It's Comedy Night on Google Hot Trends! That's where I double-taked to see John Mulaney — a very funny comedian and SNL writer but not yet a household name. I knew he had a comedy special tonight on TBS thanks to the Twitter feed of "Comic's Comic" blogger Sean McCarthy ; I also knew that John Oliver was on Comedy Central because I watched a bit, and vastly enjoye the tale of 11-year old John running a foot race with a key part of his anatomy exposed (which sounded like it affected his aerodynamics). But then as I checked it out, I saw that Mitch Hedberg was trending, too — high at #2 — that Greer Barnes was #1, and that Fabrice Fabrice (a character of comedian Nick Kroll) and Smacky the Frog, a character of Hedberg's, were all trending in the top 20. I know they're all funny and all, but — huh? (more...)

I've written before about Funny or Die as an essential platform for established artists looking to present a different side of themselves, send a message or just have ridiculous fun. But what I realized just now after clicking on a video from their newsletter is that they are the only platform — besides maybe YouPorn — where the actual platform is synonymous with the type of content you'll find there. I'm not talking about channels on YouTube or Blip.tv or Kaltura, which are all certainly impressive — I'm talking about branding. Funny or Die is now the Kleenex of comedy videos — instant shorthand for what you're getting. It's like how for a while we all said "YouTube" even if we were referring to a video on, say, Vimeo ("Let's Vimeo this!" never quite made it into the popular lexicon.) (more...)

Nick Douglas' Twitter Wit is a compendium of what he bills as "the funniest tweets of all time," so the top five from those should be hi-larious. Right? Eh, you can decide that for yourself, but the point is, Douglas and publisher Harper Collins picked their five favorite Tweets from the book  for a new promotion, which is about as un-Twitter as it gets: Inviting people to make a video based on one of those tweets. The filming! The editing! The uploading! Geesh, 140 characters never sounded so time-consuming. The winner gets Winner gets an iPod touch and a copy of Twitter Wit; three runners-up get a copy of the book and, I guess, the glory. (more...)

If you've seen Funny People — or read tech blogs — you know about the MySpace scene, where Adam Sandler's bigshot comedian character is hired to do standup at a big MySpace event (for a whopping $300, 000 — probably not a Rupert-friendly sum these days). Seth Rogen is his sidekick, an aspiring comedian whom Sandler taps first to write him jokes, then to be his BFF. Together they mock MySpace, like wondering what would happen if Tom from MySpace and Craig from Craigslist got in a fight ("Tom has more friends…Craig has weirder friends though. Craig has friends that are willing to do a lot more for cash"). MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson even makes an appearance, asking Sandler: "Do you actually use MySpace?" Says Sandler: "I fuck girls, Tom. I don't have time for that."  Zing! (more...)