New York - Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) male-focused Spike TV cable network this week announced plans to launch a number of new original Web series as part of the re-launch of its website on Friday. The site features a new full episode player with comment, sharing and embedding capabilities for a number of Spike TV shows, and will offer original Web series including "The Crew," "James Rolfe -- Cinemassacre," "The MMA Girls" and a series that will be co-produced with Playboy.com.

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."