The Social

Geek humor abounds.

Parody singer "Weird Al" Yankovic poked fun at Segway riders three years ago with his rap song "White and Nerdy."

His latest single "Craigslist" skewers the people who can be found swapping wares and scoring dates on the classifieds ads site. (While there's a verse about the popular "missed connections" feature on Craigslist, there isn't otherwise mention of the current prostitution controversy that the site's been dealing with.)

The video and song are a professed homage to The Doors. Ray Manzarek, the former band's keyboardist, was enlisted to play on the track. And while the music itself will sound unmistakably familiar to Doors fans, Yankovic asserts it isn't a takeoff on a specific song,

The lyrics, by contrast, are unlike anything Jim Morrison would have dreamed up:

Got a trash can of Styrofoam peanuts, you can have em for free
You can drop by on the weekend and pick em up from me
But the trash can ain't part of the deal
Only givin' you the peanuts, get real

"Craigslist" is available for sale as a single now and will appear on an album that comes out next year.

The Doors parodying is spot-on. But the video and lyrics unfortunately aren't as funny as the over-the-top "White and Nerdy," which became a mild viral sensation on YouTube in 2006.

More importantly: I've e-mailed Craigslist founder Craig Newmark to gauge his reaction. He responded: "The thing's pretty funny!"

This post was updated at 11:48 a.m. PT with comment from Craig Newmark.

Viacom's MTV Networks has brought some of its television content to Netflix's library of streaming online video, the companies announced Monday.

Yaaaaaaay! SpongeBob is taking over your Netflix account!

(Credit: Nickelodeon)

The offering consists primarily of kids' shows from the Nickelodeon network, with select seasons from the shows "iCarly," "Blue's Clues," "Dora the Explorer," "SpongeBob SquarePants," and a handful of others, as well as the first nine seasons of "South Park," the Comedy Central animated series that you probably don't want your kids watching.

Netflix's streaming-video service still very much takes the back burner to its DVDs-by-mail service, but the company has deals in place with TiVo, Boxee, Microsoft's Xbox, and some HDTV providers.

It's also the second streaming Netflix deal for Viacom, which licensed content from its Logo network last year. Viacom has also signed content deals with Joost (Disclosure: CNET News publisher CBS is an investor in Joost) and NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture Hulu, which now runs episodes of Comedy Central's hit talk shows "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."

One major player in the video world with which you probably won't see MTV Networks making a deal any time soon: YouTube. Viacom still has an outstanding lawsuit against YouTube parent company Google over infringing content.

Stephen Colbert really wants to be among the stars.

(Credit: Comedy Central)

If the results of an online poll are any indication, NASA may soon be naming a new wing of the International Space Station, Node 3, after late-night comedian Stephen Colbert.

According to the Associated Press, write-ins for "Colbert" crushed all of NASA's four poll options, pulling in 230,539 votes; the second-place choice, NASA suggestion "Serenity" (a nod to sci-fi hero Joss Whedon) was more than 40,000 votes behind. Writer Dave Barry also threw his hat in the ring, suggesting "Buddy" as the perfect name for Node 3. But he didn't amass nearly enough support.

Colbert has made a habit of encouraging his loyal fans, whom he calls "The Colbert Nation," to game all kinds of online naming polls so that some incarnation of his name will emerge the winner. But he suffered an embarrassing defeat when the government of Hungary refused to name a new bridge after him, despite an extensive naming campaign on his Comedy Central pundit show, "The Colbert Report," to vote for him in the official online bridge-naming poll. (The government's excuse? The bridge could only be named after someone who speaks Hungarian.)

Colbert also couldn't get the right kind of support from either fans or state government authorities to put himself on the South Carolina presidential primary ballot in 2007. But with no poll involved, upstart airline Virgin American named one of its planes "Air Colbert."

As for the new "node" in the International Space Station, NASA spokesman John Yembrick told the AP that the government agency will make its final name choice next month. Don't give up hope, Nation!

So either Jon Stewart is really on to something with his mad-as-hell crusade against financial hypocrisy and stupidity, or there are a lot of unemployed people watching Comedy Central clips to pass the time.

Either way, an on-air freakout by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli may have been one of the best things to happen to Comedy Central in months: Fake-news pundits Stewart (of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart") and Stephen Colbert (of "The Colbert Report") have seen traffic to their Web sites and online video clips soar after the two went on mocking vendettas against Santelli, fellow CNBC personality Jim Cramer, and the NBC Universal-owned business network in general.

Traffic to the shows' Web sites has been at its highest of the year so far in the past week, at over 60 percent their weekly average for 2009. ComedyCentral.com, which hosts video clips of both programs, also had its best traffic of the year, and the digital version of a viciously funny clip called "CNBC Gives Financial Advice" logged over 1.3 million views in a week, the sort of numbers usually reserved for grainy videos of cats behaving unnaturally.

Here's the back story: Santelli was supposed to appear on "The Daily Show" after his tirade about the federal government's economic bailout, but backed out abruptly. That's when Stewart and Colbert--but especially Stewart--turned up the heat. Stewart went on the aforementioned anti-CNBC rant on March 5, putting "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer squarely in his crosshairs. Cramer appeared on "The Colbert Report" the following night.

Now, Cramer is scheduled to make a "Daily Show" appearance on Thursday night.

Stewart and Colbert have been two of the most visible figures in cable television's slow crawl onto the Web. Not only are they wildly popular with young and tech-savvy audiences, but the segmented format of their talk shows lends itself well to being split into short clips and swapped via video-sharing sites, which meant that unauthorized clips of the two were some of YouTube's earliest hits. That's what indirectly led to Comedy Central parent company Viacom's massive copyright lawsuit against YouTube owner Google.

Later on, the full archives of both shows were made available on Comedy Central's Web site, and recent episodes are available in full on Hulu (as well as iTunes and Xbox Live).

Colbert, who started out as a commentator on "The Daily Show" before spinning off his blowhard persona into his own talk show, also owes a big chunk of his notoriety to the Web. Video of C-SPAN's coverage of the White House Press Correspondents' dinner three years ago, in which Colbert performed a shockingly blunt comedy routine that skewered then-President George W. Bush, was a huge hit on the Web among those who wouldn't have considered actually watching C-SPAN in the first place.

Last year, Colbert was honored by the annual Webby Awards as "Person of the Year." Take that, nonbelievers!

236.com, a comedy site developed as a joint venture between liberal news site The Huffington Post and Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, will be a joint venture no more. The site will become a Huffington Post subsidiary and is slated to be re-branded as "Huffington Post Comedy." Financial terms were not disclosed.

"After a successful first year as a standalone comedy site we are excited to bring 236 into The Huffington Post as we launch our comedy vertical," Huffington Post co-founder and namesake Arianna Huffington said in a release Tuesday. "We look forward to creating a section that serves not only as a one-stop-shop for humor with a satirical take on the news but a spirited community for all comedy lovers."

Reports surfaced in December that IAC was looking to spin off some of its smaller properties, 236.com possibly among them.

Though it began as a political news site, the Huffington Post has gradually expanded into other news and lifestyle areas to broaden its coverage. The "Comedy" section created from 236.com will join sections like entertainment, media, and "green" news.

The Huffington Post closed a $25 million funding round in December.

A guy I know created an Elf Yourself video of his friends. Um, I'm on the bottom right.

(Credit: OfficeMax/JibJab, user-gen work by Peter Feld)

Because we need to ensure that silly do-it-yourself comedy will stay alive during these harrowing financial times, the magic venture capital fairies have infused JibJab.com with a $7.5 million Series C round. And by "magic venture capital fairies" I actually mean Overbrook Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and existing investor Polaris Venture Partners.

Founded in 1999 by brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, JibJab started as a hub for funny political song-and-dance videos that the two created, but in 2007 the company began an e-card service called "Starring You!" in which visitors to the site could insert photos of themselves (or their bosses!) into geeky cartoon videos. For the '08 holiday season, JibJab partnered with office supply store OfficeMax for the third annual installment of those "Elf Yourself" greeting cards that I'm sure more than a few of you were sent. (See image for embarrassing example.)

JibJab says a whopping 35 million of its holiday greeting cards were sent across the Web this winter. That's a lot of elves.

JibJab forged a deal with CNN Politics around that time last year when everyone was either thinking about Halloween or the presidential election, launching a zombie politician video creator.

The site has a business model beyond advertising and sponsorship, thank goodness: some of its content is subscription-based, and JibJab also sells additional video. To keep an "Elf Yourself" video past the holidays, for example, you can pay to download it.

"We sensed that customers would pay for access to unique, high-quality entertainment that they could use to express themselves online," co-founder and CEO Gregg Spiridellis said in a release. "With this thesis well proven, and the capital from this financing now in place, we plan to aggressively innovate the online greetings category in the months and years ahead."

Hey, guys, I have a suggestion: recession-themed dance video greeting cards!

This post was updated on Friday at 7:26 a.m. PT to note OfficeMax's creation of "Elf Yourself," which is now presented by JibJab.

These days, everyone can use a few good laughs. Guess that means Comedy Central's latest launch is well-timed.

The Viacom-owned cable network took Jokes.com, a property it acquired in 2002, and relaunched it Wednesday as a hub for its stand-up comedy archives. Sort of like a Hulu for stand-up comedy, it's debuting with over 5,000 video clips (embeddable and shareable, naturally) and 12,000 text-based jokes that are searchable by topic ("George W. Bush" or "holidays") and by comedian. A "Comedians A-Z" database provides information on different stand-up comics and who's on tour--the site sells tickets and merchandise, too.

"Stand-up comedy and comedians have always been the backbone of the network," said Erik Flannigan, executive vice president of digital media at MTV Networks Entertainment Group, the Viacom division that encompasses Comedy Central.

As with other Comedy Central video sites, like The Daily Show and Colbert Nation, the content is ad-supported. This summer, Comedy Central took another acquired property, Atom.com, and turned it into a site for short-form Web comedy.

Since the clips in the video archive are sourced from Comedy Central programming going back to 1997's The A-List, none of them go beyond a late-night-cable level of tawdriness. The text jokes, Flannigan said, can be dirtier.

"We're not trying to make it as dirty as humanly possible, but we're not adhering to the same standards as broadcast," he explained.

But Jokes.com, which was put together over the course of about a year by a team of about 20 people, will likely expand beyond television content soon. Flannigan said the company has "explored the notion" of adding stand-up comedy from other Viacom properties like MTV and BET. Comedy Central representatives continue to plan to grow the site, introducing the ability for users to upload their own stand-up videos and add more social-networking features for comedians to network with fans. Members of the team hinted that they speak on a frequent basis with News Corp.'s MySpace to discuss possible cross-promotion and campaigns for discovering young comedians.

There's also a "joke-a-day" iPhone app coming in 2009. Better warn your boss about the impending plunge in productivity.

NEW YORK--Two years after acquiring it, MTV Networks has shaped Atom Films into Atom.com, a sister site to its Comedy Central network dedicated to short-form, Web-based comedy.

Executives from the Viacom-owned MTV Networks held a press conference here on Thursday to kick off the new site, which Executive Vice President of Digital Media Erik Flannigan described as "our punk-rock label...where you're purposely encouraging development that's supposed to (expletive) with the system and break down boundaries."

Along with four new original Web series commissioned by Comedy Central, which range from an animated show about conjoined twins connected at the naughty bits to a live-action series about three clueless slackers who attempt to be militia guards at the U.S.-Mexican border, Atom.com welcomes user-generated submissions. Select videos will be featured in a weekly "Upload Showdown," and winners will become "pro" content creators on Atom.com and have access to additional Comedy Central resources like a spot on a new late-night televised program, Atom TV, a sort of week-in-review special about the site.

Atom TV, which premiered Tuesday morning at 2 a.m., is "jukebox-style, proudly low-budget, (and) super-late-night," according to Scott Roesch, general manager of Atom.com. Eventually, Atom.com will percolate into video-on-demand cable television, where Atom Films had a presence in its early days. Ideally that'll happen later this summer.

More Web shows are on the way, too, including an "advertorial" series called Agency, in which terrible advertisements for real brands are created by an incompetent, fictitious ad agency.

Online comedy video sites are a dime a dozen, but Roesch said that because of the ties to Comedy Central, Atom.com has an immediate lift above the fray. The new site has more than 20,000 videos in its library already, and predecessor AtomFilms.com pulled in more than 1.9 million unique visitors monthly, which execs say is more than online comedy brethren FunnyOrDie, SuperDeluxe, and The Onion combined. Built on Viacom's Flux social platform, Atom.com also aims to be a community site of sorts.

There's a history to it. In 2006, MTV Networks acquired Atom Films, home to online indie hits like Gerbil in a Microwave, along with Shockwave and AddictingGames, and Atom Films founder Mika Salmi became head of MTV's overall digital operations. While the short-form films site had some science fiction and horror hits, too, it was comedy that turned into the real successes, and that's why the company has decided to rebrand it as a comedy-only site. "In the online viewing experience, you've got to grab the viewer immediately," Roesch said, explaining that online video as a whole is best suited to comedic styles.

"There's not a lot of viral tearjerkers," Flannigan added, saying that Web comedy is now an essential part of American youth culture. "There is a social currency in your knowledge of and your passing along of short-form comedy."

Yaaaay! Stephen Colbert on Hulu!

(Credit: Comedy Central)

This post was updated at 11:01 AM PT on Tuesday to clarify wording: television content from Viacom is almost exclusively handled by MTV Networks.

In an unexpected move, video site Hulu will be getting some political loudmouths just in time for the 2008 presidential election: Comedy Central's late-night personalities Jon Stewart of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report.

We had to check and make sure the press release wasn't a joke, but there are indeed full episodes from both programs available. It comes as somewhat of a surprise, considering Comedy Central parent company Viacom has not officially signed on to Hulu, which launched as a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. and does not yet have any other major networks on board.

But on the other hand, MTV Networks, the Viacom division that encompasses Comedy Central, has made some distribution deals, and both Stewart and Colbert were already available on the Web in one form or another. And Viacom had already made select content available to Hulu rival Joost, but now that the Joost hype has faded completely, experimenting with Hulu's ad-supported distribution seems logical. Making the popular Comedy Central talk shows available could be the media conglomerate's way of dipping a toe in the water.

Additionally, later in June Hulu will start to add select programs from PBS: Nova, Carrier, Scientific American Frontiers, Wired Science, and potentially others.

This bring's Hulu's count of programming content partners up to more than 70.