You have GOT to love this. Tiny banner ads tied to flies, and the insects were set free during a conference. I’m thoroughly impressed in such a strange way. Although I have to wonder what the floor looked like at the end of the day.

I’ve often said that you need to logout of your account to see what YouTube really looks like, since that’s what the majority of viewers are seeing. Let’s look at one of last year’s last Archive.org homepage screen shots of YouTube, and compare it to today’s.

Some differences:

• 2008 has lots of white space and simplicity like Google. Today’s homepage features a film ad that dominates almost the entire “above the fold” region.
• The content featured on 2008’s page is mostly consumer-generated or amateur. Today it’s Crackle content and yesterday was FunnyorDie.
• Last year’s page featured new functionality. Today’s features a “house-ad” for YouTube/Google’s store (watch out for those Lava lamps… they sometimes forget the logo).
• The featured videos, like on Break.com, were new each day and remained constant. Today we see a variety of videos rotating, and many are popular amateur videos (mixed with some advertised content). We’ve shifted from homepage featuring to “mini-featuring” via “spotlight tagging.”
• The biggest change is not evident on the homepage. Now the power-engine behind YouTube views is “related videos,” which can account for a significant portion of views.

Again, YouTube is behaving less like parent Google and more like Yahoo.com or a media company. Perhaps the price it can fetch for a homepage takeover is too tempting to resist. It’s a great way to get a film “top of mind” awareness to jump-start a weekend box offices, or a television debut (and I was especially impressed with V’s custom YouTube ad unit). And who can fault YouTube, which bears the bandwidth cost of so much unprofitable consumer-generated content to lure mainstream users with semi or pro content that can be better monetized?

Still, it’s remarkable what a difference a year can make. From where I sit, the biggest flaw in the user-interface is that it’s not entire inviting to visit the most-popular or genre-specific videos. One tends to use the homepage as a search engine, or be drawn to whatever thumbnail or title that happens to appear below the ad-du-jour.

I’ve suggested before that the day of the YouTube editor is behind us, because the sub-page featured videos don’t seem to garner significant views. However I’d suspect “spotlight” videos are driven not just by algorithms (most-viewed, longest average viewer duration, highest rated, related) but by editor preferences. If I’m right, the editors still have an active hand in deciding what YouTube amateurs find audiences. Interestingly we tend to see a few dozen of the same Partners with the most active rotation, which suggests editorial favor-ability or content favored by “crowdsourcing” as defined by the engineers.

Ann Curry joined in a “spontaneous” musical about lunch at Trump Tower, and the ImprovEverywhere team worked with NBC to capture the fantastic moment in “I Love Lunch! The Musical.”  Watch the Today Show coverage of the event and see some fantastic photos by visiting ImprovEverywhere.com.

The bit borrows heavily from my favorite ImprovEverywhere clip “Food Court Musical,” but gives me goosebumps anyway. Charlie Todd’s mission is to to bring people a fun, harmless, interesting moment. And their reactions bring a wonderful richness to the experience. 5 of the largest stars possible.

I met Todd last year, and have remained puzzled why this format couldn’t substantiate an incredible 30-minute television show. It’s simply brilliant.

You may also like the Grocery Store Musical. “They turned life into a musical,” says a bystander. Could we ask for more?

A dog does the salsa. Thanks Sign543 for this gem…

It’s now easy to search YouTube comments without diving into each video and clicking “show all comments.” In a vital move, Google now invites you to search ALL COMMENTS here. Nice job, Google & YouTube. I’ve been begging for this, and with this and the Twitter partnership… you’ve become a real-time engine again.

I can only imagine you’re now developing something that will make social-media monitoring tools obsolete.

YouTube comments are another channel to mine for your brand (or ego surf). We can only hope that Google will provide some advanced filtering. For instance, eliminating spam or allowing us to search by “influence” as defined by the video or commenter.

Although YouTube doesn’t make it easy to spam comments, it’s now quite easy to add noise to this channel. For instance, I can type “Starburst” over and over again in various comments, and Starbucks might think it’s suddenly getting buzz. Or I could ask all of my viewers to type “Citibank sucks” in the comments, and that might set off alarms in the secret Citibank monitoring cabin.

But we can trust Mother Google to solve for that.

In a brave move by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and their gang, Funny or Die has finally moved its content to YouTube. The FunnyorDie website has always had an identity-crisis. It certainly wasn’t a sage financially-driven move, but a fantastic creative outlet for spontaneous and risque comedy by Ferrell, McKay and friends.

It was a bold moment where the actors and writers stood before the public — without layers of intermediaries muting their brilliance. Could Hollywood have produced Pearl The Landlord? The most epic star-created viral video ever (and interestingly not appearing on the YouTube FunnyorDie channel).

Then other stars jumped on the bandwagon. While the site was rarely “top of mind” even for comedy enthusiasts, every few months something would draw us all back for a reunion. In the spaces between, there were dips in recurring traffic despite some great star-powered comedy. Furthermore the site wasn’t sure if it was a pet project, a consumer-generated content play, or a mini television studio. It was, in fact, all of that.

A partnership with YouTube will now give the team a recurring audience, which takes the pressure off the “hot viral” clips that would remind us FunnyorDie.com exists. And it will most likely drive more traffic to FunnyorDie than the site would get otherwise (especially if the team is smart about how it teases content is keeps exclusively on FunnyorDie). I’m not sure I’d advise the CollegeHumor approach of posting content 1 month prior on its own site. Instead, I’d post best-of content and occasionally have Ferrell talk to his subscribers about what’s new in his life and on FunnyorDie.

Remember, FunnyorDie… the most popular and most-subscribed YouTube channels aren’t networks as much as people. Give Ferrell or McKay a Flipcam once a week and post weird unedited stuff…. then you’re sitting on traffic gold you can monetize on YouTube and back on FunnyorDie.

Here’s what I find most interesting and maybe concerning to the FOD folks. Despite a significant push by YouTube (featured ‘n spotlighted videos), we’re seeing only 20K subscribers to date. Compare that to the nearly 500K subscribers TheStation picked up in just weeks (due to its already popular YouTube “star” cast promoting it). TheStation picked up 20K in about 45 seconds.

Here’s where the “blatant self promotion” comes in (it’s disclaimed in the damned masthead, people). I first established a Nalts FunnyorDie account I wrote Will Ferrell a note naively thinking he might write back. Well here’s an open public invite, Mr. Ferrell. I will promote the living crap out of “Funny or Die” on YouTube to my 150,000 plus subscribers. Just let me meet you for 7 minutes and get some footage. We’ll do a collaboration, which is the fastest way to get a loyal for you to pick up a loyal YouTube following (see my free eBook “How to Become Popular on YouTube Without Any Talent” to learn more). After these 7 minutes or up, I’d like you to scream at me to leave. And I will.

I’m serious. A Nalts Will Ferrell collaboration. I’ll meet you anywhere, sir… New York anytime. In San Bruno during Thanksgiving. Toronto next week. You make me proud to be a middle-aged guy with a spare tire. I just want to bite your arm. Not a flesh-piercing bite. More like a gentle but awkward nibble. It won’t hurt.

My son Grant wakes up first. Every day. Then, after feeding Freddy, he settles down onto the computer. “Dad- did you see the new Google?” He showed me Ernie & Burt on Google, and I did a search to confirm we hadn’t missed the local Jim Henson exhibit (ends Nov. 29).

While telling Grant about my childhood hero, Henson, he reminded me of this video… March 2006 (below).

But first, I’ll provide you with some “must watch” Sesame Street and Muppet moments:

1) Manamana

2) Peter Sellers discussing with Kermit how there is no Sellers because he had him “surgically removed.” An interesting moment considering Seller’s history of assuming his character’s identity on and off screen.

3) Dom DeLuise merdlealadop space scene (watch Dom improv with an antenna he happened to catch before it fell into a hole).

4) The Pigs in Space are given the chance to understand the meaning and purpose of life, but opt for dinner instead (a soul-searching commentary by Henson).

5) Aaron Neville and Ernie sings “I’d Like to Visit the Moon.” Best harmony ever ever ever.

I met Neville once while interning at a PBS station in New Orleans. He was as calm, cool, and humble as he appears. Sadly, I never met Henson. It was always one of my dreams.

My favorite part about this YouTube IQ 6-question video quiz is how I bombed the first question (but thank goodness it didn’t count). By SirJaredTyler.

In news that shocked regular YouTube viewers, creator “Shaycarl” is not on today’s “most-popular” page.

Shaycarl, a radio disk jockey turned full-time YouTube star, has been on a rapid rise in subscribers and views (evidenced by Google trends data below), propelled exponentially an assload in recent months due to his affiliation with “TheStation,” a popular collaboration channel of YouTube’s largest stars.

But Shay has not posted in 19 hours. His “Baby Can Slam Dunk” video was posted more than 19 hours ago, and his “Giant Dog” was dated 9/31 and posted more than a day ago.

Shay was not available via phone or e-mail, and has largely secluded himself into a Danny “James Arthur Day” Diamond sweat lodge tent in recent months.

Shaycarl’s last Twitter post was 11 hours ago, and his fans have become alarmed that his biggest hater gentle hater has abducted him. The hater (known as MisterDoodyHead) is presumably based in Venice Beach, California… based on his referring to “out here” as Shay’s current location. Reports of Shay being beaten by a car-seat have not been verified by local authority.

Fortunately ShayCarl’s YouTube account shows activity as of four hours ago, and he will presumably return to most-popular by midnight… unless Sxephil and CharlesTrippy upload more than 100 videos today.