Common Paradox Tech Blog

Hoping to raise money for the Haiti earthquake relief effort, Bono, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Alicia Keys, and Coldplay and somewhere around 100 other stars will entertain viewers on both the web and traditional TV tomorrow night at 8pm ET in a benefit called Help Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief.

The telethon was organized by MTV Networks and George Clooney, and other networks taking part will include the websites of MySpace, YouTube, Hulu, AOL, Fancast, VH1, CBS, MSN, Bing, Yahoo, Rhapsody, TV.com, BET and CNN. The event will be streamed by mobile providers AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, too. There will be over 30 networks involved once all’s said and done. Expect this to dominate both the internet and the television tomorrow night.

A U2/Jay-Z/Rihanna collaboration and a jam including Kid Rock, Keith Urban, and Sheryl Crow will be among the main events. They’ve got a little something for everybody planned, it looks like.

Most of the sites that are hosting this event haven’t created pages to visit yet, but show up at any of the networks before the show starts and you’ll find your way.

Live Chat: More Engagement, More Donations

Live chats managed by Gigya — the same company that did the MTV/Facebook/LG Avatar webcast with James Cameron — will accompany the MTV, VH1 and CBS webcasts.

Gigya told us that MTV Networks is working with them again to recreate the “lean forward” level of participation they achieved with the Avatar webcast. The live chat makes the donating experience public; folks in the chat will probably encourage one another to donate, and people will be more likely to donate if they know they can impress their friends. They’ve found that these webcast chats drive more traffic and more word of mouth promotion, which will in turn lead to a greater volume of donations.

[img credit: iamguilty]

Tags: alicia keys, aol, att, bet, bing, bruce springsteen, cbs, cnn, coldplay, fancast, george clooney, gigya, haiti, hulu, jay-z, justin timberlake, keith urban, kid rock, mtv, myspace, sheryl crow, sprint, taylor swift, television, tv, tv.com, U2, verizon, vh1, webcast, Yahoo, youtube

It wouldn’t be an award show without some sort of bizarre and shocking moment that gets the Internet abuzz, and last night’s American Music Awards were no exception.

The talk of the show this time is Adam Lambert’s (who you may remember from American Idol) performance, in which he kisses another guy towards the end.

The event is still the talk of the Web this morning, bringing back memories of the infamous Britney Spears and Madonna makeout from the 2003 VMAs which pre-dates both YouTube and Twitter (nonetheless, the clip still has 5 million views).

At the moment, video of the Lambert performance does not seem to be available on ABC’s (who aired the AMA’s) website, though the clip is on YouTube (below). Whether or not that’s an editorial or technical decision, we’re not yet sure, but you may recall that MTV reaped a massive traffic boost from keeping the Kanye West/Taylor Swift incident off of YouTube and in its own player earlier this year.

It’ll be interesting to see how long the buzz surrounding Lambert’s pushing-the-envelope performance lasts given the vastly different media landscape that exists just a few years after the infamous Britney/Madonna moment. Feel free to share your thoughts about it in the comments.

Reviews: Twitter, YouTube

Tags: adam lambert, american music awards, youtube

Unlike YouTube, Hulu doesn’t show you the number of times a given video has been viewed. Although the site does have a “Most Popular” section, Hulu recently started offering a bit more insight into viewing trends by distributing “Movers & Shakers” charts (via email) that lists the most popular videos, shows, clips, movie trailers, and search terms over a given week.

Perhaps most interesting of the bunch is the “most popular show” category, a combination of clips and full episodes that tells you what has moved up and down in the past week (versus the other data, which can more or less be easily found on the site), serving as a TV ratings of sorts for the Web (minus CBS, the only network not involved with the venture).

In this week’s rankings, Saturday Night Live – hosted by Taylor Swift – moved up into the #1 slot for TV shows, not surprising given that clips from the show currently dominate the site’s “most popular” section. SNL is followed by The Office, Family Guy, and The Daily Show.

Here’s a sampling of the lists:

Interested in Hulu’s weekly show rankings? Let us know and we’ll keep them coming!

Reviews: Hulu

Tags: hulu, video

For those hoping for a re-enactment of the Kanye/Taylor Swift viral video that became an Internet meme, SNL didn’t deliver the goods last night. There was, however, a nod to one of the biggest Internet fads of the year, as guest host Taylor Swift included a mention of the event in her “Monologue Song” (video below).

For those wishing to relive the meme one more time, check out our Top 10 Kanye West Interruption Parodies.

For international viewers, versions of the clip are still available on YouTube.

Reviews: YouTube

Tags: kanye west, taylor swift

One of the top Internet memes of 2009 is likely going to get a shot of new life this weekend as Taylor Swift hosts Saturday Night Live.

Of course, we’re talking about Kanye West’s interruption of the singer at the MTV Video Music Awards that spawned countless “I’ma let you finish” parodies, Halloween costumes, and even the use of the word “jackass” by the President.

NBC has just released the first preview for the show, which, you guessed it, alludes to one of the greatest viral video moments of all-time. We won’t ruin the punch line for you, but you can probably guess what it is. Here’s the video:

Tags: kanye west, snl, taylor swift, video

Twitter opened up Twitter Lists this week, allowing users to create their own “follow lists” of their favorite Twitter accounts.

Todd Zeigler tallied the early stats this morning and found that – yowzers – our own humble @mashable account was the second most-listed on Twitter, trailing behind @barackobama.

Obviously ranking on a list that includes President Obama is more to do with our super-supportive Twitter community than actually having anywhere near the influence of a world leader. And it’s a position that isn’t holding late in the day: as more mainstream users get to grips with lists, we’re already seeing celebrities like Taylor Swift and Ellen rocket up the rankings.

The true value of lists, of course, is not overall authority but topic-based influence: who are the best people to follow for info about fly fishing? Or baseball? Or fine wines? Soon, Twitter Lists will tell us.

Yes, We Pander

That said, we’re not conceding the race to Obama just yet:

We’re in 7,500 lists.

Barack is in 10,900 lists.

If 3,400 of you were to accidentally go to the Mashable Twitter account and add us to a list, we’ll include the “War on Fail Whales” in our 2012 Presidential bid. Promise.

Image credit: dcumming27 on Obamaiconme

Reviews: Twitter

Don’t have your costume ready for Halloween yet? Internet meme site Know Your Meme wants to help. The site has launched the Hallow-meme Costume Builder, which aids you in creating a Balloon Boy costume, a Kanye West & Taylor Swift outfit (for couples), a Three Wolf Moon costume for three people, and many more besides.

It’s a smart move from Know Your Meme, a spin-off from video-blog Rocketboom: not only does it give the site more visibility this Halloween, but the use of affiliate links means that the site could bring in a few bucks from geeky Halloween revelers.

Tags: costumes, hallow-meme, Halloween

We’re seeing numerous reports of Facebook Pages (including our own!) not displaying any content, and instead, just showing the message “[page name] has no recent posts.”

Our Page has been having this issue for the last 30 minutes (as of around 7:00pm PT), while Twitter search shows lots of other users experiencing problems as well.

Some of Facebook’s most popular Pages, like those belonging to Vin Diesel, Taylor Swift, and even Barack Obama are missing all of their posts too. Other Pages, however, continue to work as normal.

We’ve contacted Facebook and will update when we learn more.

Update #1: As of 7:35pm PT, Facebook tells us they are “looking into this now”

Update #2: As of 8:45pm PT, Facebook tells us “this issue was due to a bug that we were able to resolve quickly. All the posts should be back now and no data was lost.” The Mashable Page is back up as are the ones we checked. If you’re still having issues, do let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Facebook, tweetzi Twitter Search

Tags: facebook

News of a disturbing incident in London is spreading around the Web this afternoon. Leona Lewis, singer and winner of the UK’s “X-Factor” program was apparently hit in the face at a book signing.

There aren’t many details available yet about the incident, but the singer, presumably through her team, has already issued a statement on Facebook to her more than 600,000 fans.

“Leona was the victim of an unprovoked attack this afternoon at her book signing. The police were called immediately and medical attention has been sought. Leona is understandably shaken and apologises to the fans she was unable to meet and complete signings,” read a note on her Page.

Fans are quickly adding comments to the post, showing their support and sending well wishes. The immediate reaction is reminiscent of what we’ve seen in other recent unexpected celeb stories, like Kanye West’s VMA outburst, where Taylor Swift’s fan page started growing explosively afterwards.

In this case, we first and foremost hope Lewis recovers quickly, but are once again impressed by the role that social media plays in the aftermath.

Tags: facebook, leona lewis

This is pretty awesome. You’ve probably heard about hip hop artist Kanye West’s antics on Sunday night during MTV’s VMA awards. If not, watch this. Basically, West interrupted country singer Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to say that Beyonce deserved the award. It seems like no one will shut up about it. While West later apologized, his name has been a top trending topic on Twitter ever since the incident. And now any website can suffer the same disrespect at the hands of West.

Kanyelicio.us is a site with one purpose: To make Kanye West insult your own site. Simply type in the URL “http://kanyelicio.us/” and after the final “/” put in your own domain. For example, here’s Kanye insulting TechCrunch.