A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon the new Tumblr account for Sesasme Street. I’m not exactly a huge Sesame Street fan, although of course I watched it as a kid. I was more interested in the fact that it was an official account, using YouTube and in-house videos to show snippets from the show. I looked around a bit more and found they also have a regularly updated podcast with the same kind of content. They’re on Facebook, they have many apps, they’re on Twitter. I love a company that is happy to put their stuff out there. There are so many routes to Sesame Street now, that the intro song makes no sense!

It’s encouraging to see a company happy to promote the brand rather than worry about sales. It’s certainly working on me, at least. There is no other reason that I would watch a video of Elmo interviewing Neil Patrick Harris.

Although, I am slightly in love with Elmo - but as it turns out, only Elmo when he screws up. I spent a good hour or so one evening watching Elmo outtakes.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the Ricky Gervais one - which is not suitable for kids, as you can imagine.

That also leads nicely on to the lullaby video (not an outtake, as it happens), also featuring Mr Gervais. I only watched that until the song began though. These kinds of things aren’t aimed at me.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the troublesome Katy Perry video appeared on the Tumblr account, and has now disappeared. I don’t care very much for the debate, the outfit looks fine to me, but I am not a mother. What I did think was interesting was that the preview appeared on the internet, never made it to TV, and was subsequently pulled from their official channels. It was almost as though the internets was a test-bed for the wider viewing audience. I can’t believe they would pull it based on YouTube comments though. I mean, if that’s the case, they clearly have a bit further to go in understanding the web-world completely.