Of course, Foxconn knew “Nightline” was coming and was obviously well prepared for its visit. Indeed, there are already allegations that Foxconn has been hiding underage employees from investigators.

That said, the Fair Labor Association is at this very moment conducting a massive audit of Foxconn that will see it not only examining production lines and employee dormitories, but digging through the company’s employment records in search of evidence of more serious problems. So perhaps there’s more to learn here. Maybe, Foxconn really doesn’t meet social responsibility standards.

But perhaps it does. And if — if — that’s the case and the FLA’s probe concludes without incident, maybe it’s time for the conversation to expand from allegations of employee abuse to subjects like fair wages, which actually seem to be top of mind for the Foxconn employees interviewed by “Nightline.”

Not to downplay any past or as yet uncovered worker mistreatment, but right now Foxconn seems to be just a massive contract manufacturer that folks living in industrialized nations probably wouldn’t want to work for. But thousands of others do, because, troubling though it may be, collecting $1.78 per hour for performing mind-numbing labor for 12 hours a day is a better alternative to remaining in the rural villages they come from.

In the meantime, they’re offering this teaser clip, along with a story-behind-the-story (warning — comes with annoying auto-play video):

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.

A week ago, the fine folks at ABC’s “Nightline” news program were in Silicon Valley on a quest to find out whassup with this growing smartphone war going on between Google’s Android operating system and the iPhone from Apple.

After touching the Nexus S of a Google smartphone exec, the ABC correspondent also asked BoomTown to weigh in on the whole thing.

Short version: Location, location, location. Apple and Google have opposite strategies. And, in the impending doom prediction part, search giant Google–and all these smartphones, really–are like a Borg that likes to suck up tasty mobile data.

But why don’t you see for yourself in the video of the interviews:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Since you’re reading this site, it’s likely that there’s little news for you in this one. But it does let you see the inside YouTube HQ, a giant bunker in San Bruno, Calif., that used to be the home of The Gap. There’s minigolf and a tiki bar!

The segment also features a lot of YouTube viral clips, including Greyson Michael Chance, whom I’d never heard of before, but he’s apparently going to be the next Justin Bieber.

Oddly or not, I can’t find the ABC clip on Google’s video site itself. So you’ll have to watch it on ABC’s mugly proprietary player.

And here’s Chance, a 12-year-old, doing Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi.”

OK. But remember that most of the world actually hasn’t heard of, let alone used, the service. So exposure like this “Nightline” episode, which aired last night and reached millions of people, means… something.

My favorite bit comes right at the beginning, when host Martin Bashir asks, “What is it? Well, I don’t really know, because I don’t do it.” (By the way, a note to ABC News: You guys gotta make your video embeddable).

And while we’re on the topic of Twitter hype, here’s my question for proponents of the “Twitter is the next Google/YouTube/whatever” meme. I certainly think that the service could be a big deal (maybe). But can you explain how it reaches the critical mass of a Google (GOOG) or YouTube?

Because everyone looks for something. And just about everyone wants to watch a video of something. But people who want to broadcast their thoughts or actions to the rest of the world–that’s always going to be a subset of the general population, right?