Best of the Web Viral Videos 2008 (Fun on a Friday)

Looking for some fun time-wasters? Look no further than this Washington Post roundup of the best web videos of 2008. Here's to 2009 and more YouTube fun.

Straight No Chaser - Fun on a Friday

What happens when you post a ten-year old video of you and your college buddies singing group on You Tube? If you're this group of Indiana University crooners (my alma mater!), you get over 8 million views, one of which was by a president of a record company. Guess what happened next? A record deal and a holiday album. Enjoy the video of the college performance that started it all or buy their album here.

Read all about them here: ABC News/Group Gets Record Deal from You Tube

YouTube Tries to Depose Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert

The "truthiness" is out! The two comedians are apparently being dragged into the copyright fight between their employer and Google. Entertainment conglomerate Viacom, the company behind Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google last year, alleging that Google and YouTube encourages users to pirate copyright material. Now Google wants to depose Stewart and Colbert on their behalf. There's a lot of legal wrangling (of course) and who knows if it'll happen or if we'll get to hear about it, but that'd be one legal proceeding I'd like to sit in on! The online video industry is wrestling with copyright issues much in the same way the music industry wrestled with this issue with Napster and file-sharing. Lots of different opinions, lots of different approaches, no clear idea on how any of this will shake out, which is one reason why people are watching this high-profile case so closely.

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Diddy Rants on YouTube to Recruit New Assistant

It was bound to happen eventually: online video recruitment. Sean Combs (a/k/a "Diddy") is looking for a helper to fill the shoes of his former assistant. But instead of résumés, Mr. Combs is accepting only video applications uploaded to YouTube. Qualifications? You've got to be able "to read," according to Diddy . . . oh, and you need a college degree. YouTube viewers will be able to vote on the finalists before Diddy makes his pick.



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