Youtube is immensly popular and has set a benchmark for what should be expected from the world of internet video 2.0 websites. That is precisely why I am not doing this project on youtube. I instead chose three sites that are in some cases less popular, but in general containig a smaller scope.

College Humor is a very different breed of comedy. That is why CollegeHumor.com was founded in 1999 by two high school friends from Baltimore, Maryland. They went to different colleges as a way to share all of the pictures, videos, and links their friends would IM and e-mail each other. Now it's a lot bigger. This site includes social networking capability, as well as the ability to upload photos and video compilations. You aren't the only supplier of content, however. The site has a dedicated team of writers that spend their days finding funny things on the internet to share with us.

CollegeHumor.com reaches over 6.21 million unique visitors each month, and displays over 200 million monthly page views (courtesy of Nielsen data). Our users are 73.4% male and 42.6% are within the 18-24 age demographic, and 69.2% are between 18-34 (based on @Plan data). The user base is made up largely by College students - in fact 68% of our users are students. In addition, their weekly email newsletter reaches over 200,000 subscribers. Some of their past site sponsors include Proctor and Gamble, Sony Motion Pictures and Home Video, Ford, Rockstar Games, Jose Cuervo, Virgin Mobile, CBS Television, Miller Brewing, Comedy Central, Paramount Theatrical and Home Video, Warner Brothers, MTV and many others. It uses connected ventures technology - which states tha by using their site you acknowledge that all works they submit as solely theirs and all works you submit as solely yours.

Here's something (appropriately) funny I found on CollegeHumor.com: aptly titled, Spam I Might Actually Read...

Obviously, Stupidvideos.com hosts videos of people doing stupid things. Specifically, they offer stupid videos, photos, and parodies of tv shows. They also offer ecards and contests for cash prizes for good stupid videos, blogging and social networking capability and links to sites such as xsports for specific genres of stupidity, such as sports bloopers.

StupidVideos is located in El Segundo, CA and is part of PureVideo Networks. StupidVideos.com is a viral video website dedicated to humorous, off-the-wall videos, including wild stunts, wacky animals, sports bloopers, funny commercials, song and dance parodies and more. The videos are submitted to us by users like you, licensed from their partners, or produced by the StupidVideos staff.

"IMPORTANT: IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18, STUPIDVIDEOS WILL NOT CONSIDER YOUR SUBMISSION WITHOUT YOUR PARENT OR GUARDIAN'S CERTIFICATION THAT THEY HAVE APPROVED OF THE ACTIVITIES INVOLVED WITH YOUR SUBMISSION BEFORE YOU BEGAN PRODUCING IT. "

Copied straight from their terms of service, this is unique to them. They refuse to allow minors to partake in doing stupid things on purpose without their parents permission. Now if only the lady that spilled McDonald's coffee on her lap to test the temperature was told that, we'd have less general stupidity in this world...

Break.com is a leading entertainment channel for guys fueled by user created media. Break creates a growing community based on timely, visceral entertainment, and enables users to upload and share their original content. essentially its a powerhouse.. Break remains a leading proponent of the democratization and monetization of content. Thanks to Break, you don't need to be famous to create entertaining videos and have them distributed to millions. Break has already worked with a wide variety of advertisers including Anheuser-Busch, Verizon, Lions Gate, Paramount, MTV Networks, Haggar Clothing, Universal Pictures, Miramax, The Weinstein Company and many more.

Break has some powerful statistics. It's the largest independent multimedia destination (Hitwise), as well as a top 100 domestic US web site (Alexa) and top indexer for men 18-34 (Comscore). It's become a platform to reach over 1.3 million daily unique visitors who consume over 15,000,000 videos daily!

As with all of these sites aforementioned, Break follows the same terms policy for uploaded content. This is Taken directly from their Terms and Conditions:

"You understand that all user feedback, data, comments, suggestions, information, text, data, software, sounds, photographs, audio, audiovisual, video, artwork, graphics, messages and other materials of any nature ("Materials") that are transmitted to or via the Site are the sole responsibility of the person from which the Materials originated. This means you, and not us, are entirely responsible for the Materials you transmit through the Site. Further, you understand that by using the Site you may be exposed to Materials that are offensive, objectionable or indecent."

Well, t least they're honest..

For your enjoyment, this was gleaned from the videos at break. This girl was playing a computer maze game, when randomely a scary picture comes to the screen and screams, scaring the girls. It's a poplar prank and a large number of videos use it to get scares from their victims.

All three sites have practically identical legal issues surrounding their content and they handle it in nearly the same way. They all deal with humor, instead of the all-encompassing youtube, which has vlogs and serious things as well. They all use standard social networking technologies to their advantage. They all advertise, but to their respective audiences. Break and CollegeHumor have similar audiences and advertise to the age group 18-34. Stupid Videos tend to attract a wide following of those bored of their respective day jobs, and tend to advertise big companies such as Geico.

But they all share a purpose: to bring a smile to our faces when we should by rights be doing something important