Google Maps is back on the iPhone!!! Do you know what that means?!? It means we’re all still struggling to find some meaning in this life.

— Funny Or Die (@funnyordie) December 13, 2012

It took five years, but the Funny Or Die comedy site finally reached five million Twitter followers. And, naturally, it’s marking the occasion with a video by its co-founder and frequent star, Will Ferrell.

In it, he makes fun of the site’s tweets and also fires an intern — pretty much par for the course. Along with the fandom on Twitter, Funny Or Die has two million Facebook “Likes” and 370,000 Tumblr followers.

Here’s the Ferrell video:

Other comedians — and at least one start-up — followed in his footsteps. And C.K. ended up using the Web as a direct sales channel again, both for a concert tour and to help another performer.

But C.K. never promised that he’d stick with the Web exclusively. Good thing, because his next concert special will air first on HBO, sometime next year.

The move might disappoint some digital purists, but it makes plenty of sense for C.K.

He’ll get the money and distribution power that HBO, which boasts some 30 million subscribers in the U.S., can tap into.

And unlike other performers who cut deals with HBO, he’ll hang on to some of the rights: Via Twitter, he says that a “few months” after the special airs on HBO, he’ll sell it again, directly from his site.

The move is probably a bigger departure for HBO, whose subscription model is based on exclusivity. Unless you want to steal it, the only way you can watch “Game of Thrones” is by shelling out for HBO, or waiting up to a year for it to show up on iTunes, DVDs, etc.

Lesson here: Like we said before, just because you can use the Web doesn’t mean you’ll only use the Web. Digital gives C.K. and (some) other performers a new option, but it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition — they can now mix and match distribution strategies. Don’t be shocked if C.K. ends up doing something similar with the likes of Netflix the next time out.

Good for him. And for us.

Hurricane Sandy’s impact was widespread and damaging all over the East Coast, much of it devastating.

But on a late-night comedy level, of course, it provided fodder. While Jimmy Kimmel — who usually does his “Live” out of Los Angeles — had to cancel a week’s worth of shows planned for Brooklyn, other hosts used the storm as a prop.

Here’s both Jimmy Fallon of “Late Night” and David Letterman of “Late Show,” doing their monologues in front of no one, because it was not safe to bring in audiences (although as a joke, Fallon had one dude named “Bucket Hat Guy”).

Here are the videos:

Here’s a Kickstarter project that you don’t see that often — an online video project based on Awesome Asian Bad Guys.

“When we were growing up in the ’80s and ’90’s, we’d always see hard-hitting Asian bad guys in flicks like ‘Die Hard,’ ‘Bloodsport,’ and ‘Karate Kid 2.’ These badasses were often cooler than the heroes they fought, but they’d usually have a two-minute lifespan before they were mortally wounded or beaten to a pulp. It really sucked that you barely saw them on screen and rarely got to know them. That got us thinking,” the creators — who have a YouTube channel called the National Film Society — explain. “How cool would it be to expand upon this largely ignored slice of pop culture history by following several Asian bad guys on their own action-packed adventures?”

The five-episode action comedy Web series will apparently be a “cross between ‘The Expendables’ and ‘Dumb & Dumber.’”

Yay. The movie project is about $20,000 short of budget, with three days to go.

Here’s the video:

But it’s a good one!

So: Look what happened at the end of Monday Night Football last night, after the “replacement referees,” brought in by the NFL after the league locked out its regular officials, blew the last call of the game. The move gave the Seattle Seahawks the victory instead of the Green Bay Packers, and kicked off a social media explosion:

This data comes from social chatter tracker Bluefin Labs, which tracks several social outlets, but it’s most heavily weighted toward Twitter. And if you were on Twitter last night you got to enjoy a torrent of entertaining commentary, from both amateur and professional wags.

The two tweets that seemed to resonate the most, though, came from Packers player TJ Lang, who’s going to end up spending a lot of money for these two outbursts, which have been retweeted more than 130,000 times. Avert your eyes if you don’t like cussing!

Got fucked by the refs.. Embarrassing. Thanks nfl

— TJ Lang (@TJLang70) September 25, 2012

Fuck it NFL.. Fine me and use the money to pay the regular refs.

— TJ Lang (@TJLang70) September 25, 2012

The most interesting question for Twitter, and for the media companies it is trying to court, is what all the chatter did for last night’s ratings.

A core part of Twitter’s story now is that its online discussion will end up generating more offline eyeballs for the TV networks, and my hunch is that this happened last night at ESPN.

It certainly did for me — I had lost interest in the game about an hour before, but switched it back on after Twitter exploded, and ended up watching another half hour of outraged post-game coverage while amusing myself online.

I’ve asked ESPN if they’ve got data that backs my theory up, and will update when I hear more.

(Image: Rachel Nichols via Twitter)

I wrote a profile of 9GAG — which went through Dave McClure’s 500 Startups incubator, kind of — back in April. That story mentioned this round of funding and the names of some of the investors, though the company wouldn’t confirm it at the time.

What’s interesting to note now is who has invested, particularly since there’s a lot of derision for 9GAG from the denizens of message board sites like Reddit and 4chan, who say it rips off their content. Of course, Reddit and 4chan aren’t exactly traditional investment opportunities.

Silicon Valley investors have flocked to put their money into Hong Kong-based 9GAG. The seed round was led by True Ventures and Freestyle Capital, with Greycroft Partners, 500 Startups, Scott Banister, Chris Sacca, David Tisch, Kevin Rose, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ben Ling, Karl Jacob, James Hong, Philip Kaplan and others.

Why? Because 9GAG is huge. It has more than 70 million global unique visitors and more than a billion page views — per month.

For instance, investor Tony Conrad of True Ventures talked up the “potential of 9GAG as a viral distribution platform” in a statement.

9GAG today is also releasing an iPhone app, and said an Android version is on the way.

Ouch.

Hulu said Sunday that it will roll out two new shows between now and summer, while bringing back a third it debuted last year. The new shows include a half-hour scripted comedy about a dysfunctional Senate campaign, dubbed “Battleground,” beginning in February, and a travelogue show from director Richard Linklater.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The comedian has kicked off a press tour, starting with a weird and dizzying Q&A with Reddit yesterday, followed by a “Nightline” segment last night. This one lasts six minutes, has a minute-long pre-roll, and is the standard introduction-of-semifamous-person-to-TV-mass-audience that shows like “Nightline” specialize in. (Look! Here he is with a MacBook!) Nothing wrong with that.

I bought it Saturday night, watched it on the plane Sunday, and laughed out loud, a bunch. You should do it, and there’s a good chance you have — techland loved this story this weekend. Also, again: It’s very funny.

But What Does It All Mean? Not a ton. It’s an evolutionary step, relevant to a select group of people who make entertainment. With one interesting twist.

The part that isn’t new here is Louis C.K. using the Web and doing it on his own. We’ve seen a bunch of that over the years, mostly from entertainers who have already become famous (or at least semi-famous) with the help of mainstream media. Prince and Radiohead sold their own music only after they sold lots of songs for big music labels. Adam Carolla leapt/got pushed from TV and radio gigs into podcasting.

The new twist here is the way his experiment changes video “windows” — which determine when shows and movies show up on different outlets. By going direct-to-fan first, C.K. doesn’t shut off his chance to end up working the Big Media Companies he says he doesn’t want to work with. He’s just making them wait. So the people who really love him can get it right away, and he can capture almost all of that value in the transaction.

We’ll call it the Louis C.K. Window.

It can run for a week, or a month, or however long he’d like to be the sole outlet for his show. But then, if he wants to get more money for his product and reach a different audience, C.K. can sell the program to HBO or Showtime or Netflix for a “pay-TV window.” And then, eventually, to the likes of Comedy Central or FX. At some point, he can retail discs and downloads via Amazon and iTunes, etc.

The Louis C.K. Window is the most gratifying, because it’s cool, and because he’ll keep almost every penny his fans spend to see him. But it’s also likely to expose him to the smallest number of people.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that a million people pony up for the concert — basically, that is, everyone who watches his (great) show on News Corp.’s FX channel. (News Corp. owns this site, too.)

That’s a wildly optimistic estimate, and it will still be a fraction of the people that HBO, which has some 28 million subscribers, can reach. You can fault Big Media for a lot of things, but it remains pretty good at rounding up Big Audiences.

But that’s the great thing about the Louis C.K. Window. It lets Louis C.K. — and a relatively small group of people with big ambitions, and ardent fans — have it both ways.

Here’s the two-minute version:

And if you’ve got 10 minutes (remember, if you live in the U.S., you get a bonus hour tonight), here’s the whole interview. And here, via the New York Times, is more on his plan to stream his next concert from his own site, passing over not only pay cable but Netflix and iTunes, too.

Of all the Hollywood celebs who lurk around the Web trying to figure it all out, comedian Will Ferrell has maintained a pretty consistent level of funny.

And so it is with this video for Funny or Die — the comedy site Ferrell co-founded — that he is not even in (although it is chock-full of famous comics). It’s about Ferrell winning the 2011 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Watch:

Of all the fantastic characters on the brilliant HBO comedy series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the one I can never get enough of is JB Smoove, the innovative comic who plays Larry David’s best sidekick, Leon Black.

Here is an insidery, slightly tasteless, but decidedly funny spoof video of Smoove taking over Hollywood’s William Morris Endeavor talent agency on Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday.

In it, Smoove decides to “run sh*t!“

And so he does:

Oh.

Bad news, LinkedIn. You led “The Daily Show” last night.

Here is a very funny piece from cable television comedy show, “The Colbert Report,” about a reporter from Georgia.

It’s hard to explain why it’s so funny, but it is a perfect send-up of the reporting process. The story: “Man Says It’s Too Hot to Fish.”

As Colbert intones: “Newspapers are part of America’s past, like buggy-whip makers and the middle class, but they still perform an important function.”

Enjoy:

Here’s a full-page ad Mirman took out this month in the New York Press and the Greenpoint Gazette, two free New York City papers.

(Sorta-meta side note: This is a prank that only works because he actually bought a print ad–anyone can write anything on the Web, so if he just did that, it wouldn’t have the same impact. But if Mirman hadn’t posted this to his Web site, who would have seen it? Also, have you ever really looked at your hands? I mean, really looked at them?)

Oh, also: This contains jokes about Stalin and Jeffrey Dahmer. Now you’ve been warned!

May 19, 2011

Eugene Mirman
Brooklyn, NY 10217

Time Warner Inc.
One Time Warner Center
New York, NY 10019

Dear Time Warner Cable,

On April 23rd I moved and had an appointment with Time Warner Cable to come and install cable, Internet and phone service and no one showed up. When I called, I was told my appointment was entered wrong and moved to May 4th, without anyone calling me. No big deal, why would a company check with someone to see if they are home on a Wednesday afternoon? Of course they are. Everyone is. Name one person who isn’t home on a Wednesday afternoon? You can’t. It’s impossible, because everyone is home. It would be a waste of resources to call and talk to him. Did Stalin ever call people before he arrested them and sent them to die in Siberian work camps? No! Why should Time Warner Cable have a policy that is any different from Stalin’s?

Did you know that on Yelp, Time Warner Cable has one and a half stars? That’s less stars than Jeffrey Dahmer — who killed and ate people, maybe even had sex with their skulls (I don’t really know). Obviously what I’m saying is untrue, because Yelp does not review serial killers, but if they did, his babaganoush would be better than yours, if you both made babaganoush, even if his drugged and murdered people. Sorry that got weird. F**k you. I just made you read that confusing thing.

To give you an idea of how much I dislike your company, I have come up with plagues I hope God smites your board of directors with. I know He’ll only do this if you enslave the Jews, but considering you might have a monopoly in NYC, you sort of already have:

1. Awkward. Every board member’s cell phone ring loudly announces their weight and also the day they’ll die.

2. Bathroom. The constant feeling that you have to go number two, but completely forgetting how.

3. Improv. Your first-born will want to be a short form improviser.

4. Popcorn. Your second born will smell like hot buttered popcorn. It’s not that bad at first, but eventually I bet it will be maddening.

Sincerely,

Eugene Mirman and probably everyone of your customers

P.S. On May 4th I called you and got an automated message saying my appointment was moved to May 10th, but spoke to two representatives who assured me it was still on May 4th. Twenty minutes later, I got a call saying the technician called and couldn’t reach me and my new appointment would be on May 12th. An hour later I got a call apologizing and saying my appointment was moved to May 6th. Why does your company act like a controlling, abusive husband on an episode of Law and Order?

P.P.S. On May 6th a very nice, professional man came, rang my doorbell and installed everything. I would feel remiss to not mention that a handful of other employees were also very helpful. However, overall your company is run like an ill managed Soviet factory. I bet if Ayn Rand was still alive, she’d write a fun to read, but poorly argued book about how appalling and inefficient your company is. Please cut it out. Thank you.

This is a paid advertisement

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.

It would, as is so hysterically acted by Billy Crystal and Helen Mirren, also include vampires. Old ones.

Enjoy:

Excellent!

Although they did not do their patented line–”Schwiiiing”–Wayne and Garth (also known as Mike Myers and Dana Carvey) of faux cable show “Wayne’s World” were back on “Saturday Night Live” this weekend.

And it was a welcome visit.

Featuring their top picks for the upcoming Oscars, this retread from the late-night television sketch comedy icon was funnier than a lot of stuff on SNL now.

Enjoy:

Last month, the company rolled out a revamped version of Myspace, which is owned by News Corp., publisher of the Wall Street Journal. I’ve been testing it to see what has changed and if it’s worth using. Its interface is cleaner than the old version of Myspace and I found it easy to navigate. It’s also inviting for non-members or people who’ve long-since given up on Myspace. But I can’t definitely say I like it enough to add it to my large list of social networks.

Step one of this site’s rehab was a new focus. Myspace (myspace.com) was redesigned to serve as a source of information about entertainment. People who use it can follow five categories—TV, music, movies, celebrities and comedy—that include more than 100,000 topics. News about these topics comes from sites all over the Web and is arranged on users’ home pages to show loads of information at a glance. A Discovery tab at the top of the page shows content related to trends on Myspace makes suggestions based on a user’s preferences and taste. A spokesman said the Myspace topics can be expanded, but for now, if you’re fonder of, say, books, theater or hard news, Myspace won’t be a good fit.

Step two for Myspace included making nice with its old competitor. It now works with Facebook Connect to pull in people’s Facebook “likes” and interests, which automatically generate customized Myspace pages for new users.

The final step of the Myspace redesign was its emphasis on music. The site still contains one of the largest Web music catalogs that plays full versions of songs for anyone who visits Myspace. New versions of band profile pages look more organized. And all artists with band profiles will have ReverbNation’s FanReach email product integrated into their profile to help them create targeted email campaigns for fans.

Was Myspace’s rehabilitation worth the effort? I’ve been using it for a week and it has taught me a lot more than I knew about things I care about. I had no idea that one of my favorite TV shows, TNT’s “The Closer,” recently said that 2011 would be its last season. Nor did I know that Anthony Bourdain blogs about his role as a judge on “Top Chef Masters.” These items and others appeared on my Home page after I performed the process that the Myspace site refers to as a Facebook Mashup.

The Facebook Mashup does a few things automatically for you, in addition to generating a Myspace page filled with topic-related news. A playlist is created in the Music section of your page that contains artists whom you “like” on Facebook (or whom you indicated while setting up an account). And the Videos section of the Myspace page will reflect your tastes in a list of Followed Channels related to your Facebook preferences.

The Home page can be seen in one of three views—List, Grid or Play—and icons at the top of the screen let users toggle among these views. My favorite was Grid View in the Full Grid View format, visible by clicking a small box at the top of the page.

Some of the content displayed on my Home page was mixed up. For example, a tile representing the story about Mr. Bourdain’s blog (originally posted on Celebrifi.com) displayed with it a photo of actor Tom Cruise, who wasn’t mentioned in that post. Another Tom, Tom Colicchio, chef and a “Top Chef Masters” judge, was mentioned in the post, but that doesn’t explain the mix-up.

Anything that falls into the 100,000 plus topics of Myspace’s realm can be found via a search box in the top right corner of the page, but this box is confusingly labeled, “Search People.” Though Myspace still allows users to search for and friend one another, the label on this search box is puzzling, given the greater reach of the site.

You can watch video content from Hulu.com (of which News Corp. is part owner) without jumping to a new page. And videos also come from other sources like TMZ and the NFL.

Users can earn recognition badges—icons that show up on their page—for their involvement on Myspace, and can become curators of topics, awarded on the basis of users’ involvement and how much other people respond to their activity.

This week, a Myspace mobile app was launched in Apple’s App Store, and an Android app is due out next year.

Myspace successfully reinvented itself in a way that could very well get people using it again, but Facebook’s more personalized social network may be more valuable than a rich library of entertainment content.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/trying-out-a-revamped-myspace/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101123/viral-video-angry-birds-versus-evil-pigs/ http://allthingsd.com/20101123/viral-video-angry-birds-versus-evil-pigs/#comments Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:15:21 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37599 There’s not much more to say than the headline above.

Except to note that this spoof of popular smartphone app characters at war–in this case, the Angry Birds and Evil Pigs–from an Israeli comedy show on television is very, very funny.

Enjoy:

Thanks to Hillel Fuld for the video tip.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101123/viral-video-angry-birds-versus-evil-pigs/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101014/viral-video-collegehumors-move-from-viral-one-offs-to-web-series/ http://allthingsd.com/20101014/viral-video-collegehumors-move-from-viral-one-offs-to-web-series/#comments Thu, 14 Oct 2010 07:10:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35247

The national broadcast television networks aren’t the only ones debuting a fall series season.

CollegeHumor Media, the online comedy video site, is also trying out three longer-term, weekly series rather than the more typical “viral one-offs,” it said.

“The whole idea is to get people to start thinking of CollegeHumor less as a comedy show, and more as a comedy network.” said CollegeHumor’s President of Original Content, Sam Reich, in a statement.

Thus, the New York-based unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) is offering:

“Full Benefits”–What happens when your friend with benefits is also a co-worker? Well, presumably, hilarity ensues!

“Hello My Name Is”–A professional make-up artist is hired to apply prosthetics to cast member Josh Ruben. When the process is complete, does hilarity ensue?

“Very Mary Kate”–Life can be tough for a former child star with only a few billion dollars, a 26-bedroom apartment and a trusty bodyguard to her name. Hilarity or something like it, I think.

As you will see from these three videos, they are all still a little not-ready-for-prime-time, but it’s a nice effort, especially from the adorkable couple in “Full Benefits.”

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101014/viral-video-collegehumors-move-from-viral-one-offs-to-web-series/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101006/viral-video-jon-stewart-goes-sweet-on-rick-sanchez-sort-of/ http://allthingsd.com/20101006/viral-video-jon-stewart-goes-sweet-on-rick-sanchez-sort-of/#comments Wed, 06 Oct 2010 08:58:07 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34945

As everyone knows, the back-and-forth between Rick Sanchez and “Daily Show” mocker-in-chief Jon Stewart turned serious after some controversial remarks on a radio show from the CNN personality got him fired.

Sanchez was taking aim at Stewart when he shot himself in the foot, which is why it is so compelling to see Stewart handle the situation with admirable restraint in this video from the comedy television program.

Enjoy:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Hurty Sanchez
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101006/viral-video-jon-stewart-goes-sweet-on-rick-sanchez-sort-of/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100928/viral-video-katy-perry-defiles-elmo/ http://allthingsd.com/20100928/viral-video-katy-perry-defiles-elmo/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 07:14:08 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34213

Okay, it’s admittedly a very funny mock skit from this weekend’s season premiere of “Saturday Night Live,” featuring singer Katy Perry and her problems related to a canceled appearance on “Sesame Street.”

But must poor Elmo suffer? You’ll figure out why right away.

One big plus: The genius of former SNL cast members Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler, who was also host of the NBC television comedy show. Perry was the musical guest too.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100928/viral-video-katy-perry-defiles-elmo/feed/ 2