inc., and
Yahoo!. iFilm suffered serious losses in 2000 as a result of the
dot-com bubble bust. It reorganized under CEO Kevin Wendel in 2001 and rebounded with a new focus on
viral video. Prior to 2005, when
YouTube was founded, iFilm was one of the primary destinations for viral videos on the internet.
Acquisition On October 15, 2005, under CEO
Blair Harrison iFilm was purchased by
Viacom for $49 million, with the hopes of creating their own user-generated YouTube rival. Instead, in December 2006, iFilm was bundled with
MTV Networks' entertainment group. iFilm had a brief life with
MTV Networks. On January 13, 2006, a television series presented as a collaboration between iFilm and
VH1 titled
Web Junk 20 debuted on
VH1. The show was marginally popular, airing for 3 seasons.
Rebranding Erik Flannigan,
MTV Networks' VP of digital media, suggested that the core audience of iFilm, who were primarily young males, aligned perfectly with Viacom's
Spike. During the first quarter of 2008, the two brands were merged. The iFilm brand was no more and re-branded and re-purposed as
Spike.com. The content of
Spike.com was set to be composed of
Spike programming,
Comedy Central clips,
GameTrailers and
MTV videos. When Defy Media bought the URL from Viacom in 2014, it changed it so it redirects to Defy property
Screen Junkies. ==Investors==