Unlikely, save for one determined Atlanta fan with a taste for hip-hop cartoons. Superdeluxe's staff was laid off in May, but it took the Time Warner subsidiary seven months to move a small portion of its video library over to AdultSwim.com and shut the site down.

Turner isn't the only one finding it hard to get a laugh. Funny Or Die, which has never matched the popularity of "The Landlord," the bossy-baby clip from Will Ferrell, has morphed into a collection of cooking videos and videogame walkthroughs. Heavy.com is in management disarray, and is trying to make money on its advertising network rather than funny videos. eBaum's World, bought by the older brother of Google founder Larry Page, is entwined in a baroque financial disaster. And JibJab, famed for its political-satire musical numbers, seems to make more of its money through serving as an advertising agency for the likes of OfficeMax and Honda.

Why the serial failures? One could point to the struggling market for online advertising, or sponsors' unease with the racier fare preferred by the young male demographic they're hoping to reach.

But I think it has more to do with the nature of humor. Telling someone that they're about to hear a really funny joke just raises expectations. A website dedicated to laffs will find its viewers inevitably drifting away as the gags go flat. Sad as it is to say, people go to YouTube prepared to be bored — and then they're delighted to find something mildly amusing, becauses it's so unexpected. There's no business to be built around such idle surfing — but it's the very nature of how people get their laughs.

One has to wonder if Ferrell isn't trying to undermine the competition, however, considering how not-funny the clip is. Neither Ferrell nor Reilly can seem to decide who's the straight man and who's the goofball. IBeatYou should probably stick to promoting itself with Jessica Alba — 758 users participated in her staring contest, compared to twelve so far for Ferrell and Reilly.

It's an interesting deal for Hollywood, where traditionally people don't get out of bed unless there's cash money on the table. With more stars, producers and writers moving into venture-backed deals like FunnyorDie's, you might see more hot names demanding that studios and networks invest in their startups as part of other deals. It may be the only way Ashton Kutcher can keep Ooma alive.

Primarily through new ventures that not only go around the studios, but around traditional distribution entirely. While the networks and studios all have subsidiaries producing content strictly for online distribution, the talent contracts are still typical pay-as-you-go deals (and meager at that). Agencies have been most enthusiastic about new busines models — probably because they're already realizing efficiencies in terms of talent discovery using the Internet, which allows them to get around scouts and managers and reach new faces easily and cheaply.

A number of agencies have begun embracing new models. 60frames, an online video startup, took $3.5 million in venture funding and was incubated by the United Talent Agency. Creative Artists Agency is assembling a $200 million venture fund with partner Draper Fisher Jurvetson. International Creative Management is reportedly talking to Qualcomm about raising their own cash. And William Morris has helped back a $500 million SPAC to fund M&A deals, with Ashton Kutcher serving on the board. The draw for the agencies is the ability to own a piece of the company that distributes work from their own talent stables.

The only problem is, that gives them a conflict of interest when negotiating with the studios. Why pitch deals to the studio for the standard 10 percent cut when in-house deals would result in agency fees and back-end profits? And no one knows how this will shake out for talent. As LivePlanet producer Sean Bailey pointed out to reporter Laura M. Holson, "People in Silicon Valley too want their pound of flesh."

(Photo by Getty/Sharon Dominick)

1. Facebook stays independent and private, strikes a meaningful deal that legitimizes its business plan, and buys a startup.
2. Born out of the writers' strike, at least one "Funny or Die" style site gets big buzz and maybe even gets bought, but it fails to produce any videos near the quality of FoD or Super Deluxe.
3. Google releases some limited version of voice search beyond GOOG 411. During the year, the company's stock tops $800.
4. Digg sells to a major media company for at least $200 million, and founder Kevin Rose starts a non-web-based company.
5. YouTube announces it's adding HD video, but the feature doesn't arrive until 2009.
6. Gawker Media, publisher of this site, starts a men's site and a Web show.
7. Yahoo suffers major layoffs, leading the press to dub it the next AOL.
8. Yet AOL is spun off and reframes itself. At the end of 2008, the company's future is still uncertain.
9. Apple releases a second-generation iPhone, and at least one New York Times article tries to draw a "middle class/rich" line between those who upgrade and those who stick with the first generation.
10. A new videoblogger emerges as the go-to example for slick independent daily vlogging, following Amanda Congdon and Ze Frank.
11. Tumblr, the pared down blogging service, enjoys the popularity that 2007 brought Twitter.
12. Twitter remains independent and spins off a new service.
13. The Internet again fails to drive one presidential candidate to success. So does Chuck Norris.
14. Jason Calacanis, still running his online directory Mahalo, starts another project.
15. A new meme started in a geeky part of the web infiltrates the "normal" population even more deeply than LOLcats.
16. Yet another e-book reader comes out and no one cares.
17. Blog search engine Technorati collapses after failing to get enough funding to stay afloat.
18. The Wall Street Journal announces it will soon be free online.
19. Blog platform maker Six Apart, having spun off LiveJournal and rearranged its exec staff, gets bought.
20. Dell screws up the good will it won in 2007 with another customer-service or bad-parts scandal.
21. Net Neutrality takes another hit from a telco-friendly Congressional bill.
22. Second Life plods along.
23. The TechCrunch blog network lands a regular TV appearance, if not a show.
24. The country tires of the last round of famous-for-being-famous celebs, and gossip blogger Perez Hilton's TV show gets cancelled.
25. A minor medical incident renews the "can Apple survive without Steve Jobs" argument.

Problem is, despite attracting talent such as Bill Murray, Jenna Elfman, John C. Reilly, Jimmy Fallon, Jeremy Piven, John Mayer, and a writing staff of 30, "The Landlord" remains Funny Or Die's only real hit. This despite 16,000 subsequent efforts by the company and its users. In fact, the video's sequel and the site's second biggest hit, "Good Cop, Baby Cop," (see above) garnered just a tenth as many views.

"I kind of wish we'd released 'The Landlord' today and not last spring," Kvamme told Portfolio. "The site was nothing then, and now it's a robust thing."

If you've never had the pleasure of factchecking at a magazine, congratulate yourself. And stay far, far away. Writers (and editors) have a tendency to pull facts out of thin air. That means the poor factcheck department is often sent scavenging for ridiculous facts like the number of fish in the ocean. Worse, it has to verify information gathered from the Web's most trusted source, Wikipedia. In the above clip from comedian Will Ferrell's Funnyordie.com, Peter Karinen and Brian Sacca of the "Fact Check Unit" must verify that Bill Murray's sleeping aid is a warm glass of milk. The source is Wikipedia."That's a user-generated site," exclaims the duo, "that could have been written by a 7-year-old." Hilarity ensues. The moral: Don't use Wikipedia as a source. (And don't become a factchecker).