New York - Viacom will fold a number of its Web properties into its Spike.com destination, including its video site iFilm, gamer community service Xfire, and gamer news site GameTrailers, Variety reported. The iFilm brand will be retired, while Xfire and GameTrailers will retain independent URLs. The new Spike.com site is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2008, and will be headed by John Slusser, co-founder of GameTrailers. "There is a lot of overlap in all these audiences. The people who like cars also like girls, they like computers, and they like sports," Slusser told Variety. "We see a lot of opportunities in reaching them this way."

New York - Viacom's MTV Entertainment Group said this week that it plans to fold its iFilm unit into its Spike TV brand, and launch a new version of SpikeTV.com that will incorporate iFilm's broad-based online viral videos and Spike TV's broadband and TV assets. As a result, iFilm president and CEO Blair Harrison will leave iFilm, and is currently exploring other options within MTV Networks. MTV Entertainment Group said the combined traffic of iFilm and SpikeTV.com "will immediately give the site millions of impressions to sell under the Spike brand."

IFILM, a division of Viacom's MTV Networks, announced today that Lowell Goss, the former head of user experience at Yahoo!, has been named Senior Vice President User Experience and Product Development. During his three years at Yahoo!, Goss created and managed a 45-person user experience design team for the Yahoo! Media Group business unit.
www.ifilm.com