At the end of last year, we told you about a new project by YouTube called the “YouTube Slam“. The project pits two videos against one another in a “hot or not” style competition. The site lets you watch two videos and decide which one is better, or in the case of comedy, funnier.

That project alone wasn’t scientific or geeky enough for Google, so the company decided to delve deeper into what makes videos funnier and how the company can detect that you enjoyed it more than any other old video.

One place the company decided to go was within the comments on all of the videos that participated in the YouTube Slam. By looking at the content of the comments, it found that many people would leave a quick “hahaha” or “LOL”. Comments that display the humor you found in the video can help the company rank the popularity of a video in a slightly different way. This data on top of what it was already collecting with your votes, might just tell us which videos are actually funnier.

Surprisingly, the company found that the more o’s you put in your LOL comments on the video, the funnier you thought it was. It was a pattern it picked up time and time again, so Google has decided to build it in to an algorithm which ranks the funniest videos:

Next we needed an algorithm to rank these funny videos by comedic potential, e.g. is “Charlie bit my finger” funnier than “David after dentist”? Raw viewcount on its own is insufficient as a ranking metric since it is biased by video age and exposure. We noticed that viewers emphasize their reaction to funny videos in several ways: e.g. capitalization (LOL), elongation (loooooool), repetition (lolololol), exclamation (lolllll!!!!!), and combinations thereof. If a user uses an “loooooool” vs an “loool”, does it mean they were more amused? We designed features to quantify the degree of emphasis on words associated with amusement in viewer comments. We then trained a passive-aggressive ranking algorithm using human-annotated pairwise ground truth and a combination of text and audiovisual features. Similar to Music Slam, we used this ranker to populate candidates for human voting for our Comedy Slam.

How scientific is it exactly? Your guess is as good as mine, but the minds at Google always come up with a way to quantify huge amounts of data so the “LOLSignal” sounds just as good as any other.

If you haven’t participated in the YouTube Slam project yet, it’s a fun way to kill boredom for hours on end.

The best one of the lot might be by comedy team Rooster Teeth. It’s called “Siri: The Holiday Horror Movie (Trailer)”, and has all of the fake gore and cheesiness you’d expect from a really crappy Horror movie. The only difference is that the evil force that stars in it is none other than Apple’s Siri.

Enjoy!

This video is Biz Stone’s wonderful attempt at selling Twitter, or Twttr as it was known back then. It’s highly amusing to see the normally coy Stone in outlandish mode. [TechCrunch via SayOMG]

If you don’t know about the scandal that’s been going on on the US network NBC either you’ve been living under a rock or you don’t live in the USA. ;)

We did cover a part of this story two days ago: Someone Wants To Pay A Million Dollars For Conan O’Brien’s Suitcase?

However, if you missed that, here is a quick summary of what’s going on:

A brief summary of what happened. In 2004, amid worries that O’Brien would leave NBC since he was getting some offers, NBC promised O’Brien that he would take over the Tonight Show in 2009, essentially forcing Leno to retire. Leno didn’t want to retire and was #1 in the ratings, and with 2009 approaching Leno began to get offers from other networks. Fearing Leno would leave and compete against NBC, it offered Leno a show in a primetime slot to keep him at NBC. O’Brien took over the Tonight Show, but hasn’t achieved the same ratings success that Leno was when he left, and Leno’s primetime show has failed for several reasons. Now NBC is moving Leno back to the 11:35 timeslot, and offered O’Brien to keep the Tonight Show, but to start at 12:05. O’Brien has refused. I don’t know when the switch will be made, but for now both shows are currently at the old timeslots, and both hosts have taken several swipes at NBC and at each other.

Since late night talk shows thrive on jokes, this has been fodder for all of the late night talk shows.  Serioulsy, just run a Google search.

However, what’s been hilarious to me are the ads that Conan and The Tonight Show have put on Craig’s List.

Last week they put The Tonight Show on sale:

4 SALE: BARELY-USED LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW – MAKE ME AN OFFER!!! (Universal Studios)

This is a chance of a lifetime to own your very own late night talk show–guaranteed to last for up to seven months!! Really must see to appreciate.

Information for potential buyers:

- Measures 100’ x 100’ x 32’ – plenty of room for a futon!

- Designed for 11:35 but can be easily moved

- Band can be sold separately

- Buyer must honor Barry Manilow booking next Thursday

MAKE ME YOUR BEST OFFER!!!!! (Also willing to trade for Coldplay tickets.)

• Location: Universal Studios
• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1551463643

This week Conan has put up an ad in the casual encounters section:

TALL, SLENDER REDHEAD AVAILABLE FOR NIGHTTIME RECREATION – m4ww – 30 (Universal Studios)

- Tall, slender redhead available for nighttime recreation.

- 6’4”, completely ripped, VERY Caucasian.

- Drapes match the carpet.

- Currently homeless, must meet at your place.

- Can go a whole hour (with scheduled breaks every 7-10 minutes).

- Fatties welcome.

- Not afraid to take two people at once, and then a musical guest.

- NOTE: If you want me to perform after midnight, it’ll cost you!

• Location: Universal Studios
• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1558679241

We’ll miss you Conan.  Come on Fox! Give him an offer!

Summary courtesy of LJ World.com O’Brien/Leno Controversy

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Someone Wants To Pay A Million Dollars For Conan O’Brien’s Suitcase?