Albino Blacksheep

Infobox Website
name = Albino Blacksheep
logo =


caption =
url = http://www.albinoblacksheep.com
commercial = No
type = Entertainment website
registration = Optional
owner = Steven Lerner
author = Steven Lerner
launch date =
current status =
revenue =

Albino Blacksheep is a website based in Toronto, Ontario that posts humorous and artistic member-submitted digital media. Most of these are movies or games created with Adobe Flash. The website also features image galleries, audio files, and text files. Additionally, there is a mobile section that provides ring tones, screensavers, and wallpaper for mobile phones. [ [http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/mobile/ Mobile Section] on Albinoblacksheep.com.] The website was ranked fourth in blogs of the year (2005) by Blogpulse. [ [http://www.blogpulse.com/blogs2005/2005_TopBlogs.html Top Blogs] from Blogpulse.com, retrieved January 31, 2007.]

In addition to the media available on the website, there is also a large user community that takes advantage of the forums and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel; members of which often offer tutorials on the production of the type of media found on Albino Blacksheep. [ [http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/tutorial/ Tutorial Section] on Albinoblacksheep.com]

History

Albino Blacksheep was founded in 1999 by Steven Lerner (also known as "Sners") to promote his band of the same name, which was started in 1996. In 2000, Lerner took a web design course and redesigned the website. This new incarnation contained rants, graphical images, and a video stream from Lerner's video camera. Perhaps Lerner's first famous work was in 2003, with his site's Google bomb for French military victories. [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3995/is_200402/ai_n9398865 French twist] from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, posted March 25, 2003.] Since then the site has been growing in popularity, currently receiving about 1.50 million pageviews per day. [ [http://albinoblacksheep.com/help/stats Site Stats] as of March 23, 2006.]

Albino Blacksheep is also famous for being a major portal for Flash animation and animutation (a Flash animation style created by Neil Cicierega in 2001). The website also helped the band Tally Hall achieve some notability after posting their music video [http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/bananaman Banana Man] . [ [http://www.delmarvanow.com/deweybeach/stories/20051214/2232232.html Quirky Michigan band pops into Rehoboth] by "Kim Silarski" of the Gannett News Service, posted December 17, 2005.]

On April 1, 2007, Lerner changed the homepage to a joke homepage, designed to make people think that the site had been bought and turned into "Google Animations". The joke was reinforced by a fake blog stating that"Albino Blacksheep has been acquired by Google Inc. for roughly $32 million in stock options. The deal was discussed over a casual breakfast in Mountain View, California between the Canadian-born founder of Albino Blacksheep and the Google co-founders and CEO. Plans are underway for Google Inc. to tie its services and software into the former Albino Blacksheep website which will go by the new name Google Animation."

Name

According to Steven Lerner, the creator of Albino Blacksheep, the name is an intentional oxymoron; by definition, a black sheep cannot be an albino because it quite obviously possesses skin pigmentation. He also points out that "black sheep" can also be interpreted as "outcast" and that the site's title could be interpreted to refer to an albino outcast. [ [http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/meaning The Meaning] by "Sners" of Albinoblacksheep.com.]

Notes and references

External links

* [http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/ Albino Blacksheep]
* [http://www.absforums.com/ Albino Blacksheep Forums]
* [irc://irc.rizon.net/albinoblacksheep Albinoblacksheep IRC Channel] - IRC Channel, hosted on [http://www.rizon.net/ Rizon's] IRC servers.
* [http://www.myspace.com/133318465 Official MySpace Page]