LisaNova

Lisa Donovan is an American actress and writer. Her self-produced comedic short films, published under the username "LisaNova" on YouTube, have garnered international attention.

Donovan was a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder before moving to Los Angeles, California in hopes of becoming an actress. There she founded Zappin Productions, a production company specializing in viral videos.

LisaNova on YouTube
Donovan, originally going only by "Lisa" on YouTube, began by posting her sketch comedy which soon received several hundred thousand views. After this, she and some of her friends got together to create a series of spoof vlogs which attracted yet more attention and views.

During New Year's Eve of 2006, Lisa Donovan and friends danced on stage with The Flaming Lips, after allegedly winning a YouTube contest put on by the band. After the concert, she then posted a series of five videos that are chained together from the audition, to the concert, to the end of the day song.

On July 09, 2007, a video was posted on YouTube which revealed that Lisa Donovan's production company, Zappin Productions, had been hired to participate in the contest, and in fact had edited some of the contest videos themselves.

She has since parodied George W. Bush, Keira Knightley, and Lindsay Lohan, among others. As of July 2007, LisaNova is listed as the 11th most popular channel on YouTube with over 49063 subscribers.

On July 10, 2007 Lisa posted a video titled "LisaNova does YOUTUBE!!!!", in which she kidnaps prominent YouTube users and forces them to send spam on her behalf. The video, which was the finale to a marketing campaign by Donovan in order to win the contest, received more than 700,000 views. While successful, it is believed that the backlash from angry YouTube users who had received a number of spam emails from Donovan which coincided with each new round of voting in the contest, resulted in a second-place finish for Donovan, who had been leading the final round of voting until the last day that voting was to occur.

MADtv
Lisa Donovan auditioned for a role on MADtv soon after moving to Los Angeles, but was turned down. However, after MADtv's casting director learned of Donovan's YouTube success, she was offered a second audition and subsequently hired as a featured cast member. She debuted in a spoof of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where she played Salma Hayek, the producer of the ABC Comedy Ugly Betty. The episode aired on February 172007. It is unknown if she will continue into the 13th season.

Other

 * Full text available at Global Technology Forum.
 * Full text available at Global Technology Forum.