From the CollegeHumor dudes, who aim inside, accurately, on this one. Soundtrack by BlackBerry Messenger:

This is a very funny CollegeHumor video series, called
“Always Open With Dave Koechner,” a great if unsung comic. It is set at a Denny’s restaurant. Really.

This perfectly awkward episode features another comedy gem, Amy Poehler.

Maybe it is just me, but a lot of these small Web-only videos are really starting to get interesting.

The challenge, which has stumped creators since the dawn of Web video, is getting more urgent as many producers shift their attention from creating one-off viral hits to online video franchises. Media companies and advertisers say they have money to invest, but loyal audiences, while growing, remain elusive.

Sites including Hulu LLC, IAC/InterActiveCorp’s CollegeHumor, Blip.tv and Demand Media’s Cracked.com are trying to draw recurring viewership by enticing users to tune in at a certain day of the week, running TV-like promos for Web shows or cross-promoting series against similar content.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Personally, I think this stuff needs to be a lot shorter, like the industry satire that CollegeHumor put together a while back. But whatever. It’s amusing enough, and it’s not aimed at me, anyway.

Which is a good reminder that despite what armchair ad critics like me have to say, a lot of the rebranding efforts that Yahoo, and now, AOL, have underway aren’t aimed at us anyway: They’re aimed at a relatively small number of ad buyers, planners and other pros who decide where marketing money goes. But we’re still going to enjoy assessing them.

And yes, while we’re at it, let’s note that this video is running on YouTube, which is owned by Google (GOOG). What does Carol Bartz plan to do about video, anyway?

This Weekend Update is particularly exciting because of all the things happening here at All Things Digital. There is, of course, the upcoming D7 Conference, which promises to be more tech-extravaganza fun than a tweet from @sockington (if only half as cute), but this past week has also seen the launch of our very own iPhone app, meaning ATD has gone mobile–smart news for your smartphone (we’re still working out potential taglines).

Like past D: All Things Digital conferences, D7 boasts a great lineup of speakers and industry leaders. This year, the gang that’s all here is full of personality, wit, chutzpah and all that other good stuff that’s sure to make this one of the most interesting and revelatory events yet.

For instance, Microsoft (MSFT) is rumored to be debuting its latest upgrade to its search engine, Kumo, at D7. The conglomerate sorely needs a win here, especially in its losing battle to the ubiquitous Google (GOOG) for market share in search. Search was a big topic in general this week as Kara Swisher liveblogged Yahoo’s (YHOO) “chalk talk” and interviewed one of its speakers, head of Yahoo Labs and Yahoo Search Strategy Prabhakar Raghavan, an exchange in which Kara gets Raghavan to exclaim WOO! for “web of objects.” In addition, Google search bigwigs Larry Page, Eric Schmidt and Marissa Mayer could be found across several universities this week dispensing “be more lazy” speeches to fresh graduates.

This was also the week with the IPO for OpenTable, the online restaurant reservation company being the first in Silicon Valley to go public in a long time. Kara Swisher and John Paczkowski give their takes on the offering.

It was also a week of many faceoffs. Here’s a smattering of those that went tete-a-tete this week:

• Craigslist vs. Henry McMaster. Winner: Craigslist. The online classifieds site retaliated with a lawsuit of its own after the South Carolina Attorney General threatened legal action.
• Microsoft vs. the European Commission: In the latest antitrust case development, Microsoft and the EC have been going head to head over scheduling issues, of all things.
• L’Oréal vs. eBay. Winner: eBay (EBAY). L’Oréal lost its latest lawsuit against the Web auctioneer over trademark-infringing cosmetic products sold on the site.
• CollegeHumor vs. Amazon: More of a prank than a bout, CollegeHumor gamed Amazon’s (AMZN) system by artificially driving up sales of the Three Wolf Moon T-shirts, complete with outlandishly positive product reviews.
• Comcast vs. Disney: Though Comcast (CMSCA) wasn’t pleased with Disney’s (DIS) partnership with online video site Hulu, the two companies were able to put aside their differences to form an ESPN360 pact.

More next weekend, but in the meantime, look out for all our coverage of D7!

One of my favorite things about the Web is how quickly and effectively you can take media and mash it up into all sorts of new forms.

Case in point, this comparison of scenes from a trailer from the latest Batman movie, “The Dark Knight” and that of 1989′s original “Batman.”

Incredibly, many of the scenes are almost exactly alike.

(I had posted some trailers from “The Dark Knight” here, at the time of actor Heath Ledger’s death in January. Ledger stars in the upcoming movie as a very malevolent Joker.)

See the trailer mashup here, which is on CollegeHumor:

But, with ever-escalating costs (and in YouTube’s case, a big $1.65 billion acquisition price that demands justification by its owner Google) and a need to have what passes for a business model beyond the fact that they are super popular, fans of either site will have to buck up and get used to it in an even bigger way.

It seems blazingly obvious to say this, but what medium can escape the fact that it has to pay the bills?

Facebook has been at work on a new system that would put targeted ads in users’ news feeds based on the details they put in their profile pages, which was highlighted in this Wall Street Journal article this week and also which the social-networking site’s head ad guy Mike Murphy alluded to in this video I did a month ago.

People on the service are justifiably concerned about the possible violation of privacy, as the company employs more specific characteristics to the ad-targeting than just generic stuff like age, gender and geography. You say you like stock cars, for example? Presto: NASCAR ads on your page and in your feed.

This comes soon, in the wake of YouTube making an extravagant announcement earlier this week about its plans to put “overlay” ads in some of its professionally created and other videos, called InVideos. By no means an innovative development, they are semitransparent ads that will be part of the video experience, rather than being located near the videos on the Web site. Prediction: They will likely be annoying.

Said one of the many commenters, unhappy about the development: “Why ruin YouTube’s experience for millions of viewers just to gain the tiniest bit of money from less than 1% of people looking at the video? Forcing a viewer to click away an ad will not help the advertiser, YouTube or the viewer.”

One dedicated YouTuber was even more clear, with what seemed like a mile-long comment that requires a good minute of scrolling and just repeats “F*** YOU! NO ADS” on the YouTube blog.

As ads increase in number, I am betting this will seem calm by comparison.

So while the transition is taking place, we might as well laugh at this video, again from CollegeHumor.com, that looks at the comment system in the open. It’s a bit racy, but about as accurate as it gets.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google (owner of YouTube).

Here’s one parodying the great John Woo movie Face/Off by reimagining it in a Facebook setting. It’s from the excellent CollegeHumor site: