Josh Spector

6 Lessons You Can Learn From The Success Of “Jackass”

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The latest Jackass movie crossed the $100 million mark at the box office last weekend as it continues the remarkable success streak for the franchise. But the reasons Jackass has become such a phenomenon goes beyond people’s fascination with guys tasering each other. Here’s a look at 6 Lessons You Can Learn From The Success Of Jackass that will help you create and market your own comedy creations.

You Don’t Need A Big Budget

The most common excuse I hear for why somebody’s content doesn’t work is because they don’t have enough money to make it work. While there’s truth to that excuse some times, it’s usually just a cop out.

The Jackass crew produces its movies on a miniscule budget compared to a typical feature film and it has absolutely no impact on the entertainment value of the final product. This is even more true online, where typically the videos that go “viral,” have little or no budget at all behind them. In fact, I’d even argue that in most cases online, the bigger the budget the less likely the video is to succeed.

There’s Strength In Numbers

One of the keys to the success of Jackass is that it revolves around a crew of guys doing the stunts and not just one individual. The competition between the guys drives them to do bigger and better stuff than they would on their own. Second, it allows the audience to connect with different members of the Jackass crew and accentuates their individual characteristics (i.e., Johnny Knoxville’s the ringleader, Bam Margera’s the one who messes with his parents, Steve-O is now the sober one, etc.). Third, having a group also creates natural marketing advantages because it allows more people to market to more audiences and bring their own niche followings into the fold.

From a comedy standpoint, I rarely ever see comedians take advantage of the strength in numbers – though I have noticed that many of the biggest stars on YouTube informally collaborate and work to grow each other’s followings. Even forming a loose coalition, can pay big dividends for comedians who are trying to break into the business.

What You Stand For Is As Important As What You Produce

The Jackass guys make some really funny movies, but that’s not what really drives the connection between them and their fans. That connection and loyalty comes from the ideology behind their brand. People aren’t just entertained by the Jackass world, they passionately connect with what it stands for – a balls-out, no fear, approach to life. There’s lots of videos of people hurting themselves out there, but there’s only one Jackass and that’s mainly because Jackass stands for more than just entertainment to its fans.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

People like things that are simple to understand and they like to share and  talk about things that are simple to explain. Jackass is both of these things. You don’t need a college degree to “get” a Jackass movie and you also don’t need to have seen anything else the Jackass guys have done to appreciate their latest masterpiece. These are two things that are completely opposite of what I see lots of creators doing when they roll out episode 14 of their obscure Napoleanic political satire series on YouTube.

Get More Bang For Your Buck

It’s always smart to develop multiple ways to monetize your content and Jackass do this on a large scale by essentially shooting enough bonus footage to release a straight-to-DVD sequel to their latest big screen productions. After Jackass 2, they followed it up with Jackass 2.5, a straight-to-DVD release that included enough new footage to stand on its own, even though it was all shot using the same budget they used to shoot the feature film. They’re planning to do the same thing with an upcoming Jackass 3.5 DVD release.

This is smart business and something I’d encourage you to consider on a smaller scale in your own projects. If you’re shooting a sketch video, what else can you get out of that? Maybe you can sell a song that you play in the video? Maybe you can shoot a funny “Making of” video and get two videos out of your one production?

Show People You’re Having Fun

It seems obvious, but if you’re creating comedy it should be fun. And that fun can be contagious because audiences want to connect with people who look like they’re having fun. The Jackass guys always look like they’re having the times of their lives and that’s why just about everybody that watches their work has that moment when they feel like they wish they were a part of the crew because they make it look like so much fun. Even though you know it would be torture, they make it look so fun that you want to be a part of it…by paying to go see the movie from the safety of the theater.

READ THIS NEXT: 6 Questions You Should Consider Before Doing Anything Online.

5 Reasons You Haven’t Made It In Hollywood Yet

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There’s no one path to success in Hollywood, but there’s certainly some things that may prevent you from getting that elusive “big break.” Here’s a look at five common mistakes I see comedians make that might be prolonging their struggle.

You’re Not On YouTube (Or There’s A Bad Version Of You On YouTube)

I’m not about to suggest that you need to become a YouTube star in order to have a career in Hollywood, but if you’re a comedian and you’re ignoring YouTube as a showcase for your talent then you’re making a huge mistake. YouTube regularly gets searched by studio execs, casting agents, talent bookers, and others who are looking for a quick reference about a comedian who may be brought up in conversation.

I’ve been in countless meetings where this has happened and I’d say more than 50% of the time what comes up is either nothing, or some outdated or terrible clip of the person in question. It’s really inexcusable and a huge missed opportunity. Inevitably, the comedian’s out of the equation and they turn their attention to somebody else (who likely has a decent clip on YouTube that they can look at in that moment).

It’s ok if you’re not going to be constantly posting new videos of yourself on YouTube, but you should absolutely have at least one or two good ones up there that showcase your talents. You never know who’s going to be looking.

You Don’t Understand The Business

One of the things that’s always been interesting to me about people who want to have a career in the entertainment industry is the fact that most of them don’t bother to learn anything about the business of Hollywood. I understand that performing and creating is an art and not a science, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t at least have some idea of what’s going on in your chosen industry.

At a bare minimum, you should occasionally read industry news on sites like Variety or Deadline Hollywood so that you start to get a sense of who the various players are in the industry and what their interests are. If you’re lucky enough to get a pitch meeting with a producer, you should know what other kinds of projects they have bought – not only because it might help you sell a pitch but also because it might help you decide if it’s even somebody you want to work with in the first place. The more you understand about how the business works, the more likely you’ll be able to find success within the system.

You’re Not Creating Anything Or Building Any Value In Yourself

Another ironic trait that I often see in comedy creators is that they’re pursuing a career as content creators, but they don’t seem to have any interest in creating anything until somebody tells them they can. It used to be that you needed a studio or somebody to “greenlight” your creations and get them in front of an audience, but those days are gone. Sure, you might not have as much budget as you’d like for your creation, but thanks to technology it’s now easy to create something and expose it to the whole world.

If you do this, you not only are showcasing your talent but you’re also building value in yourself by starting to attract your own following and audience. A comedian with an audience (even a small one), will always be more intriguing to Hollywood than one who has no audience. And it’s impossible to build an audience for yourself without creating something first.

You’re Just Like Everybody Else

One of the easiest traps for comedians to fall into is to look around at other people who are having success in their careers and assume that you should be more like them. I couldn’t disagree more. The key to catching Hollywood’s attention is to be different from everybody else and to stand out from the crowd. A lot of times I think comedians think it’s enough to just be funny, but it’s not. There’s lots of people that are funny. The question is, what makes you different than everybody else that’s also funny?

If you haven’t figured out what’s unique about your voice, your act, your writing, or your content, then you’re fighting an uphill battle in terms of your career. There should be something about you and what you do that nobody else can do, and that something is what you should be “selling” to Hollywood. Because if you don’t know what makes you stand out from all the other funny guys, then how can you expect Hollywood to figure it out?

You’re A Pain In The Ass

Nobody thinks of themselves as being a pain in the ass, but trust me, some of you that are reading this fit the bill. Hollywood is just like any other business and people want to work with people that they know are responsible and easy to deal with. It seems like a little thing, but showing up on time, being reliable, and following through on what’s expected of you when you actually do get an opportunity can go a long way to getting you another opportunity.

Hollywood’s a small town and the chances are that anybody you work with will wind up in other jobs in the future where they can help (or hurt) you and they also probably know lots of other people in the industry who can give you opportunities. Being difficult or irresponsible will do a lot more than ruin the one gig you’re working on at the moment.

How Ben Huh Turned A Funny Cat Blog Into An Internet Empire

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You may not have heard of the I Can Has Cheezburger Network, but if you’ve spent any time on the Internet you’ve definitely seen some of their work. I Can Has Cheezburger is the company behind such Internet staples as the LOL Cats and Fail Blog. The 3-year-old network of crowdsourced comedy sites includes 53 sites and attracts more than 16 million unique visitors a month, according to this interesting New York Times article that was published back in June.

The man behind the company, Ben Huh, recently did a quick interview with Channel APA which you can watch below. In the video, Huh explains how and why he started the company, what he thinks has been the secret to its popularity, and how he thinks any artist can market themselves better.

5 Tips For Stand Up Comedian Alex Kummert

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One of the things I’m excited to be doing here on Connected Comedy is providing specific advice for comedians, bloggers, and video creators about how they can get more attention for their creations. That’s why I’m introducing a new feature on the site called 5 Free Tips where I will offer some free advice specifically tailored to one person’s content.

If you’d like me to give you 5 Free Tips, just shoot me an email and tell me about yourself.

The first beneficiary of my 5 Free Tips is aspiring stand up comedian Alex Kummert, who sent me the following email:

I’m a 17 year old high school senior from Washington State. I’ve been doing Stand-Up Comedy for about 3 years now. My material is on a couple websites (Rooftop Comedy, Punchline Magazine) and I was lucky enough to win an online contest.

Despite this, I still think I could do more. I’m not sure what that entails, but I’m sure you would give me a better idea.

Here is some of my recorded material (please let me know what you think!)

More from Alex:

Neighborhood Block Party

High School Open Mic Night

I checked out Alex’s work and came up with the following 5 Free Tips for him:

TIP #1: Have A Goal

The first tip I would give you is that you should think about what your goal is and why you’re posting these videos online. Is it to get views and exposure for yourself? Is it to try to build a following and gain subscribers? Is it to try to get bookings on stand up shows? Is it just as a calling card for people who you want to show your act to?

Most likely your answer is a combination of all of the above, but I think it’s worth thinking about which of these things is your #1 goal because it will impact whatever strategy you take with the stuff you put online. I’m guessing that since you’re a relatively new stand up comedian, that your main goal is to try to start to get some attention for yourself and hopefully have a few people start to become fans of the funny stuff you create. I’ll assume that’s the case for these next tips.

TIP #2: Use Your Name

This is a common mistake that I see lots of stand up comedians make online – they seem to hide from their name. As a stand up, you want people to get to know your name so you should be using it as your account name on everything you do if possible.

Your YouTube channel shouldn’t be “AKummert,” it should be “AlexKummert.” And your Twitter account shouldn’t be @Kummert_442, it should be @AlexKummert. It’s a little thing, but that consistency can really help people find you, connect with you, and remember you. While you’re at it, you should go buy AlexKummert.com – even if you don’t use it, you’re going to want to own it at some point so that you can.

TIP #3: You’re 17. Use That.

All successful comedy is about voice and usually the more unique the voice, the better the comedy. In your case, what makes you stand out from a million other comedians is probably that you’re 17-years-old. I’m not suggesting that you turn yourself into some kind of gimmick, but you might want to think about ways you can play off your age online to attract an audience.

For example, I’m sure there’s a lot of other 17-year-olds who are interested in performing stand up even if they’re not actually doing it. They’d probably be interested in reading a blog or seeing videos with you talking about your experiences, more so than they would an older, more established comedian.

Your age, combined with a blog or video series about those experiences, also has the extra benefit of giving you an interesting story that could get you some attention elsewhere. No newspaper or local TV station cares about the fact that you’re doing stand up comedy, BUT… I bet a lot of media would be interested in a story about a 17-year-old stand up comedian who has a following of other kids that want to be stand up comedians. With a little clever positioning, you go from just another guy in the crowd to the “leader” of the crowd.

TIP #4: Turn A Stand Up Joke Into A Video Blog

This is another opportunity that I see lots of stand up comedians ignore. Just because you do a joke in your stand up act, that doesn’t mean that the joke can’t be done in other ways. Stand up works ok on YouTube, but a lot of times the same joke told in a different way – acted out as a sketch or just said as a video blog rant – can play much better. I’d suggest looking at some of the jokes in your act that work well and shooting some simple videos of you telling them as video blogs.

This also allows you to title the bits specifically and market them to an audience that’s predisposed to enjoy them. A full stand up set is much more difficult to get attention for because it’s about a lot of unrelated topics.

For example, you could tape yourself telling an extended version of your Mario Kart joke, post it as a standalone video titled something like “How Mario Kart Stopped Me From Getting A Driver’s License,” and then post the video on video game message boards or fan sites where people will be likely to get the references.

Here’s an example of a Mario Bros. video blog to get you in the mood:

TIP #5: Decide What One Action You Want People To Take

This ties into whatever your overall goal winds up being, but you should have one consistent action that you want people to take and promote that action across everything you do online. For example, if the #1 thing you want people to do is subscribe to your YouTube channel then that should be the URL featured on your Twitter page and not your Rooftop Comedy URL which is what’s there now.

If you have a blog or website that features all of your creations, then you should be asking people to go there from Twitter and YouTube and whatever else you create. If you want them to join an email list so you can give them a heads up about your activities, then ask them to on everything you do.

There’s no right or wrong one thing you want people to do, but I would recommend coming up with one main action that you want people to take and figuring out ways to encourage them to do so.

Hope this helps Alex, and if anybody else would like to get 5 Free Tips, please let me know.

“I’m Boy Crazy” Blog Gets A TV Deal From Showtime

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Yet another Internet property has snagged a TV deal, as Alexi Wasser’s blog ImBoyCrazy.com is being developed into a TV series by Showtime. Deadline.com breaks the news:

Showtime is developing Boycrazy, a half-hour comedy based on Alexi Wasser’s provocative blog ImBoyCrazy.com, with Wasser attached to star and Lynda Obst to executive produce. Wasser will co-create the potential series with Daisy Gardner (Californication), who will serve as showrunner. Boycrazy centers on a girl (Wasser) looking for love, purpose, and the meaning of her life, one dude at a time. It follows her as she tries to navigate the world of sexuality in the post-modern society of Los Angeles while trying to find real love.

I had never heard of ImBoyCrazy prior to hearing this news, but after checking out the site it’s easy to see why Showtime might be interested in the property. Wasser, an actress whose biggest credit appears to be a role in Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, has created a nice little “world” to showcase her concept.

The blog not only has advice posts that showcase her voice, but also feature videos and podcasts. She’s also had the blog up and running since 2008, and built a decent following for it including more than 3,000 Facebook fans, 6,000 Twitter followers, and 1,000 YouTube subscribers. Obviously, those aren’t overwhelming numbers, but they’re enough to lend some credibility to go along with a solid concept.

This is a perfect example of the way blogs, videos, and podcasts are increasingly enabling Hollywood outsiders to catch the attention of TV development execs .

Here’s a look at some of the videos Wasser made for the site:

4 Ways To Get Comedy Club Audiences To Remember Your Name

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The other day I had a conversation with a woman who said she goes to comedy clubs once or twice a year. She mentioned that she had been to the Comedy Store recently and that she had a great time.

But when I asked her who she saw, she replied, “I don’t know. It was a bunch of guys and I don’t remember any of their names.”

Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, that’s the reaction most comedy club audiences have after shows. They usually like the comedians they saw (at decent clubs at least), but have no idea who those comics were or any intention of planning to go see them again…even though they liked their act!

To me, this has always been a huge missed opportunity. Comedians (and comedy clubs for that matter) do a terrible job of implanting comedians’ names in the minds of crowds who enjoy their acts. That’s part of why it’s so difficult for most comedians to build a following.

Obviously, there’s no “rules” for making sure that the next person who likes your act will remember your name, but here’s a few ideas I have that might help.

Work Your Name Into Your Act

Although stand up comedy audiences  rarely remember comedians’ names, they usually remember some of their bits. When people leave a club and are talking about who they liked, you usually hear something like, “The guy that talked about dating lesbians,” or “The woman that told that airplane joke.”

This creates an opportunity if you can work your name into a bit that’s funny enough for them to remember.

A good example of this is comedian Michael Kosta, who repeatedly mentions his own name and hands out business cards with his name on them from the stage as a running gag throughout his act (see below video). It’s a simple little trick and I have no idea if it’s calculated move or not on his part, but I guarantee you that more people remember his name than the average comedian.

Give Crowds A Reason To Look You Up After The Show

I’ve never really seen any comedians do this, but I bet it would work. What if you created some kind of additional content tied to one of your jokes that people would want to look up online the day after your show? This would obviously be joke-specific, but here’s one hypothetical example.

Comedian J Chris Newberg* has a song called Drunk Girl which he performs in his act (see below). He also has a slideshow video he made for the song featuring pics of all kinds of wasted girls. So here’s an idea…

Why not buy a domain like DrunkGirlSong.com and have it redirect either to his YouTube page for the video or to his personal website? Then, after he performs the song on stage he could mention that they can see the video or download a free mp3 of the song at DrunkGirlSong.com. If they like the song, they’ll probably go check out the easy-to-remember domain and subscribe to his YouTube channel.

Email The Crowd The Next Day

If your crowd is having trouble remembering your name the day after a show, maybe you can remember theirs? If the club you’re performing at will allow it, why not put your own comment cards on the tables and ask people to give you their email, Twitter, or Facebook account info. Collect the cards after the show and then you’ll be able to reach out to them personally the day after the show, thank them for coming out, and introduce them to the rest of your comedic exploits. It takes a little work, but I bet you they’ll remember your name after you send them a thanks for coming.

Let Your Audience Participate Via Twitter

I’m sure you’ve seen Jimmy Fallon and other late night TV hosts using Twitter hashtags to allow their audiences to participate in their shows. Well, you could probably do something similar on a smaller scale in your comedy club act. For example, come up with a funny idea for a hashtag and ask people in the crowd to take a moment and send a tweet with that hashtag.

What do you get out of it? Well, anybody that participates is somebody who was in the audience for your show and you can go back the next day and tweet a thanks to them. Now, they’ll connect your name with your act.

These are just a couple random ideas of how you can better get your name out there. What else would you suggest?

*In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve worked with Newberg in the past and have helped him get more than 7 million video views online.

What The Death Of Digg Means For Comedy Content

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Once upon a time (read: about 6 months ago), Digg was a king of the social media space and able to drive more traffic with a single link than just about any other site on the web. But those days are coming to an end…rapidly.

For those of you that have never heard of Digg, here’s a quick back story. Digg’s been around since 2004 and is essentially a site where anybody can post a link to an article or video on the web that they find interesting and the community of Digg users can vote up or down whether they think the link is worth your time.

If the link gets enough votes (according to Digg’s mysterious algorithms), it gets featured on the Digg front page and is rewarded with so much traffic that it will probably crash your site’s servers and knock you offline. Oh, the irony.

Because Digg’s front page is able to drive so much traffic, an underground industry developed of people who were willing to game the Digg voting system for a price. I won’t go into all the dirty details, but suffice it to say that there were people you could pay to get enough votes to essentially “guarantee” that your piece of content would hit the front page of Digg and receive a ton of traffic.

Constantly espousing the benefits of a “social news” system, Digg always spoke out against the gaming of its system and would regularly “ban” users and sites who it claimed were violating the rules of its game.

However, there was always a pretty clear double standard as certain “Power Diggers” and publishers always seemed able game the system and operate with immunity from Digg’s community policing.

A couple months ago Digg transitioned to a new format which was intended to limit some of the influence of the Power Diggers, undercut the “illegal” paid Digg market, and more evenly spread out the traffic people could receive from the site so that it was no longer a “front page or bust” situation. The only problem is that the “new Digg” has been nothing but a disaster.

Since launching the new version of the site, Digg has seen a drastic drop in traffic, a drop in its ability to send traffic elsewhere, and a slew of layoffs. But today brought even more titillating news, with a revelation that Digg may be gaming its own system for the benefit of its publishing partners. If you’re a social media or marketing geek, this analysis is a pretty interesting read. If you’re not, here’s a quick summary.

It appears that Digg has been creating its own “fake” accounts and gaming its own system in order to hit the front page with links that drive more traffic to its publishing partners (big companies that are paying them for traffic) and making it seem like those publishing partner’s stories are being naturally voted to the front page by the Digg community. Digg responded to the accusations by declaring that the fake accounts were just for testing purposes, which seems like a pretty weak excuse to me.

Anyway…

The demise of Digg and all its associated conspiracy theories has been fascinating to follow, but what impact will any of this have on the comedy world? Here’s a few thoughts I have about how a Digg-less world could impact the comedy web:

Get ready for a traffic (and revenue?) drop.

Comedy content has always done well on Digg and a lot of comedy sites receive a ton of their traffic from Digg (yeah, I’m looking at you Cracked and College Humor). As Digg crumbles, that traffic is not going to be easily replaced, which could have serious implications on sites that rely on it to generate the ad impressions they rely on for revenue.

Bloggers can go back to creating content for their actual audience.

No blogger wants to admit it, but if you’ve ever had a post hit the front page of Digg and saw the flood of traffic it sent to your site then you probably got a little addicted to the feeling. As a result, you probably started to create a few more posts specifically as Digg-bait (even if you knew they weren’t necessarily things your particular audience would love) in the hopes of getting another hit like any true junkie.

In case you ever wondered why just about every post on every comedy blog is a list of crazy/wacky pictures, the reason is that those posts tended to do very well on Digg. If there’s no more Digg audience to attract, my guess is you’ll see a lot fewer of these posts which is probably a good thing.

Digg is dead. Long live Reddit!

Reddit is another social news site that was basically considered Digg’s main rival. That said, it wasn’t nearly as big as Digg (until recently) despite in my opinion being a much better site. The reason it wasn’t as big as Digg? Probably because it wasn’t nearly as easy to game and therefore not nearly as reliable a traffic driver (Note: Reddit can also drive a lot of traffic if you post links to good content on Reddit. The difference is that on Digg you could get a lot of traffic to mediocre or bad content if you gamed the system. That’s much more difficult to do on Reddit). Now, with Digg out of the picture, you’re already seeing people turning to Reddit in the hopes of finding and promoting great content.

It’s a reminder of the dangers of relying on marketing platforms you don’t control.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in the past few years is that it’s always dangerous to rely too much on a platform you don’t control for your own marketing purposes and this is a perfect example of why. There’s a lot of sites that lived off of Digg traffic in the past couple years and built nice businesses on Digg’s back. But now, Digg’s about to disappear and in some cases drag those audiences with them into the abyss. Does this mean you shouldn’t try to get traffic wherever you can? Of course not. But it does mean that you should always be trying to capture your own audience and not just assume that you’ll always be able to tap into a traffic faucet like Digg is was.

That’s how I see the death of Digg affecting the comedy world. What do you think?

The Story Behind “Stuff White People Like”

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As most of you are probably aware at this point, a little blog about Stuff White People Like exploded across the Internet a couple years ago and rode a wave of success all the way to 73+ million web visitors and a book deal. What you probably don’t know, is how exactly that happened.

The blog’s author, Christian Lander, tries to explain the phenomenon in this presentation he gave back in 2008 at the offices of Google. Don’t be scared off by the 48-minute run time of this video – Christian’s speech only lasts about the first 20 minutes and he’s as entertaining as you might expect.

How The Awl Succeeds By Doing Everything Wrong

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The New York Times has an interesting profile of The Awl, a culture website that recently spun off its own humor site (dubbed Splitsider) and seems to be succeeding despite breaking all the “rules” of building a successful media business online. Here’s an excerpt:

The very idea of a little digital boutique flies in the face of all manner of conventional wisdom, chief of which is that scale is all that matters in an era of commoditized advertising sales. The Awl is attempting to tunnel under those efforts by building a low-cost site that delivers a certain kind of content for a certain kind of audience. And the owners don’t have to get rich — The Awl has no investors — they just have to eat.

“I’m surprised that there aren’t a lot of independent, owner-operated editorial Web sites out there,” Mr. Sicha said. “We will be two years old in April, and we are self-sufficient and stable. That’s pretty fast.” (Disclosure moment: I know Mr. Sicha socially in a New York media sort of way, and he has written for The New York Times in the past. The mysterious Mr. Balk, who is never interviewed for quotation, not so much.)

The Awl confronts the tyranny of small numbers in an age when Web behemoths, like Gawker Media and The Huffington Post, get most of the attention. A lot of ad agencies don’t want to deal with any sites under a million unique visitors, and many brands are not necessarily interested in cutting deals with boutique Web sites.

It’s the job of Mr. Cho, a veteran of College Humor and Radar, to solve this, which he’s done in part by cutting sponsorship deals with Ann Taylor, Yahoo Search Terms, Kia Motors, Gillette and Merge Records. Those deals mean The Awl is no longer solely dependent on selling display ads.

Read the full article here.

Web Comic Creators, PadPressed, And Where Comedy Central’s Traffic Comes From

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Here’s a few things I’ve come across recently that are worth clicking:

• If you’ve always thought you’d be great at writing a comic but have no artistic ability, here’s a great list of 6 Free Sites To Create Your Own Comic that will probably come in handy.

• I haven’t tried it out yet, but the new PadPressed plugin for bloggers using WordPress looks pretty damn cool. The plugin promises to beautifully format your blog content for the iPad, essentially creating your own iPad app for your blog without having to go to the trouble of actually designing an app and getting it into the app store.

• A recent Mashable article about social media strategy included some interesting stats about where Comedy Central gets its web traffic from – apparently 21% of its referral traffic comes from “social networks,” and 15% comes from Google.

• Finally, comedian Mike Bridenstine’s Tumblr tipped me off to this recent video of comedian T.J. Miller appearing on a morning talk show in Minneapolis. It’s a pretty off-the-wall (and hilarious) appearance that I’m sure left an impression on viewers who are used to seeing the same old comedian promotional appearances. Here’s the clip: