Myspace CEO Mike Jones sent out this internal email today:

From: Mike Jones
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 11:26 AM
To: Myspace All
Subject: IMPORTANT COMPANY NEWS
Importance: High

Myspacers,

Today, we are announcing that Myspace will be acquired by Specific Media, one of the world’s leading online media and advertising platforms. Over the next few days you will be hearing from the team at Specific, including their CEO, Tim Vanderhook, regarding their exciting plans for Myspace and how it fits in with the overall vision of their company.

In conjunction with the deal, we are conducting a series of restructuring initiatives, including a significant reduction in our workforce.  I will assist Specific with the transition over the next two months before departing my role as Myspace CEO.

I wanted to take a minute to thank you all for the incredible experience it has been to lead this company and to work closely with all of you over the past several years. While I regret we won’t be working together at Myspace any longer, I am very proud of the work we have done here and believe we have performed with excellence – even under extremely difficult circumstances.

My time here at Myspace represents the most engaging and challenging time of my professional career. I have found our team to be comprised of the best people I have come across in our industry.

You can read the press release below.  Once again, thank you for all of your hard work and dedication.

Thanks,

-M

Restructuring initiatives indeed: Myspace will be letting go of about half of their staff, which is at about 400 currently. Also, removed from this email is Mike Jones’ P.S. “Screw you Facebook”.

(h/t Tech Crunch)

The piece goes on to lampoon Facebook, FourSquare, Skype, and something called MySpace (???), while also satirizing the dinosaur media’s often-clunky attempts to integrate the buzzy platforms. (H/T The Political Carnival)

The clip pretty much speaks for itself. My personal favorite is Grubs’ update, later in the report, where he notes an uptick to his follower count amid the gunfire. Runner-up goes to Sofia Reza‘s update (from a nearby Starbuck’s) that skewers the often dissonant combination of local news copy writing and enthusiastic TV reporter inflection. From Fox 4 DFW:

In summary, Ping is not very social and it is not really about music. It is about music purchases and celebrities.

If you want to see a social network about music, check out last.fm. It knows what I am listening to right now no matter where I am listening (not in iTunes hopefully). It knows what music I like and it doesn’t ask me to tell them what that is. It knows who likes the same kind of music I do.

Ping shows what a command and control culture thinks a social network is. I am sure millions of people will use Ping. And I am equally sure that it will not advance the state of the music business one bit.

Two things here. First, the piquing was about last.fm, which Wilson evangelizes for frequently that I finally went to his channel, fredwilson.fm, to put his money where my ears are. There I found a whole bunch of new, great music. Bookmarked. Second, his description of Ping made me think not of Apple, but of Twitter.

I was recently annoyed to discover that my malfunctioning Tweetdeck was not the result of an overworked computer (my default assumption always) but rather Twitter deciding to kill some of its darlings. Or rather, some of your darlings — apps that users have become used to, that they have integrated into their behavior (Business Insider has an extensive list). I get why that has to happen — should happen, and is natural to happen, even — but I’m keeping my eye on how it’s happening.

It happened imperiously, top-down-ly, dare I say Facebook-ly. Sending out an email that your filter couldn’t distinguish from follower and DM notifications, instructing you to update your applications without so much as a prompt (they just…won’t work) and doing it during the last week of August — when people have tons of time to dedicate to reading emails from Twitter, and tending to their malfunctioning technology — all that doesn’t exactly maximize the user experience.

And Twitter is all about user experience — the fact that it is so easy, so clean, so unencumbered has won it so many users and fans, for so many different reasons. So when it starts to become annoying — with too many ads in the feed, too cluttered an interface, too many fail whales etc. — the less committed amongst us will bolt. I wrote about that in November when those lists were launched, and found it a “time-consuming, burdensome process [for] users,” rolled out in such a way as to create an urgency about making lists now lest you be left off the gravy train. (Not to be confused with the “Suggested Users” gravy train which was also more about brands and celebrities than anything else.) And it’s new “Suggested Follow” user confuses me because, unlike last.fm, it does not seem to know “what I am listening to right now,” since it keeps suggesting people I already follow. There doesn’t seem to be much “listening” going on at all.

So that phrase — “a command and control culture” — doesn’t only sound like Apple, with its beautiful but un-openable iPad, but also Facebook with its top-down maze of privacy settings, and now Twitter with its weirdo Orwellian OAuth lingo (like something that might one day, say, enslave drones like these). The jury’s out on whether Twitter’s reassertion of control is better for users — I can’t help but agree with the note of caution sounded by Chris Dixon —  but the more they behave like ”a command and control culture” the less they will ”advance the state [of the] business.” In the words of Cory Doctorow: “Incumbents make bad revolutionaries.”

I was halfway through writing this post when I remembered that Fred Wilson was not only the evangelizer of the free-and-social last.fm but was also the key investor who brought forth Twitter’s app-killing message. Hmm. Discrepancy? Hopefully not — maybe that will mean he’s aware of the pitfalls, and will keep an eye on Twitter lest it become more like Ping than Last.fm. Because I have to say, I worry about Twitter. Not that it will survive — they don’t need my blessing for that — but that it will stay the kind of open, community-enhancing-and-enabling site that made it flourish at the outset. The kind of site that got people of influence not only using it, but evangelizing for it. I worry about the incumbents vs. revolutionaries dichotomy, I worry that, as Chris Dixon said, “having one company control a core internet service hinders competition and therefore innovation,” I worry about its stability, like Caroline McCarthy of CNET did last year, when she noted its not-infrequent wobbles and mused that “the prominence of Twitter as a communications channel in the Iranian crisis raises the question of whether a pre-revenue company — no matter how cushy its venture backing — is up to task.” But honestly, between the closed “Suggested Users” list, the rollout of lists, its lack of support for the businesses that banked on it early — from outfits like Stocktwits to TwitPic, which amazingly is threatened now (despite this Twitter-cred-making moment), and this top-down UE-ignoring OAuth stuff, I worry that they are becoming a site that I use but don’t care about, or root for. Like Facebook.

Yes, I know that Facebook has 600 million users or some such crazy thing. It doesn’t need me, but anyway, I still use it. But MySpace has shown what happens when users don’t love using anymore. So, too, did Friendster (and man was I on that thing every other minute back in the day). So while I know that Twitter is doing just fine with or without my 140-character contributions, I also know that people are fickle, and when using something becomes too annoying, they stop. Using Twitter this week was annoying. So, all things being equal, I’d rather they stop than the rest of us.

Related:
Here’s Who Just Got Screwed By Twitter [Business Insider]
Don’t Get Cocky, Twitter [Mediaite]
Twitter’s Youth Is Over [CNET]
Why does it matter that Twitter is supplanting RSS? [Chris Dixon]
“There’s a plane in the Hudson” [Twitpic]

Photo of Steve Jobs from Pocket-Lint.com; Twitter illustration from LaurenceBorel.com. Now-iconic Hudson plane pic by JKrums on Twitpic.

When looking ahead at the next year, pundits turn into prognosticators. Bloggers covering all sorts of topics and industries are now giving their predictions for what’s to come in 2010. Conventional wisdom says to go the conservative route with these choices in order to avoid looking foolish when none of your projections pan out. At the same time, there’s a key difference between picking things that are realistically possible and those that are already on the road to happening. I’ve assembled my favorite predictions covering a variety of fields and what’s supposedly in store for the near future:

Recovering Economy: “Starting in Q1, unemployment will slip a half percentage point per quarter…We’re already seeing average work-week hours go up and number of temp workers go up. This is always the precursor to employers ultimately hiring new full-time employees,” says James Altucher at the Wall Street Journal. Once the jobs become available, though, the question could turn to how big a learning curve should be granted to employees adjusting back to the workforce.

Social Media Business: “Facebook will go public…Registrations are still growing nicely but showing signs of deceleration. Friendster’s remains and the slow fade at MySpace are warning signs of what can happen to a social-networking site after it peaks,”says Rick Aristotle Munarrizat at the Motley Fool. Each year, Mark Zuckerberg grows another year removed from his original college-aged audience and from the excitement of having his own venture.

Sarah Palin Politics: “The only thing Sarah Palin will be president of in 2012 will be TV ratings. Palin will get a talk show as early as next year. We’re betting a startup like Lifetime or Bravo will make an offer she can’t refuse,” says Daniel Stone at Newsweek. It’ll remind America how likable the lady from Alaska was when she first arrived on the scene in September 2008, and viewers will find comfort in her television persona and presence.

Housing Decisions: “The threat of nuclear terrorism renews interest in living outside of large urban areas, further depressing housing prices in the larger metropolitan areas,” says a blogger at SeekingAlpha. This will re-define what real estate agents mean by “Location, location, location” as homebuyers put their safety at the top of their lists.

Foreign Affairs: “There will be many strikes in the coming months, and many demonstrations on the streets of Athens,” says Barnaby Phillips at al Jazeera. Some Middle-Eastern countries are already hosts to protests against corruption, but Greece will emerge as a nation that demands international attention due to its financial crisis.

Presidential Liability: “Michelle Obama will slip by her minders and say something outrageous. The MSM will not report it. Persons who refer to it will be denounced as racists,” says John Derbyshire in the National Review. The first lady has been relatively quiet throughout Obama’s first year in office, and she’s going to be used more going forward – with both parties bracing for it.

Internet Accessibility: “A little known technology company emerges to extend wireless across unlicensed bandwidths, with dramatic impact on the VoIP market,” says Rayne at FireDogLake. With Americans’ ever-increasing need for and reliance on wireless Internet, this service seems like a logical next step, and someone will make a major splash in the market when they figure out how to do it.

Television Technology: “TV goes 3D…The television industry is looking for the next big thing to sell us. 3D TV will be the next big push. 3D will also begin to creep into PC and console games. It might not be ready for primetime on any of these platforms, but 2010 will be the year that 3D starts to make serious headway,” says Tim Bajarin at PC Magazine. If Avatar is truly the “future of filmmaking,” then people will expect similar technology at home.

Sports Pardon: “I predict [Tiger] Woods will survive this self-created mess and the public will forgive him. What he did was a disgrace, but he remains the greatest golfer in the game and maybe the greatest ever,” says Cal Thomas at USA Today. If Tiger can get going again on the green, fans will disassociate Woods’ personal failings from the golfer’s professional prowess.

Music Listens: “It’s been coming for more than a decade, but major labels are starting to grasp the digital opportunity…Expect 2010 to be the year that the bad press on the major labels starts becoming more favorable,” says Nick Crocker at Mashable. As all other industries are now following the lead of the consumers, the music business will have to adapt in order to survive, despite whatever growing pains and financial losses they endure at the beginning of the transition.

Yeah, no it isn’t.

“Ajax” is a term referring to functionality that allows a scripting language (Javascript) to load content without refreshing a webpage. It’s no more a program than HTML is a program. How do I know this? Because I develop web sites. But if I didn’t, its Wikipedia page is a Google search away.

Who cares?, one might ask. The story, after all, isn’t about arcane web protocols – it’s about MySpace’s inglorious descent into irrelevance. It’s about how the News Corp. acquisition of the site transformed from a triumph to a debacle.

It’s true. It is about that, and it’s a very good read (as Mediaite’s Joe Coscarelli notes in his review). But the story of MySpace’s decline is inextricably linked to the story of its failure to adopt technological changes. The assessments in this story miss crucial steps in Facebook’s rise to prominence that were the knives in MySpace’s spine. It’s as though someone wrote a post-mortem of the American automobile industry without describing Japanese cars.

Two examples.

Friends’ Activity
Much is made in the article of Facebook’s ability to automatically send invites to the friends of new users. What isn’t mentioned is the real change that set Facebook apart, early on: the friends’ activity timeline. Now common on social sites, the news feed of new relationships and profile changes was roundly criticized by users at launch. Many considered it invasive, since they were used to the more passive structure of other sites. That feature was added in September of 2006. Here’s a chart of subsequent growth.

Many of us sign up for a lot of new, interesting websites – but which do we use over the long term? What Facebook realized was that the social component would keep users engaged, spurring growth as they encouraged those they knew to join the network. It’s standard logic now, but in 2006, it was groundbreaking.

Facebook Connect
What’s happened since, as Slate’s Farhad Manjoo notes in a great piece about Facebook’s growth, is that Facebook has become infrastructural. The scope of people’s engagement with the site yields exponential benefit to participants old and new. What was missing was only the ability to carry that social infrastructure to other sites.

In December 2008, Facebook launched Facebook Connect, essentially a set of tools that allow any website to let users log in with their Facebook identity. The benefits work two ways: sites are given an easy way to not only provide access to site functionality, but are given access to social media’s Holy Grail: the Facebook user timeline. Sign into Digg using Facebook Connect, and any links you add to Digg are posted on your Facebook timeline. And Facebook, meanwhile, extends its brand – and its role as the backbone of online interaction.

(A quick aside: it’s that ability to become infrastructural in a unique way that has allowed Twitter to grow quickly – and why Facebook considers it most threatening. It’s also why, in my estimation, Foursquare will never become a long-term blockbuster.)

Both of these technologically innovative moves by Facebook were critical in taking MySpace out of the game, the latter being the death blow. (MySpace is even rumored to be adopting Facebook Connect next year.) Neither was mentioned in the Financial Times article because the reporter, Matthew Garrahan, didn’t understand the technology. Garrahan got right, it seems, that Murdoch’s misstep in announcing a billion dollars in ad revenue in 2008 crippled MySpace’s ability to innovate – but MySpace, even early last year, was already doomed by Facebook’s tools and its own size.

Business reporters need to understand the web and how it works. Merely visiting or using a website doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about how it is doing – any more than driving a Chevy Cavalier would be enough to report on expected revenues for its parent corporation. A reporter doesn’t need to be able to write Javascript, but they need to understand what they don’t know about technology.

The Financial Times told a good story about advertising revenue and News Corp.’s decision-making process. The nut of the story, though, was about web technology. And that, they got wrong.

The acquistion of MySpace’s parent company hardly seemed like a risk, the piece explains, and Murdoch was quick to pounce, transforming his image as a “curmudgeonly media baron” with what seemed like a surefire gain:

To say MySpace was a hot property back in 2005 is something of an understatement. Its rapidly expanding tribe of users had attracted the attention of other potential buyers. Viacom, for one, a rival media conglomerate that owns companies such as Paramount Pictures and Comedy Central, was eyeing it as a vehicle to revive its flagging MTV channel, a similarly youth-oriented brand.

Telling a money-centric story with simple precision requires an in-depth knowledge of the situation, and Financial Times writer Matthew Garrahan delivers a highly readable and fascinating take on the deal-turned-dud:

But by the beginning of 2008, things began to sour. Facebook, a rival social network that was simpler and easier to use, was gaining momentum and starting to grow more quickly than MySpace. Murdoch confidently told the world that MySpace would make $1bn in advertising revenues in 2008 – but the company missed its target. Users began to desert the site, which had become cluttered with unappealing ads for teeth straightening and weight-loss products. News Corp executives could hardly hide their displeasure, and in April this year, DeWolfe left, closely followed by most of his senior management team.

And it gets worse:

The situation is so dire that MySpace recently revealed that it had failed to attract enough online traffic to meet targets set in its advertising deal with Google and as a result would lose $100m this year. An acquisition that had initially covered Murdoch in glory and offered so much promise was becoming an embarrassment to the News Corp chairman and a liability for his company.

For all the gory details of tensions between the site’s cofounders and their big business bosses, Murdoch’s lost patience and some stellar reporting, read the entire feature here. It’s the definitive account up to now.

The rise and fall of MySpace [Financial Times]

They miss, though, the Secret Hidden Message™ of the video. That being: Asians only, please.

Friendster’s eastward movement was noted a few years back. As MySpace still dominated the United States, and Facebook grew to challenge it, Friendster was left in the cold. But it had already established a presence in Southeast Asia, and from there transitioned from life support to vibrancy.

Watch the video touting their redesign…

…and note the following:
1. Every single person pictured is Asian. Even the perplexed looking old guy.
2. It disparages its competitors as being “too common,” and “too generic.” As it says, “If everyone’s there, whoop-de-do!” Many people, of course, see the universality of Facebook, allowing you to stumble across a grade school crush, for example, as a selling point. Those people, per Friendster, are wrong.
3. It’s “fun and easy to use, just for you and your friends!” Wink wink!
4. Most nefariously, when they mention the games you can play, they show a game featuring Mario. From Nintendo.

It’s natural that a business would target an advertisement to the people who generally use it – remember, for example, how Microsoft Poland dealt with a culturally inaccurate photo. Here, Friendster looks to capitalize on that segment strength, and to bring it back across the ocean. Targeting less than 5% of the country, though, will be a tricky sell to investors.

And with that video, not an easy sell to consumers, either.

Related:
Friendster Gets A Major Makeover, Calls Other Social Networks Plain And Boring [TechCrunch]
Primitive Social Networking Site Gives It One More Sad Go [The Awl]
Lebenszeichen von Friendster [Kurier]

Baseball: New York Yankees vs. Philadelphia Phillies

Allow me to restate the sincerest of congratulations to the NY Yankees, World Series champs! They won the game not in the press box or in the sports pages, but where it mattered — on the field of the brand new billion-dollar stadium built with tremendous tax breaks from New York City. However, its worth noting that the metaphorical playing field was not nearly as level as the literal one: The Yankee’s team payroll for 2009 comes in at a league-leading $201 million. By comparison, the Philadelphia Phillies’ overall team payroll for 2009 comes in around $113 million, or roughly 56% of the Yankees’ salaries.

Yankees team payroll, 2009: $201 million.
Phillies team payroll, 2009: $113 million. (56.2% of Yankees)

Magazines: Vogue vs. Self

Where does that stand in media terms? Let’s start with magazines. Who are the Yankees of the magazine world, based on year-to-date revenues booked up to the third quarter of 2009? How about Vogue? Much loved, often reviled, Vogue comes in at around $213 million. Who would be the Phillies in this equation? Self! Yup, so far this year, Self has booked revenue of $120 million, or 56.3% of its Condé Nast sister’s. So Vogue versus Self — who ya got?

Vogue year-to-date revenues, 2009: $213 million.
Self year-to-date revenues, 2009: $120 million. (56.3% of Vogue)

Social Media: Facebook vs. MySpace

Moving on, let’s look at social media properties, as measured by monthly unique visitors according to Quantcast. In this case, the Yankees=Facebook: Facebook totally dominates the social media realm (and seems on pace to soon take over the world, but I digress.) Judging by Quantcast, Facebook enjoys roughly 100 million unique visitors a month. The Phillies’ equivalent? MySpace gets roughly 56 million uniques a month. Never has the comparison between the Yankees and Phillies been clearer.

Facebook monthly visitorship: 100 million unique visitors/month.
MySpace monthly visitorship: 56 million unique visitors/month. (56 % of Facebook)

Cable TV: Fox News vs. ABC Family

Finally, let’s move on to television. I’d love to use cable news as the metaphor, but finding reliable data for revenue and costs for cable news networks is an arduous task. Fox News is the perfect metaphor for the Yanks here — I mean, they are dominating the ratings with a thier primetime lineup is a modern day murderer’s row, and yes, they are equally loved and hated — but neither MSNBC nor CNN measure up to even be considered the lame Phillies-esque competitor. So who can it be?  Basic cable ratings can give us a hint: last week, an average of 2 MM household tuned into the self-described fair and balanced news channel. Which network had 56% of those viewers? ABC’s Family Channel enjoyed 1.13 million viewers. So – Yankee vs. Phillies is the same as Fox News vs. ABC Family — Perfect!

Fox News average viewership last week: 2 million.
ABC Family average viewership last week: 1.13 million. (56.5% of Fox News)

So in conclusion — the Yankees deserve credit for winning the World Series, but let’s not pretend that they didn’t have an enormous advantage. Beating the Phillies is akin to choosing Vogue over Self, watching Fox News over ABC Family, or being on Facebook instead of MySpace. It sort of begs the question: how come the Yankees don’t win every year?

MySpace apparently didn’t pay for the spot (which TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington thinks is a good idea; I’m not sure, I’d look to danah boyd on that score). There was definitely some quid pro quo, though, between Anderson’s cameo and marketing the movie (see the movie page here and this walk-on contest for a lucky MySpacer here) . But though this was the most egregious placement, it was far from the only product I noticed in the movie.

I’m not sure if Judd Apatow struck any deals with Red Bull or for that frosty can of Diet Coke placed prominently in the big dinner scene, or for the Wilson tennis racket or the Nike shirt or the Mac computer(s), though by now that’s de rigeur (getting people to use PCs prominently in movies, now that would be a product placement coup!). But it was hard to miss the other product placements  — call it “These Are A Few of Judd Apatow’s Favorite Things.”

1. UCB Theater – For a movie like this, ironic t-shirts make up about 80% of wardrobe. Still, the ones you notice are no accident. Early on in the show Seth Rogen’s Ira Wright (né Weiner, pronounced “Wine-er”) is seen wearing the classic UCB logo t-shirt, staple of many who pass through its classes in NY and LA. Homegrown UCB alumni in the cast include Aziz Ansari and Aubrey Plaza; Apatow held a comedy night at UCB’s LA theater for his players to rehearse their stand-up chops. In the Venn Diagram of comedy these days, everyone’s got overlap with UCB.

2. Jews - Apatow’s one, Rogen’s one, Sandler’s one, Schwartzmann’s one, Hill’s one, etc. etc. We already knew Apatow liked Jews, but here he prods, just a little bit, into how Jewish identity can be complicated in show business. See above re: Ira Wright — says Sandler upon hearing Ira’s last name, in that lunchlady voice: “You’re hiding some Judaism!” Note, in the meantime, that Rogen’s character has already worn a SuperJew t-shirt; also note that Sandler’s character is named George Simmons. Hiding some Judaism? That’s never explored. Yet later, we get to see the perfect shiksa wife that got away. Watching the family scenes later, I couldln’t help but notice that Apatow had replaced his Jewy self at the head of the family with the less, er, ethnic-looking Eric Bana. That must have been weird. Those issues are all very much subtext in the film (perhaps there only to be overthought by Jews in the audience). But still. Noted.

3. Elizabeth Banks -She’s not in the credits, but she is in the movie — twice, as herself: She’s the “co-star” on not one but two movie posters starring Sandler’s alter-ego Simmons, Mer-Man and some other one you see early on as Simmons looks lugubriously through all his clippings. Apatow worked with Banks in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Rogen worked with her on Zack & Miri Make A Porno; they’re all buds, yada yada. Sort of an interesting choice to pair with George Simmons, on the verisimilitude front — if he’s really such a big star, then I’d have taken Eric Bana’s advice and gone with someone like Cameron Diaz. Banks is still getting there. But hey, I noticed — a little product placement can go a long way. For a friend.

4. Wilco - Duh. Judd Apatow is a Wilco fan. There’s also a Wilco t-shirt and a Wilco pun. (Here is a secret about puns: people say they  hate them but they usually always laugh, and they did in this movie.)

5. Jon Brion – Maybe I should just have called this post “indie bait.” Jon Brion is not a household name but he is to those who know about him. That includes Sandler (Brion scored Punch Drunk Love), and Apatow (Brion scored the Apatow-produced Step Brothers, which sounds like a punchline but isn’t), plus any L.A. scenester who frequents music club Largo (see above re: that Venn diagram). Brion produced two tracks on the Funny People soundtrack; that’s him rocking out with Sandler as a studio-musician-for-hire in yet another lugubrious scene about how Adam Sandler’s character has no real friends. Except for…

6. Comedians – Good God there were a lot of cameos in this movie. It felt at times like watching a Comedy Central Roast. Since excess running time has been an issue in reviews for the film, I’m just going to go ahead and say that Andy Dick could have been cut. (I know the movie relied heavily on dick jokes, but that one’s hardly inspired.) And I love me some Sarah Silverman, but vagina mouth we’ve seen, so why repeat the gag? I understand that we’re supposed to really believe that George is a big-time comic, but the big house convinced me; seeing Paul Reiser looking so old a decade after flying high on his own bumbling Jewish guy schtick was just depressing. (Though maybe that was Apatow’s point.) Either way, the price tag for Big-Name Comedian product placement didn’t help with the budget — according to Nikki Finke, Funny People cost between $70 – 100 million to make, which her commenters point out is far beyond what an ensemble drama like that should have cost (estimates were reportedly low $20 – mid $30 million). As Eric Buckman of Reel Loop says, “That’s what happens when you have Paul Reiser stop by for a cameo. The payroll goes through the roof.” Eminem can stay though.

7. His Family – Yes, I know I am not the first person to point this out. And I actually quite like Leslie Mann. And the kids are definitely cute. But I do agree that they could have been on the screen half as much and it would have been fine (the fight scene at the end could have been cut, playful dress-up moments could have been cut, dog licking peanut butter off their faces without any punchline could have been cut. If a dog’s gonna be licking peanut butter off someone’s something in an Apatow comedy, I expect better). Also, as an inveterate musical theater hack myself, I submit that the “Memory” clip could have been cut in half, too. And also not used as a completely transparent, and out of character hook. Adam Sandler didn’t give a shit about his cellphone once during the movie, why now? And while it was a nice rendition, what straight man has ever been moved by Grizabella?

8. His Friends – See above re: the movie’s price tag, but when you’re Judd Apatow and your friends all happen to be hilarious comedians, and your friends’ friends all happen to be hilarious comedians and everyone knows everyone because they were all on a UCB Harold team together or in a Funny or Die video together or at an SNL afterparty together — well, why not work with them? As many of them as possible? Apatow said as much himself on his MTV guest blog:

I must write more movies so I can spend time with friends.
Do people hang out who don’t work together?

Some do. But they’re not as funny. Or, I guess, rich. See you all on MySpace!

Related:
The most perceptive thing I read about Funny People: Is the Judd Apatow moment over? [Salon]
Great background: Judd Apatow’s Family Values [NYT]
Pretty Genius Viral Marketing: Cute Cuddly Kittens & Yo, Teach [YouTube]

Product Placement:
Funny People Theatrical Trailer [MySpace]
Funny People Restricted Trailer [FunnyPeopleMovie.com]