The Social

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.

He's coming to get you.

(Credit: JibJab)

I got a little bit obsessed with JibJab.com's "Starring You!" video creator when it allowed me to create videos of my co-workers dancing the Charleston in drag while horrifically bored on a slow news day. (Josh Lowensohn looks awesome in flapper garb.)

Now, as I've just learned, the site has created a politics-meets-Halloween gimmick so that you can edit a likeness of yourself into mini-movies called "Night of the Living Democrats" or "Night of the Living Republicans" and battle zombified versions of politicians from the political party you abhor the most. The new project, launched Tuesday, is in partnership with CNN Politics--why exactly, we're not sure. And zombies are a big deal, in case you couldn't tell.

Some of us are politically jaded enough so that we'd rather battle undead incarnations of our office-mates or in-laws (since we have to do that every day anyway), but hey, Bill Clinton and Trent Lott will have to do for now.

JibJab, created eight years ago by brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, made a name for itself by Photoshopping the heads of world leaders onto cartoon bodies and turning it all into elaborate song-and-dance numbers. The original "Starring You!" mashups launched over the summer, and the Spiridellis brothers gleefully cite the statistic that over one million of the custom JibJab avatars have been created.

I guess there are more than a few of us who are inclined to procrastinate sometimes.

Trust me--I know procrastination. But this one really takes the cake.

JibJab, as you probably know already, made a name for itself by creating corny (yet socially relevant) musical skits that superimposed the heads of politicians and celebrities onto cartoon bodies. Now that user-generated content is nothing new, it almost seems overdue that JibJab would introduce a "make your own" feature. But now, at long last, here it is: "JibJab Starring You!"

The concept, at least according to the creators, is to JibJab yourself by uploading a photo, easily crop it with the Flash-based tools to make a bobblehead-like image, and then revel at the absurdity of watching yourself dance the Charleston.

But don't let that fool you. The real purpose of "Starring You!" is to dig up photos of your boss and put them into any number of the dorky dance videos. As a bonus, most of them require two dancers, so you can use the likenesses of multiple co-workers--or choose from a small library of celebrity heads that range from Donald Trump to Barack Obama.

As a demonstration, I present to you Josh Lowensohn, Hot Mamacita. (No, Josh isn't my boss, but he's more...photogenic.)